Fwd: [Asterisk-Users] Newbie here. Tips on setting up 100 phones wanted.

[Adam Goryachev]

The first problem I would consider is the reliability of the system.
Currently, I assume you are using standard analog lines stretched
between your various buildings, which means you 'only' rely on power at
the central location (which you say is generator provided) and the
physical cable survives. However, once you move to IP based phones, you
have switches, microwave, DSL, T1, etc, etc, etc... Plus power at each
location to power the phone. In such an environment, I'd be most
concerned about what might happen during some severe weather or other
extreme situation.

If the sites were closer together, then perhaps standard ethernet with
PoE would be a good solution...

See more..

On Fri, 2005-05-27 at 11:42 -0700, brandt Milczewski wrote:
> The current system is quite interesting.
> We have an office in a town that is about 50 miles from
> the ski area. The ski area is powered 100% of of generators and the
> telephone access and internet access goes from the Office in town out
> a private T1 to a town about 80 miles down another highway and then we

private T1 means dedicated point-to-point? ie, you 'rent' it from some
telco? Or, you ran your own cable, and installed your own equipment in
the other town, and just happen to use it as a T1??

> shoot a 5Mb microwave signal about 6 miles accross no mans land up to
> the ski area, (that oddly enough is on it's own highway with no
> utilities). 

So, the entire connection to your resort relies on this single 5MB
microwave link??

> From the top of the mountain I ran the signal over T1 to
> the Upper Ski lodge. 

Again, I assume you have installed your own equipment at the top of the
mountain and in the 'upper' ski lodge and run your own copper?

> From there I use an HDSL bridge about 3 miles
> down the hill to the lower lodge. 

So, if any ONE of the above fails, all comms to the lower lodge and
surrounding buildings are completely gone?

> Both lodges have a small size LAN
> about 25 computers. I also run some ethernet extender over copper to a
> couple other buildings and some WAP's these are all inside the
> employee lodge and one of the main day lodges.

I'm wondering, how do the power cables run, or does each 'area' have
it's own local generator, as opposed to a single large generator?

Perhaps you might look at adding some kind of redundancy, such as a
satellite link from the lower lodge. Meaning if you lose any one of the
above connections, you still have full external communications...

> As you can see it is a very unique and quite complex system as is. But
> the LAN is quite extensive and functions very well. As you can guess from
> the description the weak link is the Microwave from the top of the ski area
> down to the town with internet access. But that is very reliable and the
> snowfall we get, which is immense, hasn't been a problem for it yet.

That's great... hopefully it won't become a problem either...

> As for my technical background I build and admin servers and desktops
> in FreeBSD, Windows, and OSX. I learned routing and networking as
> needed for the job and look at this project as just more learning. And
> I'm VERY excited that I found an active community to query.

Well, as for my non-technical background, I've read plenty of novel's
where the basic theme is a group of people who lose all communication
with the rest of the world, and need to survive the elements/etc (plus
one or two people/animals/beasts intent on some evil plan) to make it
out alive...

Perhaps in the real world, that isn't such a likely story.....

> Thanks again I hope that helps tell the story and background a bit more.

Of course, I've not had any experience in your environment, nor in
anything similar, so if it works for you, and you are happy with the
reliability, then go for it..... (So long as you don't get someone
killed/injured and then get sued....

Regards,
Adam
-- 
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Adam Goryachev
Website Managers
Ph:  +61 2 9345 4395                        adam at websitemanagers.com.au
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