office network !!

[cava83]

Right, we have leased a new building.

30 employees max. Starting with 15 employees in the office.

Clean shell.

All cabling done.

1) Internet, leased line is out the window. What do you suggest?

I have always used leased lines, or SDSL lines.

According to some excellent sources, the SDSL network is s**t and is going to be obselete shortly.

Alternative would be ADSLmax, conjuction of several ADSL lines on a single router, basically load balancing.

2) phones. BT business is very expensive, anyone experienced using PBX? Quality of calls, reliability, up time?

ISDN30 was the original thought, they come with a minimum of 8 lines, as there is going to be 15 people starting off. (sales) we will need 14 lines minimum as they will all be doing concurrent calls.

Please feel free to make any suggestions.

Gabi.

 

[Daz]

1) Easynet - either ADSL, SDSL, SureStream or Etherstream. My experience with load balanced ADSL Max lines is far from great.. we have two Max lines and it's being replaced by a single Easynet ADSL. The Easynet ADSL is far more stable, much quicker etc.. but that might be the implementation!

2) PBX is the best way - call quality is perfect etc. Could also look at VoIP if that's your thing.. I personally like good olde fashioned phone lines.

 

[cava83]

we use easynet on two sites, so far so good, previous supplier was BT SDSL, slow.

Thanks for your input Daz.

 

[Daz]

Depends if you need high upload etc.
I've installed and used their ADSL (lots), their Surestream (quite a bit) and also one of their Etherstreams (10Mb) and all perform flawlessly. (Providing you're LLU'd)

Sure, they do have routing issues.. (their network can be flaky) but.. on the whole, very difficult to beat.

As for PBX, dunno what systems are any good etc.
I'd be tempted to use a Cisco system, with Cisco phones, but external calls go out via ISDN30? VoIP internally.. BT external.

 

[gaz_5103]

what ever happened to 2 cups and a string eyyye?

 

[Daz]

what ever happened to 2 cups and a string eyyye?

Yea, the Cups were quicker too..

 

[cava83]

we used to have 5 offices, condensed to 2 now and this one will be the third.

the two offices use BT ISDN 30, have samsung call servers and are linked via the VPN + use VoIP between the offices.

The issue is, the new company we have, the users were previously in a serviced offices and were charged skype rates for their call charges...........

So changing them to a BT business call charge plan is going to be a huge shock for them in terms of costings.

Many thanks,

Gabi.

 

[Daz]

Indeed.
But, if they're using Skype they deserve it.

 

[sn00p]

pbx....

...trixbox frickin' rules.

Been running this for ages with both VoIP terminated & pstn termianted lines, although just migrated all but one line (fax) to voip.

Trixbox will literally allow you to do anything you want, it's far better than the nortel pbx it replaced.

The routing is where is really comes in, you can setup dialing rules for your trunks - so if you have a provider for cheap calls to the US, then it can use that trunk for US numbers whereas your cheapo trunk for poland only gets used for calls to poland....

 

[sn00p]

what ever happened to 2 cups and a string eyyye?

Yea, the Cups were quicker too..

String? Twisties?

 

[cava83]

to be honest, I am used to the traditional ISDN lines.

doing some research on VoiP and PBX and extras, but to be honest, I don't hve a clue, just been skimming throught the information.

I need to get this sorted.

PBX runs through normal analogue lines......

Can I not just simply cut down their costs completelely by using VoiP and not have an ISDN circuit installed....?

 

[Daz]

PBX runs through normal analogue lines......

Can I not just simply cut down their costs completelely by using VoiP and not have an ISDN circuit installed....?

You can.
Whether or not I'd trust a VoIP trunk for mission critical phones, I dunno. I'd be very tempted to use VoIP internally.. and then ISDN lines for external calls.

 

[sn00p]

PBX runs through normal analogue lines......

Can I not just simply cut down their costs completelely by using VoiP and not have an ISDN circuit installed....?

You can.
Whether or not I'd trust a VoIP trunk for mission critical phones, I dunno. I'd be very tempted to use VoIP internally.. and then ISDN lines for external calls.

Any decent VoIP provider will offer analogue fallback - if you deregister from their servers then incoming calls can sent to a PSTN number, so if the event of a network failure you're still covered - obviously you'll probably drop the number of simultanous incoming calls you can handle.

 

[Stevo_172]

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