[Asterisk-Users] Installation Configuration Questions

[Steven Critchfield]

On Tue, 2003-09-16 at 15:34, Dana Rawson wrote:
> > 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.

Yes I was providing you an option for the internal phones.

> > 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.

Look over the list for comments on quality, I only know what has been
reported here and the fact that a member of my lug recently attempted to
purchase a fair number of these phones.

> > 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.

Good choice.

> > 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?

Only to the point of what you are willing to risk. I was suggesting 2
machines just for low to little risk. It should be able to handle this
all on one machine but may be cramped later on growth. As for voicemail,
it could reside on any machine now that asterisk has voicemail2. If you
go with a single machine, then I'd put it on that one machine. IF you go
a multiple machine route, I'd put it on a machine that is least used.

> > 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?

The book is at www.google.com, it has a great index to find what you
want. especially if you use site:lists.digium.com as part of your search
string.
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>