[Asterisk-Users] Hotel Setup?

[James Fogg]

> I am working with a small inn (under 50 rooms) that is next 
> to a ski resort.  The inn just had Cat5e Homeruns to each 
> room installed, with a patch panel in the basement.  Now it's 
> my job to connect each of the those rooms to the Internet.  I 
> think I have a Cisco switch that I can do Private VLANS with, 
> however I thought of another solution.

I am working on a voice / data solution for an inn of similar size a few
miles from you (I am familiar with your company). Ultimately I had to
admit that Asterisk wouldn't work for a hospitality environment for
several reasons. The first problem was the phones - placing expensive IP
phones in a room is a big risk for guest damage and they are often too
complicated for older people to understand. The second problem was the
expense of SIP gateways and lack of message-waiting indication support
when I tried to design a system based on POTS phones. The third and
biggest issue was the call accounting software that nearly all hotels
and motels use. Asterisk has no support for serial port SCDR output for
call accounting. Hospitality operators need to be able to bill phone
usage to the room. A friend and I are working on an Asterisk module to
provide this functionality, btw.

In the end, I quoted a traditional NEC phone system with voicemail. It
meets their needs better and was about the same price.

> Has anybody seen or does anybody know of a VoIP hardphone 
> that has router instead of a switch?  I could connect the 
> phone to the router, give IP addresses based on the phone's 
> MAC, and then the client can connect thier computer to the 
> phone.  Because each phone/room would be on a different 
> subnet, they wouldn't be able to see one another.  Then I 
> could save them 6k on Cisco gear and maybe some headaches?


I have no idea what you are trying to achieve here. If you think VLANs
somehow provide security you are mistaken.