[Asterisk-Users] School design question

[Steven Critchfield]

On Mon, 2005-03-14 at 10:46 -0800, Chris Hobbs wrote:
> My school district will be building a new elementary school in 2006. We 
> were about to go to bid with a traditional intercom system for the 
> campus but I would like implement Asterisk at the campus.
> 
> My question is, do we build in a traditional intercom/paging system and 
> tie that into the Asterisk PBX, the way such intercoms have been 
> connected to other PBX's in our district in the past, or do we put IP 
> phones in the classrooms and tie that into a PA system for paging? Are 
> there IP based paging systems that could be used instead of the 
> traditional PA/loudspeaker systems in most schools?

You may want to continue having a general access PA that is just like
your currently installed system. Your PA probably needs to be easily
understood in the hallways as well as the classrooms. Cost of wire and
speakers are much lower than an IP phone and the extra power
requirements and possibly buggy firmware.

> We will be writing a spec shortly (and I will be seeking a consultant on 
> asterisk-biz soon to assist us), but I need to know whether I need to 
> get our engineering consultant to redraw the cabling to reflect a data 
> jack at the location of the classroom phone instead of the telco jack 
> that is currently on the plans.

If you aren't planning on data to the classroom, you probably are
already behind. You probably should plan on running 2 cat5 cables to
every room. At worse, you use 1 cat5 for plain old telecom. You at least
have options at that point. See about running them all to nice patch
panels so that you just make jumpers from the kind of network you want
over to the port that needs it.

Do consider that you don't have to purchase fancy phones for the
classrooms. You could use analog telephones that are cheap to replace
and use a group of channel banks to support the phones. Maybe a bit more
expensive than the IP phones, but it is tried and proven technology. 
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>