[Asterisk-Users] a bit frightened, guys

[Shoval Tomer]

Hi,

 

I started looking into asterisk cause we're looking for a real-world
solution.

(when I say we I talk about a 50+ HQ and a 10+ branch office).

 

We currently use a Panasonic analog PBX, with home-made IVR and PSTN
lines.

 

We'd like to deploy most of Asterisk's capabilities through out our
organization - to save on long distance and international calls.

 

I've been playing with asterisk for a week now, and I am charmed (if not
madly in love) with it.

 

Today I went on and bragged to my boss about it and how we can implement
it instead of buying something like Cisco's call manager.

 

He got excited too and wants to have an estimate of hardware costs for a
solution that'll work for us.

 

Suddenly I was weak at the knees...

 

I have a couple of questions for you guys.

 

A.	Has someone tried this in a real world, production environment?

 

B.	What is the Asterisk server hardware recommendation for managing
approx. 75 extensions and 16 analog lines?

 

C.	What telephony hardware do I need in order to get all these
extensions and lines connected to Asterisk

 

D.	Do I need to replace our lines (analog) with a PRI line?

 

E.	Can I use the existing infrastructure (connecting the existing
extensions to asterisk, for instance)

 

F.	What is there to be said for network bandwidth consumption for
this size of a deployment?

 

G.	Do I need dedicated bandwidth for it to work properly

 

H.	Anything else I might have left out...

 

See, I'm not afraid of hard work, and I already started working on
solutions not embedded into the Asterisk package (like broadening the
web interface, having a directory application that connects to our
internal phone directory, etc.).

 

I am afraid that since this is not a commercially available product,
since there's no guaranty it'll work I might find myself holding both
ends of the short stick.

 

For instance, can I get the hardware and return it after a while if it's
not working? Where?

This way, if it's a no go, I'm not stuck with useless hardware that cost
thousands of dollars.

 

In short, can Asterisk be deployed to a real production environment,
like ours?

 

 

 

Shoval Tomer, MCSE

IT Manager

Softov Advanced System Ltd. 

Email: shoval at softov.co.il

Mobile: 972-55-229220

 

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