[asterisk-biz] New IP PBX lifting the bar

[Chris Bagnall]

> Should or shouldn't asterisk manage firewall/qos/dhcp/routing etc? or
> when selling it into an existing site is it better to allow existing
> devices to manage this functionality?

There's room (and demand) in the market for both. Certainly from our experience I'd say it's roughly a 50/50 split.

About half the installs we do invariably end up with us getting involved with the client's data network, so using existing routers, switches, etc. often works fine. In many cases the client's using cheap consumer routers and they're delighted that we replace them with decent kit. In this scenario, being able to offer integrated units would be an advantage for clients with space considerations.

The other half of installs we're careful to completely avoid touching the client's data network at all - especially for the large corporate clients where they have their own network management people who don't like someone treading on their toes. For these installs we use our own routers, switches, internet connections, etc. and don't touch their existing network at all.

In terms of an integrated "appliance", I've been playing around with a pair of Via Epia boards in a single 1U chassis - one running asterisk, the other running pfSense off a compact flash card. It looks very tidy - it's sufficiently simple, that, provided it's been programmed in advance, anyone could take it to site, plug it in and expect it to work.

Although it performs well in the workshop and sounds like a nice idea, I'm not convinced we'll market it commercially, for three reasons:
1) customers think they're getting more for their money if they see two boxes turn up rather than one
2) if either "side" fails, we'd have to replace the whole thing, thus increasing stockholding costs
3) here in the UK where DSL is delivered over PPPoA, we still need to have separate ADSL modems doing PPPoA authentication and delivering the pfSense router an Ethernet presentation, so despite best efforts, it's still not a "one-box" solution

That's my 2p.

Regards,

Chris
-- 
C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited
For full contact details visit http://www.minotaur.it
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