VOIP - full IP system or hybrid?

[twin--turbo]

Yeah, it's a bit of a monster if your on one of the full server products. I was given a 15 minuet "This is how it works" by the installer 4 years ago and have just had to learn it all myself. I had to try and train one of the guys the basics of how to administer the system for when I leave and we spent two days and by the end of day 2 he had already forgotten day 1.

I guess there is a question of who is to manage the system and how easy it would be to do so?

I keep meaning to try Asterix, I have the disk on my desk in the dining room but other things get in the way.

Rob

[snoerre]

Has anyone ever tried openUC Enterprise - eZuce (==kind of enhanced SIPXEC commercial edition)?

[twin--turbo]

FreePBX is brilliant. I rolled out 70 handsets on an Old Dl380 G4 running FreePBX and SIP Trunks for about 5k.

Well going to have some free time each week so I may have another play with FreePBX ( well it was plain Asterix last time I had a look) for my own satisfaction.


What was the bulk of the cost in the £5K? was it just the handsets?

Rob

[twin--turbo]

you need a Cisco router to act as voice gateway.

You don't have to, and with the move away from fixed lines to SIP the need for any voice router is even less of a problem.

Rob

[glennda]

Well going to have some free time each week so I may have another play with FreePBX ( well it was plain Asterix last time I had a look) for my own satisfaction.


What was the bulk of the cost in the £5K? was it just the handsets?

Rob

Yes - as we already had the server to run it (can also be run in a VM) and using SIP trunks instead of ISDN we didn't require additional hardware for the server (as in ISDN cards etc). I got 36 @~£89 x Yealink T28p and 36 @~£56 x Yealink T20p.

With the ability to Auto Provision these Yealink Handsets easily - see my other post regarding that took about 20 mins for all phones and plugged them in and they configured themselves. These phones also come pre packed with a Power Supply if POE isn't available whereas with a lot of the other phones you have to buy them seperatly.

For Failover and ease of setup rather then setting up the phone system with a PSTN failover in the event of sip/power failure we got a PSTN line installed in the Admin office Otherwise we would of had to run half the school on UPS's

[twin--turbo]

Just installed FreePBX on a VirtualBox. Just need to get some SIP phones now to test ( I have a couple of SCCP phones but I don't want to upset them )

Is there a recomended free desktop SIP client for linux that works well with FREEPBX?

Rob

[glennda]

Just installed FreePBX on a VirtualBox. Just need to get some SIP phones now to test ( I have a couple of SCCP phones but I don't want to upset them )

Is there a recomended free desktop SIP client for linux that works well with FREEPBX?

Rob

xlite I think works on linux and is quite good

[Geoff]

Xlite is cross platform and works great. For linux look at either linphone or sparkle. On windows you also have the option of Zoiper Lite. Not sure what the deal is on Mac OSX as it's something I've never had to tackle.

[nicholab]

SIP trunks are ok if you get the management buy in and have the right set-up to support it.

[twin--turbo]

Xlite is cross platform and works great. For linux look at either linphone or sparkle. On windows you also have the option of Zoiper Lite. Not sure what the deal is on Mac OSX as it's something I've never had to tackle.

Could only see Mac and windows Xlite on the counterpath website, I used the client last year against our CCM and it worked ok but I thought they had stopped the free version.

Rob

[twin--turbo]

SIP trunks are ok if you get the management buy in and have the right set-up to support it.

I need to get a couple of channels and test them on the Call manager so we can dump the ISDN30.

Rob

[Geoff]

Could only see Mac and windows Xlite on the counterpath website, I used the client last year against our CCM and it worked ok but I thought they had stopped the free version.

Rob

Its not available on their website, but you can get Xlite 3 elsewhere on the internet.

[nicholab]

The advise with a phone system is that you have 1 PSTN line for emergencies.

[Geoff]

In a school environment I suspect it would be a legal requirement.

[twin--turbo]

We have a PSTN of the phone system for total emergancies, and a failback to ISDN2 if there is a problem on the ISDN30. If we move to SIP we would retain the ISDN2 and certainly keep a stand alone PSTN unit.

Rob