The point about the "politcal" side of this is extremely valid. But it also becomes a business opportunity to provide the hosted PBX as a service to BOTH companies! Beyond that, some sort of written agreement between the two companies, the one "owning" the box and the other as a client may be worthwhile.
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/13/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Gordon Henderson</b> <<a href="mailto:gordon+asterisk@drogon.net">gordon+asterisk@drogon.net</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On Fri, 13 Apr 2007, Gavin Spurgeon wrote:<br><br>> Hi List...<br>><br>> Lets say I have been asked to do an Asterisk/Trixbox install for an<br>> environment where 2 companies 'live' in the same... building...
<br>><br>> Both companies have 2 incoming Analogue BT Lines and then have good old<br>> BT Phones plugged into them..<br>><br>> I have been asked to setup a VoIP system for one of the companies and<br>> the other company has showed an interest, There is one central Server
<br>> Room/Cabinet will all of the shared services (www,file server, etc,<br>> etc...) and I thought of going down the lies of installing one more<br>> Dedicated * Box into this cabinet with would service both companies...
<br>><br>> My 1st questions are as follows....<br>><br>> 1.) can one * box host both separate phone setups and handle them as<br>> separate setups.. (I.e. user in company A can not dial and internal line<br>
> to user in company B)<br>><br>> 2.) can I use a Single 4 FXO port card and reserve 2 ports for one<br>> company and the other 2 ports for the other company?<br>><br>> This would also need to work for outgoing calls, all calls made by
<br>> company 1 MUST go over the 2 lines that belong to company 1 and of<br>> course the same for company 2...<br>><br>> 3.) How easy is this setup ? or should I just make up 2 different *<br>> Boxes, 1 for each company ?
<br><br>Answers to the above are generally "Yes". People sell hosted VoIP boxes<br>all the time (centrex/virtual PBX), and you can bet it's not one box per<br>client - just like web hosting, that's not really financially viable
<br>unless they are paying lots of money!<br><br>But one issue you might have is the LAN to both companies. A typical * box<br>might only have one Ethernet port - do both companies share the same LAN<br>(I'd generally hope not!)
<br><br>Also the outgoing Internet connections - do they have their own separate<br>ADSL lines, or share one? If they're separate and want to do the remote<br>working thing, then routing the calls to each one is an additional factor.
<br><br>If there's one Internet connection and they have a DMZ (small subnet<br>routed down the ADSL line) and 2 routers, one for each company, then<br>putting the asterisk box in the DMZ is the thing to do, but you then
<br>have issues with NAT (probably) and firewalling for the phones on the<br>inside. Not insurmountable, but an additional thing to go wrong.<br><br>And then there's the "political" side of things - what if one company
<br>decided it doesn't like the other company anymore and pulls the plug on<br>the PBX ... Or gets access to the box and listens to all their voicemail?<br>(Although since they already seem to have one common comms cupboard, it
<br>would seem they are friendly enough already!) So if you want a GUI to let<br>each company manage their own extensions then you'll have to write your<br>own - and at that point it might be just as easy to install 2 boxes...
<br><br>> I hope someone could shed some light on this for me<br>> and give me some idea's..<br><br>Read-up on contexts, and I'd suggest you look into asterisk in the raw<br>rather than rely on a GUI of some sorts...
<br><br>The book helps. Asterisk, The future of Telephony. You can get it in PDF<br>form.<br><br>Personally I'd install 2 boxes.<br><br>Gordon<br>_______________________________________________<br>--Bandwidth and Colocation provided by
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</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Barry D. Hassler<br>President, HCST<br><br><a href="http://www.hcst.net/">http://www.hcst.net/</a><br>937-427-9000