[Asterisk-Users] [OT] Old Building Needs a New Telephone System

Joe Greco jgreco at ns.sol.net
Sat Nov 6 15:51:44 MST 2004


> Michael Welter wrote:
> > We have a 100 year old building here in Colorado that needs a new 
> > telephone system. The building (five floors) is steel frame with lath 
> > and plaster walls. There is no crawl space above the ceilings or under 
> > the floors.  The building is "historic", and nothing can be done to the 
> > exterior.
> > 
> > The current system uses existing Cat3 (two pair) to get to the digital 
> > telephone set in each office.  Some offices have an additional pair 
> > which is used for fax (and DSL).  I belive this fax line is a POTS line 
> > from the telco.
> > 
> > The owners would like to replace the existing telephone system, but they 
> > are adamant that the exsiting wiring be reused.  They would like to 
> > provide a LAN connection to each office for both data and voice.  (They 
> > would also like to install cable TV in each office, but cable install 
> > costs would be $80,000+.)
> > 
> > The owners are concerned about frequent power failures and keeping the 
> > telephones operational.  Whatever equipemnt and telephone sets we put in 
> > the offices will have to be powered from a central UPS (PoE).
> > 
> > So how can I do this?  Can I use RS485 adapters to get ethernet to each 
> > office via the two pair?  What kind of data rate can I get with RS485, 
> > and would it be half- or full-duplex?  Would wireless work in a steel 
> > building? Is there some other technology that can be used?
> > 
> > Ideas, anyone?
> 
> It is real easy. EoV (ethernet over vdsl).
> I have done this and it works great.
> For every 24 ports I used a 1u EoV, 1u splitter, 1u fxs gateway.
> The little termination modems have ethernet and fxs.
> Just add an * box, done.

I was under the impression that none of that stuff ran at 10Mbps or
faster speeds.  If he's got two pair and Cat3, he can just run 10Mbps 
Ethernet (and full duplex at that, if it's done right).  Or has the
short-range DSL stuff (which I know at least one local telco uses for
in-house network extension purposes) finally beaten that speed?

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.



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