[Asterisk-Users] School design question

[Steven Critchfield]

On Mon, 2005-03-14 at 11:33 -0800, Chris Hobbs wrote:
> I guess the question comes down to which of three possible network 
> designs to use (once wiring is assumed to be CAT5 across the board):
> 
> A) Analog classroom phone -> Paging/Intercom System -> Paging/Telco 
> gateway -> Asterisk
>      * Limits number of clasroom calls that can be made to capacity of 
> gateway

Obviously a bad idea for the denoted reason.

> B) IP Classroom Phone -> Asterisk -> Paging/Telco Gateway -> Paging System
> 
> C) Analog classroom phone -> Channel Bank -> Asterisk -> Paging/Telco 
> Gateway -> Paging System

B and C differ only in where do you place complexity and cost. B pushes
more complexity to the classrooms and _possibly_ more support time. C
keeps the complexity in the wiring closet and requires fewer logins to
fix any problem. 

Now you need to also think about power. Unless the entire school is on a
backup generator that you can trust, I would suggest option C as you can
consolidate your UPSs in the wiring closet and make sure your internal
phone network is still functional in an emergency. With option B, you
would either have to do POE and the added cost of the POE injectors to
get the same functionality.

Keeping the idea of IP phones open lets you possibly add IP phones to
the network as needed. Think of the possibility to add a phone for a
student teacher/observer with private extension while leaving the main
classroom phone available as usual. 
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>