Will VoIP Kill the PBX? 225
gManZboy writes "Following up on their last VoIP article, Queue just posted "Not Your Father's PBX?" from Jim Coffman at Avaya Labs. Looks like the PBX may survive, but it's going to have to evolve considerably. I guess eventually corporate telecom goes away as a kind of island in the MIS dept? Maybe that's already happened?"
star-69 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:star-69 (Score:4, Informative)
However, Voice over IP and even open controlled analog/digital converted PBX systems (like Asterisk [asterisk.org]), will be able to converge into a single, re-assignable open standard.
If you are comfortable with interfacing your servlet engines with your phone system, Voice over IP (and H.323 standards) will allow you to do so.
Offtopic, My Ass.
Re:star-69 (Score:3)
SIP Servlets (Score:3, Informative)
Ubiquity [ubiquity.net] and Dynamicsoft have SIP Servlet containers implementing the spec; there's also a reference implementation here [sipservlet.org] to play with.
idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
There are major differences between VOIP, IP Telephony, Internet Telephony, and packet carrier. These terms can't be used interchangably!
Avaya doesn't know IPT, not enough, not even their 8700, sorry but it's true. They will sell you whatever they can talk you into buying, DON'T BUY THEIR IP SYSTEMS!
Asterisk is an awesome system that has come a LONG way, I really look forward to when I can carve out a living with it. I just can't today the budgets are in Cisco because of it's scale, support, and maturity. (REAL IP phreaks can laugh along with me, but it's basically true.)
mod away, I feel much better.
Re:yammering (Score:3, Interesting)
I felt physically ill after reading down the entire forum at +3. I couldn't believe how many people were poisoned with bad information, and how many more didn't even understand the very simplest terms of the industry.
I shamelessly posted under your post (FP to my browsing) to ensure that somebody saw it before being modded into nothingness. It was not related to your post in any way.
I must say that you can deploy each of the tech
The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:5, Interesting)
There are VoIP gateways, but to be honest, we just have one location go out of PSTN and another over a T1, it wasn't worth going through the headaches, but for a larger company, it is. However, we can tie together over our VPN the two systems, so inter-office calls go over IP, not the phone system.
As the PBXes are being interfaced via computer, there is no need to have the telephony guys in their own world.
Alex
Re:The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:3, Interesting)
It's long overdue, isn't it? The control stuff could have been integrated even with the voice traffic running on its own wires. But the savings in being able to lose an entire cable infrastructure has tipped the balance.
Re:The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is already there, why count not using it as a savings? The cables are already laid and it is a sunk cost, which shouldn't factor in.
Also, what that means is that you are more likely to lose all of your communications if one delicate wire is cut, rather than "just" losing phone or internet. We have some variation of VoIP. The problem here is if our T1 line goes down, we don't have telephone access either, and we might be losing a lot more sales opportunities as a result.
Re:The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:4, Interesting)
So, believe it or not, in the SOHO, these have been quite popular for quite a while. The power in voice over IP is that for the same cost, a company will be able to run two T-1 lines to the same company, and if one of them goes down, they loose neither voice or data.
The savings comes in when you look at direct voice over IP service costing just a little less than traditional digital voice (PRI or 56K ESF) services. As an IT Director, that's a good enough argument for me.
Re:The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:3, Insightful)
the 512K pipe and phone lines for a sattelite office we had was that way from the telco. we saved $1500.00 a month by having them put the T1 directly to our home office and I use a CSU/DSU that can dynamically split the bandwidth for data and voice and put the sattelite office on our PBX here in the office and have no local phone numbers in that office's area. customers use the 800 number anyways so it'
Re:The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:2)
Im not sure exactly what you mean by physically moving lines/running new lines. If theres no cable run you have to run one if you want any kind of network/phone service other than wireless. Aside from that, the whole idea of PBX is that you program the PBX to route calls going into it to go out on different lines, no need to ph
Re:The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:4, Interesting)
Maintenance/Expansion.
"Also, what that means is that you are more likely to lose all of your communications if one delicate wire is cut, rather than "just" losing phone or internet."
We are getting ready to move to VoIP. What we're doing is keeping our regular phone lines, but just using VoIP for our office phones. This allows us to:
* Get rid of our phones, increasing desk space (we just connect headsets to our computer)
* Transfer calls to people's houses if they are logged in to our VPN
* Be able to record calls by just dialing out on a special extension
* Be able to save money w/ long distance by going over VoIP, and having it automatically go over PSTN if the external network connection is down.
In addition, asterisk is extremely scriptable. We can do all this for under a grand, as apposed to PBX boxes which cost about 10 grand.
Re:The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:2)
Re:The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:2)
Re:The PBX has BEEN changing (Score:3, Interesting)
Although, my own approach would be to put both cards in, and configured. I've been in computer telephony for 11 years, and I don't fully trust these 4 port Digium cards enough to not have a hot backup. (The digium T1 cards have been a bit more reliable). Just some advise from someone who has really, already been there.
Your wire argument is all wrong... (Score:4, Informative)
Ethernet is designed to use four of the NON-VOICE wires in a standard 8 wire cable. All 8 wire, twisted pair (typically found connecting phones to a PBX or computers to your Ethernet HUB CAN run on the same wires. However, most people choose not to.
Basically, the savings is bull. Companies want ethernet separate from voice because they terminate at different devices.
In conclusion, all this will do is move everybody from two wires -- computer and phone -- to two wires computer and IP Telephony Device.
Again, you can argue that the computer and telephone can be the SAME BOX, and you are right the capabilities have been around for ten years (or even longer), but desktop computers -- to this day -- are not considered stable enough (even though, in truth most of them are) to run something as ubiquitous and important as a phone.
Re:Your wire argument is all wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
nope (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost there (Score:2)
Then there's the service side. Plenty of "little telcomm companies" (to management
Re:Almost there (Score:2)
Re:Digium Support!? (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, I was (by no means) discounting the people who are out to make a living off of Asterisk support. I have a very good friend who would be more than happy to do this for cash.
My basic understanding is that Digium has released Asterisk into the market place to boost their core business, sell
Its already evolving... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'm intrigued by software like Asterix and its capabilities, but I have absolutely no telephony knowledge and I'm not really sure where to start, like what kind of hardware I'd need in order to set this up with POTS. Lots of modems? Special cards for the phones in the office?
Re:Its already evolving... (Score:3, Informative)
You need FXO hardware if you want to take a phone line from a telecom and make digitally share it, route, connect it to the phone system. FXO, or Foreign Exchange Office handles calls that can't be dealt with in your loca
Re:Its already evolving... (Score:2)
Re:Its already evolving... (Score:3, Informative)
Think of it in normal telephony situations. You have an office with 100 extensions, so you attach a PBX to your 10 phone lines. Just because you are attached to the public telephone network, does not mean your box will be used to route outside cal
Re:Its already evolving... (Score:3, Informative)
If you went with Broadvoice or another more flexible company, you can connect directly without needing any interface between your Asterisk server and their service.
As far as bandwidth goes, to be on the safe side, figure for each call, you need a
I'm also interested for home usage (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this the only thing you need in order to use Asterix or do you need to invest a lot of $$$ in hardware?
I'm also curious what kind of setup you need on the phone side? ISDN? Normal phone line? Can you do VOIP from 1 Asterix to another? (across continents) etc etc.
Ver
Re:I'm also interested for home usage (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Its already evolving... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Its already evolving... (Score:2)
the POTS line cards are over $300.00 each, voip phones for your home are expensive, espically if they are "unlocked" and analog phone interface cards are also insanely priced.
Broadvoice will allow you to use asterisk on their VOIP system for phone service, but most do not.
I would love to set up an asterisk pbx at home for tinkering, but it is much cheaper to buy a voicelogic setup for around $100.00 and use el-cheapo analog phones in the house.
all the info you need is o
Re:Its already evolving... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Its already evolving... (Score:4, Informative)
One to four POTS lines? Digium's WildCard TDM400 with FXO modules will fit the bill nicely. More than that, you will want to go with a T1 into one of their T1 interface cards. If all of the lines at your building are POTS, you will need a channel bank to convert them to the T1. Some people, including myself, have had limited success using a specific modem, but they are not nearly as reliable and trouble-free as Digium's hardware.
For your office extensions, you have several options. You can use several of Digium's solutions, including the IAXy which is ethernet-to-POTS, or the TDM400 card mentioned above with FXS modules for up to 4 extensions. If you have more than 4, you have to use those IAXys or a T1 interface card to a channel bank, then all of your phones attach to that.
Of course, there are several brands of IP phones you can use instead of the adapters above, such as Cisco and Grandstream. You would still need to attach to the PSTN phone system as mentioned above, but using IP phones would eliminate any worry for your office extensions.
I can't offer much more advice without knowing your needs, but if you want, go ahead and send me an e-mail with your situation and I'll help you figure out what you need.
Jeremy
Uh huh. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you wonder where the PBX is heading look at the simple office copying machine. They used to make copies. Now they make copies, colate, autoscale, create PDFs on the fly and then fax the results to someone while storing the PDF somewhere AND emailing a copy to a lit of people. The PBX of next year will integrate even more so than the one's of today in a cheaper, faster way.
The PBX isn't going extinct but many of the specialized lockin systems and consultants may.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:4, Funny)
coughcoughBizHubcoughcough
I love those commercials.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:4, Interesting)
Which only underlines the point that copier manufacturers are jamming all sorts of needless functionality in there to try and maintain relevance. Yes, I said needless. Who actually uses the copier anymore? For that matter the FAX machine?
Software will always ALWAYS develop faster than hardware, for the simple differences in product rollout cycles and capital costs. For this reason alone, PBX and special telephony HW is doomed. Sure, PBX may have some life left, and sure it will evolve (just like those humongous kitchen-sink copiers), but eventually they will be relegated to the back burner, then dropped from IS/IT budgets.
PBX will die.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:2)
We use the copier for short run copies of things like checks, statements, invoices, receipts, etc.
Every time we need to pick up an SSL certificate, it's a fax. Every time we need to verify our identity to the domain registrars, it's a fax. Every time we need to get blurry, unsolicited ads for vacation destinations, it's a fax.
Maybe your suggestion would be to use a scanner. In my experience, they're slow and require extra wo
I guess it will die because you say so... (Score:4, Insightful)
I use my fax ALL the time, because if I need to send a physical document to someone, EVERYONE has a fax machine. If they have a fax server, than they get it electronically.
My phone system CANNOT go down. If a server goes down, people get coffee and get back to work, plus their already open documents are fine and they can save locally until it comes back up. If the phone system goes down, no sales are taking place.
The sales guys that bring in the money into the company aren't going to tolerate ANYTHING but reliable telephony. However, the "vritual PBXes" give the appearance of hardware, the flexibility of software, and a roll-out in the middle.
I can upgrade my Ethernet-based PBX with a few hundred software upgrade when I want new features. It's better than a hardware roll-out, but ultimately, it uses dedicated hardware for interfacing with the world.
Alex
Re:Uh huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
I use the copy machine, FAX and good old US mail every day. I also administer our PBX. Yes it has a nifty interface over TCP/IP now, but it uses the same old Cat-3 wires and 66-punch-down blocks as always. And, [RANT] considering that our company's procurement policie
Re:Uh huh. (Score:4, Funny)
People who still live on planet Earth.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:2)
Short answer: Everybody
Re:Uh huh. (Score:2)
VoIP Market Share (Score:5, Interesting)
The other issue is that much of the IT staff don't comprehend the Telecom issues, like line hunting, rollover, etc.. Unless they have been explicitly trained on it. I think we'll still have a staff of Telecom folks who are instead trained up in additional IT concepts like routing, VLAN's, etc.
Re:VoIP Market Share (Score:2)
That's fine, but there will still be a net reduction in the number of people as they will able to handle both areas. Hence the higher net profit argument touted by numerous other posters.
Your point about training is a good one though and most people overlook that.
Re:VoIP Market Share (Score:2)
Bias (Score:4, Insightful)
When someone who *doesn't* work for a telecom manufacturer starts saying stuff like this, I might listen.
Re:Bias (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bias (Score:2)
That's the point - they say PBX is dead. They sell VoIP. Big shock there.
Sorry if I confused you by saying "telecom" - I use the term generally. My wife works for company that sells all this shit.
Re:Bias (Score:2)
Re:Bias (Score:2)
Re:Bias (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't "just data". There are quality of service and reliability issues to be considered. TDM gives me low and predictable latency, guaranteed bandwidth, and an infrastructure that has extensive reliability features and ways of routing around congestion and damage.
VoIP has lower costs, less reliability, "best effort" delivery.
Re:Bias (Score:2)
In 94-95, I worked at Avaya. I worked on the raptor project. I have forgotten what it became, but Avaya (bell labs => Lucent back then) was doing VOIP.
It is safe to assume that they are making rapid changes and will adapt.
You mean Telcom and MIS are seperate jobs?? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yes (Score:2, Insightful)
It's getting there. (Score:5, Insightful)
To me the biggest stumbling block is how that traditional PBX'es are more hardware-centric and VoIP is more software-centric. Which do you think traditionally has been more reliable?
Consider mean time between failure rates for tradtional PBX voice services. Then consider a typical VoIP environment. I don't have hard figures, but I would imagine there's still a vast difference. Imagine a facility using VoVPN then extrapolating it out a little further.
If there are cost savings to VoIP and the PHB's for a company are placing that as a higher priority than reliability and security then perhaps things will continue to move toward VoIP. But I personally have worked as both a telco and a data tech and I think that traditional PBX'es are still more bulletproof than newer VoIP packages. If I'm wrong I'd be happy to hear...
Re:It's getting there. (Score:3, Informative)
Cisco's VoIP offerings run on Windows for the backend. Now, we're a Windows shop, but even our CFO who's a die-hard Windows guy expressed grave concern over the reliability of this approach.
Shoretel [shoretel.com] uses VxWorks as their software on a custom, 1U machine. VxWorks is pretty darn stable, and is what the Mars rovers run on
Re:It's getting there. (Score:3, Insightful)
VoIP boxes more often that not, run on traditional OSes . We'll see a switch to reliability when the OS specializes for VoIP . Our office uses Cisco and Ericsson VoIP phones for longdistance calls and it is very reliable (more reliable than the &*#$% MS Exchange email servers).
Essentially most people seems to
I hope not... (Score:5, Interesting)
The corded phone plugged into the wall outlet worked for hours after the power went out and was on days before the power was restored.
In the US the phone system is required to have its own separate power supply/source to ensure that communications continue.
I'm not a luddite, I'm all for VOIP, cordless phones, etc. But in this case, I also like redundancy!
Ack and if I RTFA... (Score:2)
Ptpptht! Every office I've been in in the last 10 years has required a small nuclear power plant for each phone. (And my current office requires a PC connected to the PBX to route the calls)
So for corporate use, nah do whatever.
But don't change out the home system until we have a suitable alternative. (redundant cell phone tower power, etc)
Re:I hope not... (Score:2)
Re:I hope not... (Score:2)
Re:I hope not... (Score:2)
Re:I hope not... (Score:2)
So, it is nice for redundancy, but some quiet is also nice at times.
The ended up taking the phone off the wall.
Re:I hope not... (Score:2, Insightful)
If only the feds required the same reliability of our power grid, right now there's little incentive for the power companies to do anymore than the minimum amount of maintanance, which just leads to big problems like last years blackout.
Re:I hope not... (Score:2)
Re:I hope not... (Score:2)
The fact that there is only a single pair of wires per line coming from the ILEC CO?
PBXing for a while longer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PBXing for a while longer (Score:2)
In the end though we concluded that since we already all the infrastructure in place for the telecomms and since we suffered outages and problems with this system orders of magnitude less often than we did with the data network it would be too risky and not cost ef
Its already happened here (Score:2, Informative)
The PBX now sits in a 19" rack, along side the rest of the servers. Its console is web based for programming, its just another thing in the data center, if changes need to be made a request comes into the IT dept now rather then an outside consultiant.
I hope so. (Score:3, Interesting)
eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:eh? (Score:2)
Quality of Service.
I told them so (Score:3, Funny)
This story's headline fills me with a faint form of Schadenfreude [dict.org]:
IP telephony is the technology I pitched to my company's management, when they saddled me with thankless chore of upgrading our decrepit digital key system.
PBX is what they ended up buying.
We Just Installed a enterprise VOIP Solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Will X kill Y? (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember the floppy drive? CD and Dvd and digital media were supposed to kill it, but it has been "dying" for years now. These things take time!
Yes, 50 years from now existing PBX will be but a fond memory to most of us. But it won't happen overnight. The same way a car's look evolves, so does the technology. This is both because people like familiar things, but also because companies like to eek out all potential profitability from every idea and product before moving on to the next thing.
It's just not profitable to "kill" a widely used technology like that.
Re:Will X kill Y? (Score:3, Informative)
Eek! I think you mean eke [reference.com].
It's profitable to someone. The question is, who's got better lobbyists?
Re:Will X kill Y? (Score:2)
The only real reason why the floppy is still around is because they add a whopping 3 bucks of value to th
Yes: It's just another Linux box (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no special wiring involved anymore, the terminals (phones) are computers in their own right, connected to the enterprise IT network, speaking IP.
It's not an island, it's part of the modern IT infrastructure.
No way (Score:5, Insightful)
But when I get broadband I can either pay $55/mo. for DSL & Phone or $60/mo. for DSL w/out phone service. Cable is $70 w/Internet or $60 for internet alone.
Too expensive... (Score:2)
The small PABX is quite specialised. You can pick one up in Europe for a few hundred Euros which will talk ISDN on a standard line (i.e., 4 concurrent conversations), it has Least Cost Routing and all kinds of features but isn't aware of VOIP yet. It will support up to 4 analogue lines plus
I would differ (Score:2)
A decent phone for voip is less than 100 dollars or euros. Asterisk combined with a 500 dollar server and a simple 2 line card AND an internet, can makes calls for free across the world. PABX is not able to make them for free
In addition, their is a heavy penalty by using a standard phone system. It requires a seperate archetecture and management. VOIP is far easier for long-term management.
Re:I would differ (Score:2)
The claim of calls for free across the world is disingenuous, it only works if you have a free VOIP termination point.
What will make it possible is specialised and cheap hardware, like we see for low-end PABXs and indeed routers at the moment.
Evolution, not revolution (Score:5, Informative)
When the manual switchboards were replaced with analog/mechanical switching, it did cause some changes to the system. You couldn't just speak into the phone and be connected, you had to manually dial a number. That particular change cut both ways - it wasn't quite so convenient, but it was less prone to error and it did allow more people to have phone service.
Then, along came digital exchanges. Early digital exchanges had numerous programming bugs (to be expected) but these have now been largely ironed out. Digital exchanges are faster, more reliable and easier to maintain, but the changes haven't been really visible to end users.
Now, we're moving into the VoIP era. Instead of dedicated lines and switched circuits, we're looking at a packet-based system with routing. VoIP reduces the resources needed (it can - in theory - make use of any spare network capacity between the two points to be connected) and it simplifies some of the more complex types of call. (Multi-point phone calls over IP are as simple as a multicast, for example. Over a switched circuit, it takes a bit more effort.)
Will VoIP kill the PBX? It depends on how you define the PBX. If you think of the PBX as a person manually connecting you, then the mechanical relay exchanges killed the PBX. If you think of it as merely the mechanism (human or otherwise) by which two or more people can be connected, then routers become the "new" PBX.
Of course, true VoIP will only be possible with a migration to IPv6. There are simply too many phone numbers, which would need an IP address, to use IPv4. Also, IPv6 headers are simpler, which makes routing more efficient. This makes the complexity of routing over much more complex networks possible. Finally, IPv6 doesn't fragment, which means that packet garbling should be less common.
It'll also require much higher bandwidths. The Internet is just too crowded to support much in the way of high-quality audio traffic. Packet loss is a shade too high, and latencies need to be cut. Your computer can quite comfortably handle uneven packet transmission, but the human ear can't. To fool the ear, you need much smoother traffic flows.
Smoother flows mean you need lower hop counts. This means the backbone needs to be better connected. There's been a tendancy for backbones to move towards the simplest possible layout. That's great for economics, but it means that paths are maximised. Not good for VoIP. It also means that if there's any outage, there's unlikely to be an alternative route, which means that network segments will be disconnected. Also not good for VoIP.
Telephone companies will be around for a long time, because they're about the only ones with the infrastructure and capital to build the highly connected networks required for VoIP. This is not a time for telephone companies to be concerned, this is their golden opportunity to demonstrate their continued relevence.
Re:Evolution, not revolution (Score:2)
Ewww. Software PBXes? (Score:2)
That is what you get! Friends with NBX's telling me about how they crash, and all phone calls in the entire building halt. That is
Not an Island (Score:4, Informative)
Organizationally, it started happening quite a while ago, at least in some industries. I worked as an IT director in a "Wall Street" firm for several years, and ended up with responsibility for telecoms, too. That wasn't because I sought it, or even wanted it -- I had to get up to speed on a whole bunch of new (to me) stuff -- but because it just made sense:
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IT was itself the largest single purchaser of telecom services, since we had to provision links for market data, order transmission to the exchange, our private WAN, links to settlement / clearing agents, and so on.
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The majority of telecom services had to interface, one way or another, with computer systems (e.g., to receive market data or to transmit trade data).
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The PBXs and trading floor telephone systems were computer systems. (I can recall getting a new AT&T PBX installed. Their techs went to lunch while we were still testing. We found a little problem, which I looked up in the manual and fixed. The AT&T foreman was surprised at that: I told him "Hey, it's just a UNIX box.")
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Following on to the last point, evaluating and choosing telecom systems steadily took more and more "systems-type" knowledge.
Buying a PBX was just buying a computer with some specialized I/O hardware; and it came with systems concerns -- security, for example, or the difference in performance between satellite and terrestrial links for TCP/IP.
Now, of course, we are seeing things like Asterix and VoIP, which will provide much tighter integration. Traditional voice comms are still important, but they're by no means something unto themselves.Re:Not an Island (Score:2)
Resistance to this organizational change by CIOs is often cited as a big reason for the slow adoption of VOIP by large companies.
Re:Not an Island (Score:2)
Give it time...lots of time! (Score:2)
VOIP will obviously take over standard PBXs, but the equipment manufacturers are going to slow it down as long as they can. All that proprietary hardware is extremely expensive/proftitable. Just like residential customers will continue to have traditional landlines for quite some time, businesses will take a while to convert.
One of the things that VOIP requires is a good knowledge of business phone service. You almost have to have a PBX guy on staff in addition to the IT department just to design/manage th
PBX/VOIP Suggestions Please! (Score:2)
So the next Big Project is to replace the phone system. VOIP is exciting and all that but since we are only one location the long distance savings just aren't there.
I'd like to tie the voice system to the messaging system (Exchange) so the users can have complete control over voicemail and the phone from the desktop. Also I
Re:PBX/VOIP Suggestions Please! (Score:2)
Why is PBX and VOIP mutually exclusive? (Score:3, Informative)
Just implemented Asterisk, LOVE IT! (Score:3, Interesting)
I got a new setup, bought some Cisco 7960 SIP phones off eBay, hired an Asterisk pro to do the initial setup since I was on a tight timeline. Use nufone [nufone.net] for inbound 800 and outbound LD ($.02/minute both ways). And I love it! Our main office is in New Jersey, we're in SLC, UT. They're just extensions on the phone system. Voicemail works, caller ID works, calls sound the same as normal phones.
We do have 6 analog lines with 2 PCI digium cards, which I would NOT do again. The line charge is more than we would ever spend in 800/local calling. I'm evaluating SIP/IAX softphones now. I think I may be free of the curse of the Nortel PBX forever!!
Costs..? $400 built yerself Linux box with a P4/IDE hard drive. $230 per phone on eBay ($220 for phone (incl shipping) $10 for power supply) *these phones are NICE - Cisco 7960 $1200 for Asterisk pro's time (he should charge more! shhhh) total cost for 10 phone system that has more features and works better than any high end Nortel I've ever spend $50k on, $4k
I'm thinking of setting this up for my house, sinc e nufone has a pay as you go $.02/minute plan.
Oh, and I just found out Asterisk automatically creates report logs in .cvs format! w00t!
Every day I find something new in Asterisk that I love.
step by step instructions on BRR (Score:4, Interesting)
Your grandpa never said... (Score:2, Insightful)
telephone service as part of corporate IT (Score:3, Informative)
It is interesting to note that most students on campus (Ann Arbor) are going to 7 digit dialing (565 exchange) and that service at U Hospital is going over to SBC.
Re:PBX just keeps going (Score:2)
having said that, because I work there, there is a lot of internal trunking that has been changed over from private line T1s to CBR on ATM for years, and it's just another bit stream multiplexed over a transport. you put the gateway card in the PBX, reconfigure, and go.
VoIP is more of a customer challenge in that you
Re:Stability (Score:2)
PBX's are devices to route external calls coming into them into a companies own internal telephony network, since most companies also have established data networks it does make sense to use VoIP to route calls over the data network instead since it means they don't have to pay for the upkeep of two distinct networks. Also the reliability and availability of either system is down to the investment in and manageme