VOIP Thoughts

[truebluesteve]

Hi All

 

We are looking to replace our ageing telephone system with a VOIP one - the reasons are many and varied, and I wondered if people here had any experiences they might like to share - both good and bad. Would also be interested in comments on suppliers/installers.

 

Thanks

 

Steve

[MatthewL]

I would recommend Avaya kit, its solid as a rock and we have some large call centre's running on their smaller systems and some services than run on a 24/7 basis. Cannot fault it.

[Geoff]

I just threw away an Awaya IP Office 450. I've replaced it with a Rack server running FreePBX and Polycom VOIP desk phones. Another option a lot of people here will suggest is Microsoft Lync.

[Gibson335]

We also use Avaya. It just works. I'd advise you to take advantage of their training, though - as calls related to use of software can be costly.

[FragglePete]

Splicecom here - check out my blog on here for our experiences.

 

Pete

[Meldrew]

We use 3CX and are really pleased with it.

[glennda]

I just threw away an Awaya IP Office 450. I've replaced it with a Rack server running FreePBX and Polycom VOIP desk phones. Another option a lot of people here will suggest is Microsoft Lync.

 

echo that - I made a 70 user phone system using FreePBX and 35 Yealink T20P and 35 Yealink T28P.

 

I paid £52 per T20P and ~£80 per T28P which is roughly £4600, I then used 10 x SIP trunks out to the internet from @Millgate running on an old DL120 (later moved to a DL380G4 which there is one on Ebay for £40) or you could run it as a VM.

 

I setup all of it on less the 5k and reduced ongoing costs by 60%. Splicecom I was quoted 20K for, Avaya 22K and NEC 29k. Out of those three - Splicecom was the shiney one, Avaya was the robust it'll just work, and NEC the bells and whistles that nobody really needed.

 

For what my school wanted at the time the FreePBX worked (auto attendant, Voicemail, ease of use).

[Willott]

PBX in a Flash running on a virtual server here - no problems with that, just make sure your ISP doesn't have failures or packet loss issues - or get a secondary line purely for VoIP (possibly from your trunk provider) - cost should still be cheaper than ISDN30 lines!

 

Cheers

 

Will

[Millgate]

Morning!

 

We offer a number of telephone solutions, from a fully hosted VOIP solution to an on premise PBX system and many things in-between. One of our solution specialists would have a either conduct a site survey or a discussion over the phone to come up with the correct and most cost effective solution for you. We can provide a number of reference sites for you to contact. We do the full design, implementation and support of all systems we install.

 

Let me know if you have any questions

[twin--turbo]

Depending on the size of install ( if your small ) A Cisco UC320 does a lot for a little and looks easy to set up according to the vid.

 

I Run a Full blow Cisco Call manager and Unity Connection... Way over the top for what we need but it's what we got supplied. Won't be changing that for a long time.

 

Rob

[Ric_]

I would not recommend Avaya kit... from experience it is rubbish (IPOffice). Also... Alcatel sucks (we nick-named it Alcahell). We have also just decommissioned 2 Cisco systems in the states - those were a PITA to manage.

 

Lync FTW IMHO!

[glennda]

I would not recommend Avaya kit... from experience it is rubbish (IPOffice). Also... Alcatel sucks (we nick-named it Alcahell). We have also just decommissioned 2 Cisco systems in the states - those were a PITA to manage.

 

Lync FTW IMHO!

 

The other thing with Avaya is they have no upgrade path i.e if you buy an IP office 500 and they bring out a new range it tends to be you have to buy everything new i.e new phones etc you can't just update the backend.

[Ric_]

Another point @glennda reminded me of...

 

Many solutions tie you into propriety hardware - e.g. Avaya kit requiring Avaya handsets, etc. Asterisk based systems will always give you the greatest selection of endpoints but Lync also has numerous offerings from Polycom, Aastra, Snom, Plantronics..... (the Snom stuff is REALLY good).

[Quackers]

We went VoIP 3-4 years ago and used Elastix which is free, and got some SIP phones , and used an ISDN30e line. No need to buy these systems, Elastix is very easy to configure

[Get2theChoppa]

download trixbox onto a i3 / i5 pc or a hp proliant server...additional cost will be purchasing additional lines coming in (from your provider..bt or virgin), relevant digital interace card to install in server and the VOIP activated phones....dependant upon your backbone, allow IPT traffic and rocking and rolling! You would do it all in-house?

[Oaktech]

I don't have any particular software recommendations, I've been paid to install Toshiba, Siemens, Alcatel, FreePBX, and they all have up and down sides... but I can heartily recommend Aastra phones, they are reliable and cost effective.

[glennda]

download trixbox onto a i3 / i5 pc or a hp proliant server...additional cost will be purchasing additional lines coming in (from your provider..bt or virgin), relevant digital interace card to install in server and the VOIP activated phones....dependant upon your backbone, allow IPT traffic and rocking and rolling! You would do it all in-house?

 

I tried trixbox and found it not to be very easy to configure. I would go with SIP trunks rather then additional lines and the digital interface. All runs over Ethernet.

[m25man]

Lots of suggestions on hardware but what about infrastructure such as switches, trunked links, VLANs and QOS?

 

If you intend to use VoiP as your primary means of telephony and share your bandwidth with hundreds of other users you need to address this in the early stages of deployment.

[Geoff]

I would hope that most people had already fixed up their Layer 3 and had decent a decent infrastructure with managed switches, VLANs, etc, before they got to the point of considering VoIP.

[twin--turbo]

I would hope that most people had already fixed up their Layer 3 and had decent a decent infrastructure with managed switches, VLANs, etc, before they got to the point of considering VoIP.

 

One nice advantage of using Cisco, apply a "Desktop" port macro and it will configure the QOS etc so the only thing to do is designate the Data vlan and voice vlan numbers.

 

We tend to run most of our phones on dedicated ports, but I can't say I have ecer had a problem when the port is doing the Data and Voice Vlan.

 

The cisco also knows there is a phone on the end of the wire thanks to CDP.

 

TT