[asterisk-users] t1 voip to failover pri

[Steve Glaus]

stan ford wrote:
> I'm confused with something, maybe someone can explain to me.
>  
> if your currently on  a pri and are considering moving over to VOIP, 
> that means you would have to purchase a t1 or fractional t1 for a your 
> voip connections.
>  
> but then, voip connections aren't as reliable as PRI. so then you 
> would probbaly have to get a PRI failover.
>  
> but then having a PRI failover means that you now have to pay 400 for 
> a T1, then another 400 for your PRI line. wouldn't have you have just 
> defeated the cause of savig money by now having to have a PRI on 
> standby? now costing you 800 a month? wouldn't it almost be the same 
> price to stick with the PRI only?
>  
> is anyone out there, using a VOIP only  with no failover?
We're using VOIP only, no failover. Furthermore we're using it on a 
cable internet connection. We have a cheap dsl connection for backups. 
It's been up for about 2 months now and has only been out twice for a 
small period of time. When that happens the DSL takes over. I don't 
pretend that this is in anyways comparable to PSTN service but it works 
pretty well for us. We have three locations. Two of which are set up the 
same way, the third just has 3 stations and just registers with one of 
the asterisk boxes at the other locations.

I think when you're talking enterprise you definitely want to go with a 
t1 or two t1's for backup. (I don't really understand how a PRI gives 
you more reliability than a T circuit. They run over the same copper 
don't they??) For our purposes however (and I'd like to think I speak 
for a lot of mid size businesses with < 50 employees) our setup works 
wonderful. It costs us about $600 all in all (internet access + VOIP) 
and that's  a FAR cry from what we were paying through Covad before. Of 
course there always will be exceptions (People that need 100% guaranteed 
uptime), but for the size of our business this works. The only part that 
REALLY concerns me is our DID's. If our DID provider ever goes down we 
are screwed. Anyone know of any failsafes for THIS?