Phone systems recommendations

[ITGURU]

Quick question: Do the phones need to go on to their own QoS enabled vlan for voip? and if so, how does this work in terms of the passthrough and having the phone and PC on a separate vlan?

 

They don't have to. I run them just on a normal additional VLAN and have no issues. However our switches do have a dedicated VOICE Vlan configuration section, but I don't use it.

 

The vast majority of our phones where we use the link through are only used for printers as they are only 10/100 connections and you just tag the switch port to include both VLANs.

[localzuk]

Quick question: Do the phones need to go on to their own QoS enabled vlan for voip? and if so, how does this work in terms of the passthrough and having the phone and PC on a separate vlan?

 

It is most advisable to do so, yes. The way our phones work is that you trunk the port that they connect to - then have the phone assign the "desktop" vlan to its passthrough port.

[FN-GM]

I've not, as yet, found any supplier that will support random SIP trunks across their general broadband service.

 

Zen internet do.

[localzuk]

Awesome, thank you!

 

Anyone who's gone through a similar procedure able to PM me some idea of costs you had? I'm not too worried about the costs of phones, it's more the system costs I'm interested in at the moment. Those of you using FreePBX, was it exactly as it says on the tin or where there any hidden costs to getting yourself setup? Those of you using 3CX, what did it cost? Trying to do this as cheap as i can (within my skill set...willing to put the effort into learn something new though)

 

When we put our system in, 7 or so years ago, we didn't virtualise (wasn't really a thing then).

 

So, we bought a cheap server (well, we actually bought a couple, one as a cold spare) and bought some Digium TDM400P FXO cards (for connecting from the server to analog phone lines).

 

Then I rolled our own install with Ubuntu, Asterisk 1.2 and FreePBX. Took a fair amount of faffing to get it perfect, but that was the extent of the costs for us.

 

If you use SIP trunks, and virtualise, then there is no cost really to do it.

 

Our entire system, with 40 handsets, 2 servers, and 2 FXO cards cost us less than £5k. Which, when we compared with commercial solutions at the time was ridiculously cheap (£20k was the nearest quote we got).

[mrbios]

When we put our system in, 7 or so years ago, we didn't virtualise (wasn't really a thing then).

 

So, we bought a cheap server (well, we actually bought a couple, one as a cold spare) and bought some Digium TDM400P FXO cards (for connecting from the server to analog phone lines).

 

Then I rolled our own install with Ubuntu, Asterisk 1.2 and FreePBX. Took a fair amount of faffing to get it perfect, but that was the extent of the costs for us.

 

If you use SIP trunks, and virtualise, then there is no cost really to do it.

 

Our entire system, with 40 handsets, 2 servers, and 2 FXO cards cost us less than £5k. Which, when we compared with commercial solutions at the time was ridiculously cheap (£20k was the nearest quote we got).

 

Awesome, yea it looks like it's probably a lot easier now with the FreePBX "ready to go" distro and virtualisation. I might pay for some external help initially to get us up and running (if we didn't have a whole new wifi network going in this summer id probably try and do it all myself...), and the phones are looking like roughly £3k for 65 sangoma ones, if we go for those.

 

I'm still struggling to believe the costs myself though, because people have been trying to sell us all these bolt ons and ridiculously complicated replacements to our existing pbx for £5k, £8k and more. The savings to be had by doing it DIY seem positively mouth watering.

[WithoutMotive]

Some great recommendations and ideas here. Thanks, chaps!

[localzuk]

Awesome, yea it looks like it's probably a lot easier now with the FreePBX "ready to go" distro and virtualisation. I might pay for some external help initially to get us up and running (if we didn't have a whole new wifi network going in this summer id probably try and do it all myself...), and the phones are looking like roughly £3k for 65 sangoma ones, if we go for those.

 

I'm still struggling to believe the costs myself though, because people have been trying to sell us all these bolt ons and ridiculously complicated replacements to our existing pbx for £5k, £8k and more. The savings to be had by doing it DIY seem positively mouth watering.

 

They really are. Our system has ran smoothly for the time we've had it. Only glitch we had was when I forgot to set log rotation and the disk filled up. The real beauty is the expandability of it. Want a new extension, buy a SIP phone, plug it in and configure it. Done. No extra licenses, no extra costs.

[TechMonkey]

Our BT line will allow SIP trunks. I think there is a lot of confusion as companies use terms interchangeably. We kept asking if we would be able to use our current line and some said yes, others said no until finally one company told us that yes you can use any Internet connection but if your calls are heading out directly to the Internet you can get loss of quality and nothing a company can do about it. What they recommended was to check our line was SIP enabled, which meant that SIP calls could directed off onto a SIP system that would mean the calls kept their quality. I'm sorry I don't know that actual terminology, only that BT confirmed we could have our line SIP enabled and it would take 2 weeks.

 

I imagine that what voipfone are doing is directing everything directly across the internet and it will work but you may get variable quality and they will be able to do nothing about it. My cynical brain says that they'll offer to install a high quality internet line for a one off payment of 999.99. All our quotes have included some kind of SIP setup or monthly cost, I can't believe all of them are trying to rip us off with imaginary costs.

 

As for quotes, we've had from 8k up to 20k.

[Meldrew]

Those of you using 3CX, what did it cost? Trying to do this as cheap as i can (within my skill set...willing to put the effort into learn something new though)

 

It cost us about £10,000 in all. A rough breakdown is 3cx was £1,500 (but we got too big a licence. I overestimated the number of simultaneous calls!), £4k for new 82 VOIP phones (now cheaper), £1,500 for a server (we would run as a virtual one these days), £1,000 for extra cabling and infrastructure (POE switches but old ones needed upgrading anyway), £600 for an ISDN gateway and the rest, bits and bobs and the yearly 3cx software assurance and tech support costs of about £900 per year.

 

We run ours without any VLAN at all and it works a treat. Only initial problem was the handsets had a codec issue causing bad quality, but a new codec later, all good.

 

Meldrew.

[mrbios]

They really are. Our system has ran smoothly for the time we've had it. Only glitch we had was when I forgot to set log rotation and the disk filled up. The real beauty is the expandability of it. Want a new extension, buy a SIP phone, plug it in and configure it. Done. No extra licenses, no extra costs.

 

That's the bit that was baffling me when we were chatting to someone trying to sell us an alcatel system, asked him how much the phones were "about £100" then he waits until the other end of the meeting to tell us about the license costs. Starts talking to us about all the fancy features as well, then again waits until we're all intrigued to tell us they're all "additional extras at extra cost" :| With something open source like this, it's so satisfying seeing every feature available..........which is probably why I'm repeating myself searching for the same information over and over, I'm struggling to believe there's no hidden costs!

[zag]

Does anyone run VOIP phones without a vlan?

[localzuk]

The software is free. The cost with FreePBX and Asterisk is the support side. If you want support, you can find a company to provide it. If you don't, though, then you literally have no costs.

[pantscat]

Does anyone run VOIP phones without a vlan?

 

I've seen it done in small environments (20 - 30 users)... didn't seem to cause any issues, but to guarantee call quality I'd put voice on a separate VLAN with the appropriate QoS.

[john]

Skype is complicated, licensing is complicated and relies on MS wanting to stay in the Phone business. Would be brilliant with all the bits included but I'm concerned it will be too much to manage in a small department.

 

I'd argue its not that bad.... I would expect your needs as a school are far less complex than the ones that we deal with where we have multiple sites and pools and phone lines around the world and leased cost routing to do with it, which works great. A simple install won't be that hard at all I wouldn't expect for you. As for will they stay with it, its the same thin from the good old days of Live meeting, Office Communications Server, Lync Server and now Skype for Business so its very long standing and tested technology so its just got a new name so don't let the "its new" put you off its been around a long time already so it tried and tested.

 

License wise @Ric_ did it at his school a good few years ago and licenses under EES were peanuts.

[dhicks]

Does anyone run VOIP phones without a vlan?

 

We haven't gotten around to configuring any quality of service settings for our 60-odd phones yet, they've been working just fine for the past 2 years without being on a VLAN or having QoS settings set up. The plan is to use software defined networking to do the QoS part anyway, not VLANs, but there's always been something else to set up first. I should perhapse add that we have a 10 gigabit fibre backbone, so we probably just have plenty of bandwidth to spare - we probably should set up QoS eventually.

 

The same is likly to hold for our external lines. At the moment we have 4 external phone lines provided by ISDN. As discussed previously in this thread, we can replace those with SIP connections of some sort. In theory, you need garunteed quality-of-service settings for your external SIP traffic. In practice, we have a 200mbps fibre-to-the-premisis connection and there's currently plenty of bandwidth to spare (although it would be sensible to have our gateway prioratise SIP traffic). Audio data actually takes up relativly little bandwidth these days compared to all the other stuff we use the network for.

[mrbios]

Any schools on here in or around Gloucestershire that use FreePBX?

 

Personally i feel happy enough with all this to dive in head first into FreePBX and 62 new phones, but she's understandably hesitant and would probably benefit from someone to ask questions of.

 

EDIT: Seems I've picked the absolute IDEAL time to be doing this...Sagoma S300, S500 and S700 phones with support for "zero-touch" setup with FreePBX are released in April. Sounds like it's going to be a LOT easier to set everything up than i was initially suspecting, so long as FreePBX is setup right, this should go swimmingly.

Edited March 22, 2016 by mrbios

[mrbios]

I know this is going to vary greatly from school to school but can anyone who has been using SIP along with a free minutes package find out how much they've paid in a year for their call charges + sip trunk costs? Even more ideal if you've got 8 sip trunks, but i'll take what i can get

[dgsmith]

There was only a thread about this just in the last month or so.. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/netbooks-pda-phones/162918-new-phone-system-recommendations-2.html

[mrbios]

Such wonderful timing, the past 2 weeks i've been playing around with FreePBX, i've got quotes for VOIP phones and I've planned a meeting with a guy i know well to talk all things phones (as he's well trained on them) and hash out any gotchas...come into work this morning and a digital hybrid card has failed in our old PBX

 

Just as I'm trying to sell this new idea to senior management, the digital hybrid card that finance, reception and the heads phone are all on fails. It's so well timed that it looks as if i planned it!

[VeryPC_Anthony_L]

Hi all, It seems I might be a bit late to the party as there has already been alot of talk on here.

At VeryPC we use and supply 3CX, which is a great system and can do quite a lot. Like many of you I really like the 'FREE' routes but unless you fully have the time to support this and have time to experiment and play these can be more of a nightmare. Although saying that generally the community forums that 'support' these are often very knowledgeable.

 

There is often a tendency to think that just because you have an IP system you need to have Sip lines, which although would reduce your hardware costs is not true as you can get cards and gateway equipment to link in to say ISDN lines.

 

If you want an out of the box system the systems like Avaya is a good option although often with these systems you are limited to what handsets can be used where as on 3CX / Free type system your have a lot more scope on what handsets you can use.

 

Feel free to PM me it you need any help or advise.

[fiza]

Our partner school has just moved to a new VOIP provider who have provided their own phones. The school now have a number of Cisco phones that are redundant. Can these be used with 3cx if we wanted to experiment?

[VeryPC_Anthony_L]

Our partner school has just moved to a new VOIP provider who have provided their own phones. The school now have a number of Cisco phones that are redundant. Can these be used with 3cx if we wanted to experiment?

 

 

Here is a good place to start. What SIP Phones can I use with 3CX Phone System?

 

Anthony

[PotNoodleTech]

Need some advice here peeps - already on an existing archaic contract that ends in July. Planning on getting a new IP&SIP based system and had quotes from a couple of suppliers based on leasing which were VERY expensive. LEA have advised buy outright for the back end and licences and then buy handsets etc ourselves.

 

I've seen Free PBX and Asterisk mentioned above - that looks absolutely ideal - however I am time challenged, got 6 months to get this sorted and have several other large projects to complete am worried about the time and effort and knowledge involved to get the Free PBX system working.

 

Can anyone offer advice or experiences of what you did with you're Free PBX or other phone systems?

 

Edubeers in it for you!

 

Cheers

[TechMonkey]

No first hand experience but 3CX was nearly half the cost of the nearest price with fancy phones. Speak to @VeryPC_Anthony_L or take a look at How to buy 3CX Phone System for Windows to find a reseller near you.

PM if you want more specific details.

[2ilent8cho]

Need some advice here peeps - already on an existing archaic contract that ends in July. Planning on getting a new IP&SIP based system and had quotes from a couple of suppliers based on leasing which were VERY expensive. LEA have advised buy outright for the back end and licences and then buy handsets etc ourselves.

 

I've seen Free PBX and Asterisk mentioned above - that looks absolutely ideal - however I am time challenged, got 6 months to get this sorted and have several other large projects to complete am worried about the time and effort and knowledge involved to get the Free PBX system working.

 

Can anyone offer advice or experiences of what you did with you're Free PBX or other phone systems?

 

Edubeers in it for you!

 

Cheers

 

Back in 2009 the Bursar and i went to a company who could sell us a VoIP system to replace our existing. I had never touched VoIP before. On the way back he said now i can i do it cheaper in house? So looked at Asterisk and found Elastix which is a nicely packaged version of it got a couple of SIP phones and went playing. Few weeks later ordered the ISDN line, dedicated server to run it and all the handsets. Been running fine now for 7 years and not missed a beat, thats handling 130 extensions.

 

So if you are thinking Asterisk get the Elastix package of it. Its great.