[asterisk-biz] Small business traditional phones or IP Phone?

[Pierre Marceau]

I'm sure this has been beaten to death but since I am just into this Asterisk thing for a month now I too am interested in peoples experience in such an exersise.

With no experience and just my dreaming about the how this 'migration' might go down I would think:

1 - For now don't mess with the fax, leave as is.

2 - What are you going to use for incoming phone lines, I guess you will have 2 or 3 existing POTS lines? If so you will need a Digium TDM400P with 4 FXO ports (not TDM2400P).

3 - I think you should use IP phones but I don't about Linksys 942 or any other of which there are many. Which SIP hard phone  is best and why?

4 - Using IP phones means running new ethernet wires to the phone locations (but thats all part of the fun!) on the other hand some phones have 2 ethernet ports, I guess they are '2 port ethernet hubs' so plug the phone into the wall and the existing computer into the phone, keep in mind the old ethernet rule "no two devices should be more than 5 switches apart". I don't like the idea of these 2 port phones and prefer the idea of running cable.

5 - The cost of FXS ports is one third the cost of a phone and of your 8 phones how many are wired as party lines? If you are going to run telephone wire well hell that would be crazy, do the IP phone thing and run ethernet wire.

Well, thats what I think, but what do I know?

BR
Pierre



>>> pjcrump at bitstream.net 2/5/2007 11:54 AM >>>
Working with a small business they have 5-8 phones and a fax machine.  I
will be using Trixbox and am comfortable with that.. the question is, does
it make more sense to get new Linksys 942 IP phones or purchase a digium
card and reuse their existing phones? note that their existing phones are
just regular household phones - nothing special.

If the existing phones are re-used, from looking at the digium site it
appears that we would be looking at a digium TDM2400P for approx $400
bucks??

Thoughts???

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