Need help deciding what Voip PBX to adopt for my office

Hello,

I'm new to the board and apologize if I am posting this in the wrong place. My office is looking to purchase a new Voip phone system and I have no idea where to even look for reviews of the different systems out there. I have a quote for the Avaya IP office but now nothing about it except I recognize the company. Can anyone suggest different options? Can anyone suggest where I can go to get independent reviews? Many thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer.

Regards,

John

Reply from mazilo on Mar 23, 2006 - 07:33 PM

Hi jgiotta,

Welcome to the VoIPUSER forums.

Most offices will spend $$$ for Cisco IP phones. I personally don't like the idea of investing my $$$ on any IP phones mainly because the VoIP is built-in within the phone unit itself. This makes it hard for me to choose the styles and features on the phones I want, let alone the prices. To overcome this problem, I prefer to invest my $$$ on some ATA devices and select the right phone units, i.e. cordless/corded, etc., with the right taste, features, and budgets. For these purposes, I would get some Linksys PAP2-NA as my ATA devices and some cordless phones with extensions, i.e. Panasonic KX-TG2740S 2.4GHz cordless phone systems. You may do similar to what I have done by investing some of your budget to Linksys PAP2 units and have them connected to the existing PBX system in your office. This way, your employees will not notice any differences mainly because they will still be using the same POTS.

Reply from jgiotta on Mar 23, 2006 - 07:43 PM

Thanks Mazilo. I don't think having a uniform type of phone in the office will be a problem. Added to this is that, depending on our own experience with whatever option we go with, we may end up reselling the product to our clients. These two things combined are pushing us towards finding a specific Mfg. and I was hoping for some suggestions on where to start my search. Based on your answer I think I will need some Voip primers as well

Thanks again.

John

Reply from mazilo on Mar 23, 2006 - 07:50 PM

If you want a specific manufacturer and budget is of no concerns, then you can't go wrong with Cisco IP phones. Otherwise, you might want to consider for some inexpensive China made IP phones.

Reply from rgower on Mar 23, 2006 - 11:01 PM

If all you have at the moment is a vague desire for a new IPPBX telephone system and a single quote, then stop!

Have a look at a few more systems, Siemens, Mitel, Nortel, Ericson etc. and look closely at your requirements:

What do you realy want the system to do, apart from make telephone calls, if anything?
How big does it need to be, extensions, trunks etc.?
Does it need analogue and ISDN lines for fall-over?
What other features are needed?
Does it need to integrate with anything?
Does the system work in a way that suits your users? If stepping up from an analogue system, the sight of all those buttons on system phones is terrifying!
How long do you want the system to last before having to upgrade/replace for bigger and better?
Are you happy to do any expansion yourself, or do you need an installer do it?
Do you mind being locked to a single vendor for handsets?
Can you get still get support if the supplier disappears?
Thinking of the supplier, can you get on with them? Get references!
If the system is not too big, heavily used or integrated, then a local Asterisk integrator might be more suitable?

It looks like a long list, but you are going to be blamed for the system for the next 10 years, so it makes sense to have all the answers to start with and we may be able to offer something more helpful in answer?

Reply from mannin32 on Mar 27, 2006 - 10:55 PM

I am also looking for a pbx solution for our new office. We already have a bunch of sipura, budgetone, grandstream phones to use so I wanted to use a service that will work with these phones. We are going to have a cable modem with 1.0 mb upload speed so i think we should have plenty of bandwidth. We will need pbx features for the system, ACD, transfering, voicemail, where should i look for this.

Reply from dean on Mar 27, 2006 - 11:17 PM

Hi Mannin and welcome to the VoIP User forums.

Once you've had a read of this:-

http://www.voipuser.org/forum_topic_4957.html

.... and are convinced that you're doing the right thing, you might want to take a look at Asterisk or SIPxPBX.

Dean

Reply from tangle on Mar 28, 2006 - 12:12 AM

or try a hosted IP PBX, particularly if you've got a selection of IP hardware to play with. No financial risk involved, just suck it and see. Have a look at voipfone:

http://www.voipfone.co.uk/PB_Virtual_PBX.php

or Gradwell.

www.gradwell.com

Reply from gray on Mar 28, 2006 - 12:17 AM

I am going through all this myself at the moment and busy setting up a small office that required 'some kind of phone system'. As a VOIP 'devotee' I would like nothing more than to use the techniques and principals expounded here BUT the reality is that this is a working office, it needs high reliability, and PSTN fallback. We cannot manage this yet without PSTN and the solution I have been forced to adopt can only be described as a 'hybrid' VOIP and conventional PBX system.

In basic terms we need to use PSTN mainly for inbound (two lines) and then four VOIP lines provided via two x two line ATA devices provisioned by a commercial VOIP service provider to put us in control of outbound costs. The PBX chosen will be a fairly conventional - a Panasonic KBX bought secondhand (refurbished) from an Ebay store for very little money.

In all we will be putting together a 6 Line 8 Extension system, calls to work colleagues and outworkers will be via VOIP. All international and local outbound will be via VOIP and most International inbound will be via VOIP. Local inbound (and ADSL provision) via PSTN from the local teleco.

The total cost ? Looks like being well under £500 and a few late evenings on hands and knees with the glue gun.

Reply from mannin32 on Mar 29, 2006 - 10:43 PM

thanks for the input guys. I have some more questions though, we have a small office running on voip right now through a 512k upload dsl connection and we have some problems with call quality and the number of simultaneous phone calls. There are 10 phones setup but it seems like we can only use 4 before we start having problems. Our providor is our partner who is basicly giving us a hosted pbx and told us that each phones uses 40k.

Since we are having all these problems I am worried about setting up this new office on voip since we can't get very many phones working together. I am looking at getting a cable modem with 1.5 upload so we should have plenty of bandwidth but are we going to run into the same problems?

I am basicly asking if DSL/Cable internet connections are clean enough to run voip or do i need a data t1?

Reply from rgower on Mar 29, 2006 - 11:15 PM

Hi Mannin,

Glad to see you haven't been put off by the doom and gloom

Couple of things come to mind.

The biggy is internet traffic and VoIP do not mix well together if there is any contention. While a router with QOS can make an improvement, you are probably better off with a line dedicated to phones.
Of course, if your internet provider does not offer QOS of it's own and running a bit too close to the wind in its provision then you have no chance.

The other is that all though your partner suggests your phones use about 40K (on average), the truth is that you are probably using a G711 codec which uses about 70K. On a 512K connection 5 lines is about the realistic limit.
Changing to a more compressed codec like GSM or G729 (if supported) should improve things considerably (at least double).

Reply from dean on Mar 29, 2006 - 11:30 PM

Quote:

On a 512K connection 5 lines is about the realistic limit.

Can be as low as 3 (most ADSL is 256k upstream, even at 2mb down).

Reply from oasis-k on Mar 30, 2006 - 04:05 PM

Quote:

I personally don't like the idea of investing my $$$ on any IP phones mainly because the VoIP is built-in within the phone unit itself.... I prefer to invest my $$$ on some ATA devices and select the right phone units,

Sound advice for many Small businesses and maybe right for yours, but it's important to remember that it does lock you out of all the extended features of which the high-end voip phones are capable. These can be basic - like looking up a name in the corporate LDAP server (e.g. MS AD) or getting any information/serice that can be rendered via XML (and that's a lot!) Depending on the company's size, operations and future plans buying a good build VoIP phone like Cisco can be an investment-grade purchase.

Quote:

you are going to be blamed for the system for the next 10 years,

Ducking this bullet is one of the main reasons people pay the extra bucks for Cisco.

Quote:

or try a hosted IP PBX, particularly if you've got a selection of IP hardware to play with. No financial risk involved, just suck it and see.

Can save small businesses a bundle of grief this one!

Quote:

through a 512k upload dsl connection and we have some problems with call quality and the number of simultaneous phone calls. There are 10 phones setup

Not realistic. Also you will have to use a low-bit rate codec as suggested. (I assume that no one is using the line for data - that's not clear from the post. If so don't forget that without QoS your voice will get backed up behind data. This can be very destructive when bandwidth is less than 768kbps (depending on the data protocol) as voice can get stuck behind large frames.

Reply from mannin32 on Mar 30, 2006 - 05:12 PM

well since i didn't specify we have the 512k upload dsl dedicated for voice, and we have a seperate cable connection for computers/data. But even with setting it up that way we are having these problems.

So I am trying to figure out for this new office if we should try and go with voip on a 1.5mb upload cable modem connection. Is that going to give me the ability to have 15 phones? Also in this office we will have to share the data between the computers and phones, if i create 2 seperate subnets will that help?

I also am wondering if i should go with a hosted pbx service or setup some sort of softswitch/pbx(asterisk) on my network to run the phones, which would be more reliable on cable modem? I would really like to try to get voip to work over a dsl/cable connection since we can get it setup in less than a week and not have to wait 30 day for a t1 to be installed. I appreciate all the input.

Reply from rgower on Mar 30, 2006 - 07:09 PM

With your current setup is the PBX external or internal to the network i.e. which end of the DSL line, yours or the ISP's?

If it is your end, how busy is your network?
A heavy CRM or CAD package can use a lot of network, as can Word if the files are on a server.
If the network usage is only moderate, then you can use vp channels and QOS on your network, otherwise you will need to segregate the phones onto dedicated switches and a seperate network (not a bad idea to do so as much as possible anyhow). A different subnet makes no difference on its own.

Is it internal, external or all calls suffering break up?
If it is internal, try restarting your switch and/or ATA's. Some cheap switches seem to develop interference.
If that doesn't clear things up for a while then we are looking at network problems, usually congestion, but electrical interference is also possible if your network cables run close and parallel to the mains.

If it is external calls, then that would suggest problems on the DSL line. Find a provider that offers QOS and/or lower contention. More bandwidth might improve things, but is papering over the underlying problem.

Quote:

I also am wondering if i should go with a hosted pbx service or setup some sort of softswitch/pbx(asterisk) on my network to run the phones, which would be more reliable on cable modem?

My vote would be to set up Asterisk as an internal PBX.
It offers many advantages:- Fall over to the PSTN when the DSL line fails, removes the load of internal calls off your DSL connection, makes switching between providers a lot easier.
Against that you do need somebody who can set it up and drive it and what could prove to be a creeping cost.

Overall there is no reason why you cannot use DSL for VoIP, and with something like G729 for compressing voice you should get 10 calls up 512K. But it does need testing, tuning and managing to make it work and you have to remember that nothing is guaranteed with DSL

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