No idea where to start.

4 lines, 1 fax i think. option to have more lines would help or however it works.

Need a fractional T-1?

What kind of equipment will I need?

What's a good older used phone system I could pick up for a decent price (smaller budget).

Need: voice mail, line forwarding (for receptionist), speaker, able to plug in headsets, and i guess conference calling (although not too important).


Anyone with any info please help me out here.

[Edited on July 11, 2006 at 12:22 AM. Reason : ]

7/11/2006 12:22:05 AM

I'm not sure of the hardware, but we just got setup with a linux based phone systems called asterisk. The UI is great and easy to use. We have T-1 line coming into our building.

[Edited on July 11, 2006 at 12:37 AM. Reason : ]

7/11/2006 12:37:18 AM

yea we have some asterisk stuff here at work.

Buy a 1u rackmount server + a digium TE110P

They can be had for less if you buy them from a reseller instead of digium.

Then buy some sipura phone adapters. Either the spa-2002 or spa-2100. Those are the most cost effective.

Last time i checked the 2100's were ~$85 a piece. And each has 2 phone ports and a built in nat router so you dont have to run an extra network cable. 12 people/2 ports per device = 6 devices =$510.

Alternatively you could buy a station board for your asterisk switch. But thats gonna be more expensive than using sip.

After that its just configuration.

7/11/2006 12:47:33 AM

so we're looking at initially (w/ 6 phones) ... $380 for the digium card... $free for the server as i have pc hardware i can use... $255 for 3 2100's... then ip phones at around $100 a piece for another $600... = $1235

what all am i missing from this? can i get cheaper ip phones that can do voicemail per phone?

the digium TE110P handles the T1 that then routes traffic over the network how?

7/11/2006 1:25:26 AM

2wire used to have some real slick gateway devices back in the day that would run voip with multiple mailboxes, work as a router, let you setup an extension system, etc. I dunno if you can buy them direct anymore but maybe check out ebay?

7/11/2006 10:10:54 AM

Quote :

"so we're looking at initially (w/ 6 phones) ... $380 for the digium card... $free for the server as i have pc hardware i can use... $255 for 3 2100's... then ip phones at around $100 a piece for another $600... = $1235 what all am i missing from this? can i get cheaper ip phones that can do voicemail per phone? the digium TE110P handles the T1 that then routes traffic over the network how? "

You dont need the ip phones. The sipura adapters take care of that.

So basically heres how it works. You throw the t1 card into the comp and plug in the t1. you then configure that trunk group in asterisk. Next, you confiure SIP logins for each phone you're going to use. Each spa-2100 has 2 phone ports. So you'd create 2 SIP logins for each spa-2100. You then log the spa-2100 into the asterisk switch. Each port is then related to the sip extension you created in asterisk. So voice is transmitted over network to the spa-2100 and to either port. Each port is a standard phone port so you just plug in whatever phone device you already have. It is exactly how vonage works. Infact the linksys pap2's are made by sipura.

And you might not even need a bunch of spa-2100's. You can use SIP softphones like [link]http://www.xten.com/index.php?menu=Products&smenu=xlite">x-lite.

This is a very cheap, and very customizable solution. However, there are drawbacks.

Configuration and installation of asterisk is manual. You will compile asterisk from source, and configure it in flat text files. If you're comfortable with linux, its really not a problem. You just need to learn about the configs. For that, http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/ is hugely informative.

Other drawbacks are that your network must be up to the task of delivering the voice traffic. I'd recomend using the g726 codec. If you have a decent 100mb network, you should be fine. And hell, if you have a decent internet connection you could connect from the internet to your asterisk switch with a sip phone and have your same extension.

If you have some time, you might want to compile asterisk, create some sip extensions, and test using xlite. The only cost would be time, and it would let you get a feel for configuring asterisk


[Edited on July 11, 2006 at 10:32 AM. Reason : hurr]

7/11/2006 10:30:11 AM

Quote :

"Other drawbacks are that your network must be up to the task of delivering the voice traffic. I'd recomend using the g726 codec. If you have a decent 100mb network, you should be fine."

All the bandwidth in the world won't make up for intermingling of data and voice traffic, which will result in Jitter. Gotta have that QoS to truly guarantee voice quality.

7/11/2006 10:45:22 AM

and where might you suggest one should purchase some QoS capable equipment

[Edited on July 11, 2006 at 11:00 AM. Reason : eheh]

7/11/2006 11:00:04 AM

yeah, therein lies the problem. Managed hardware (switches and routers) with QoS capability are probably gonna take you over budget, though you might be able to find something on eBay.

7/11/2006 1:46:49 PM

or you could just create a physically seperate network for voice.

honestly, with 6-12 devices on a lan i really doubt you'd see any issues with jitter.

7/11/2006 2:00:25 PM

yeah, maybe, maybe not. I've just seen too many examples of the problems that do occur.

Then again, nobody calls me to tell me that everything is working fine.

7/11/2006 2:03:22 PM

guy i talked to today said he had 8 voip phones on a 100mb network with RR business class and not one problem.

7/11/2006 7:30:28 PM

We use mostly Edgewaters for QoS management

http://www.bandwidth.com

7/11/2006 7:48:50 PM

what's a good cheap QoS router i can use with 5-10 ports that can delegate upstream to VoIP traffic?

7/14/2006 2:46:08 PM

We use a Digital Voice One DVO-1C and it would probably fill your needs. Not sure how much they paid for it, but it works.

7/14/2006 2:51:58 PM

I think what we're going to do is get 2 seperate DSL lines (6mb down, 512kbps up)... one for voip, one for data. $109/month each.

can't get TWC where we're at b/c the builder fucked up a conduit line and won't fix it.

7/14/2006 6:18:48 PM