[Asterisk-Users] Re: Sipura 3000 FXO

[Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists]

On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 22:26:40 -0500 (CDT), Joe Greco <jgreco at ns.sol.net> wrote:

> A company that has 100 desks and 8 phones does indeed have 8 desks
> with 8 phones, plus another 92 desks without phones.

Actually, I was talking about small companies with 1-8 employees, 1-8
desks, 1 networked PC on a direct to DSL modem basis and 1-8
non-networked PCs or laptops.

Those companies have to be introduced to more technology (including
better integration) slowly and cautiously. You can't go in there and
turn everything upside down. You need to do one little tiny thing at a
time, gain their trust that this stuff works, and then do another step
later.


Sometimes, this means that you deploy a few additional IP phones onto
desks that already have non-IP (but nevertheless digital) phones
connected to their small office PBX.

The IP phones (say three or four) will then be used with an RJ-11
delivered so called "IP phone" service (a jack coming out of the DSL
modem) on those desks there the people are that make lots of expensive
lobg distance calls. The phones they already have continue to be used
for local and incoming calls by everybody.

This is not an ideal setup of course, but it is a first step towards
getting them to replace that legacy PBX with an Asterisk box and all
legacy phones with IP phones. They key to that is that every step is
even from the viewpoint of somebody who does not understand the
technology, a small step, a simple step and an affordable step.

Plus, it is very easy for them to grasp the idea that an IP service
(even though it comes in form of an RJ-11 analog jack) will be used
together with IP deskphones. They may not understand what IP phone
service means and they may not understand what IP deskphone means. But
the fact that both things are marketed as "IP" + something + "phone"
will get them to say "naruhodo" (Japanese for "but of course!") and
buy into what you are suggesting.

> Now, here in the backwards and technologically challenged USA, we
> usually find those computers networked together, and this is where
> benk made an interesting point, that apparently this isn't true in
> Japan.

PCs are networked in Japanese offices, but many ***small*** companies
without IT departments still haven't networked their computers, partly
because they have nobody who looks after IT and partly because of fear
of viruses.

Also, it is far more likely that those companies who don't know about
IT and networking and who don't have any IT staff will be introduced
to us as potential customers simply because we tell people that we
cater for those. Many of the Japanese companies who do LAN/VPN stuff
and telephone systems don't like to deal with the very small
companies, partly because of low budgets, partly because there is no
IT guy they can talk to.

> So, if they've got several PC's, I haven't seen networking them to be
> unusual, and I haven't seen DHCP/NAT to be unusual.  This could be
> different in Japan if, for example, NTT mandates the use of their own
> NAT/DHCP-less DSL adapter and forbids any sort of add-on firewall/NAT-
> router devices.  I really don't know about that, though I remain a bit
> skeptical.

NTT does not do any such thing, but you have to think of this as a
step-by-step evolutionary process in which a dialup modem which was
connected to "the dialup PC" in the office, gets replaced with an ADSL
modem. So, they do the same thing as they have always done. That
"dialup PC" becomes that "ADSL PC" and they recognise that it is much
faster and that the phone line is not busy anymore when they use it,
but it wouldn't occurr to them that they could share the link.

It will take another evolutionary process for them to realise that
this could just as easily be done.

Then there are still a number of folks and companies on Cable Internet
and the CATV companies do indeed have measures in place that prevent
you from sharing the internet connection. I have seen many places
where simply unplugging the LAN cable rendered the service offline and
you had to fax tons of documents to the CATV company to get it turned
back on.

Anybody who has once witnessed the trouble and the hassle of such an
incident will be very very careful not to even think about changing
anything surrounding that "ADSL PC". They wouldn't know that it
wouldn't do any harm on the ADSL service. All they know is that it was
a big problem with that internet connection at home or at a cousin's
house or another company they worked for. They don't remember that it
was CATV internet, in fact they may not even be able to tell the
difference.

In Japan, most things happen very very slowly. When they do happen,
they happen fast, but it takes time to get to that stage.

Getting broadband into most offices and homes was something that did
already happen and it did happen fast. Getting all those broandband
links to be shared on a LAN did not happen yet as a mainstream event
and I guess it will take a while before this can be taken for granted.

rgds
benjk

-- 
Sunrise Telephone Systems, 9F Shibuya Daikyo Bldg., 1-13-5 Shibuya,
Tokyo, Japan.

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