[Asterisk-Users] Mission-Critical Deployments

[John Goerzen]

I work for a company that is nearing the end-of-life on its existing
Nortel Meridian switch and is considering Asterisk.  We have
approximately 200 existing extensions, and probably 150 out of those 200
are using basic analog phones and would stay that way.  The rest would
have VOIP phones at the desk.

We're seriously considering switching to Asterisk.  I've done quite a
bit of tinkering with Asterisk for my home, but I'm not certain about a
few aspects of how we might deploy Asterisk in the enterprise.

Here are my questions:

1. Where could I look for some resources on server sizing?  Is it
   any problem to support this number of users with a single server?

2. What do we need to do for our data network to make VOIP reliable?
   QoS, basic traffic prioritization on the switch, vlan, ???

3. What's the best way to integrate these 150 analog extensions?
   I've seen interface boxes that usually come in 24-port sizes.  Some
   have an Ethernet/SIP interface to hook up to Asterisk, and others
   have a T1 interface.  What sounds best and is the most reliable?

4. What is a good company to contract with for emergency support?
   Digium?

5. What are people doing to make VOIP phones resiliant in the face of
   power outages?

Is there anybody here that would be willing to serve as a reference
check for Asterisk should we pursue that path?

Thanks,

-- John