[Asterisk-Users] Installation Configuration Questions

[Dana Rawson]

Steven,

Thanks for the response. 

> First off. NO HTML EMAIL!!!!!

Sorry.  Thought Rich text was acceptable.

> Well we can start by dealing with your users. You can go with analog
phones. On the analog side anything over a SMALL 
> handful need to slide up to T1 + channel banks. T1 is 24 channels, and
therefore you need to get 5 of these to cover 
> your needs. 5 will get you to 120 users. 5 ports of T1 will run you a
minimum of $2,000 (TE410P + T100P) + 5 channel
> banks whose price range depends on sourcing of the units and timing. On
Ebay, you can occasionally find good channel 
> banks for $200-300 if your timing is right, otherwise they run around $800
or so. New they are a bit more pricey.

This may be a stupid question, but are you speaking of the internal network
here?  Also, what if I was going digital?  I'm looking to go with IP phones.
Hoping to go with SIP.

> If you went SIP, It has been mentioned here recently that you could get
Grandstream Budgetone phones for $70 each and 
> possibly some wiggle room for a bulk order. So 100 users would be $7,000
and a big bad ethernet card a a couple of good 
> switches.

SIP is what we would be refering to as the 'digital' option, yes? Thinking
about Snom as these appeared to be decent phones.  I've been looking for
phones, are the Grandstream phones of decent quality?  Was also planning on
power over ethernet.

> Now for your inbound lines. You will need to know what your trunk usage
is. Is your company phone intensive? Do you know 
> how many lines you currently have? I'd bet you have probably 2 T1s or so
already. So plan on at least a TE410P for 
> incoming lines. Or maybe 2 T100Ps so you can split your load across 2
machines.

For my inbound line I will be going with 2 ISDN PRI simply based on volume.

> For redundancy you can make 2 decent machines receive calls and a third
machine do all the routing to SIP phones. This 
> should alleviate the load on any single machine trying to do too much on
both the T1 port and the ethernet port. Not to 
> mention, you may have the telco forward calls from one trunk to the other
in case of failure. So you could feasibly take 
> one gateway machine down at a time and still process calls.

Are we talking 'server' class machines?  Would I need a separate machine for
voice mail?

> There is still a lot to think about, and this will just scratch the
surface for you. If you need much more than this and 
> are in a hurry to get there, there are consultants on this list that would
be more than happy to help you out. 

The more I read the more it makes sense.  However, I do need this fully
functional by 01Dec03 so I may be in need of consultants if what you say is
applicable.  Are there any books available that would cover this (linux PBX
installation) and that you would recommend reading?

Thanks, again!!