BSR vs. New Gateway Opinions?

[dmthames]

Morning,

So I have two call centers in different locations that are part of the same business unit, and they want to work together more closely...i.e., back each other up, take over flow calls, etc...

I'm going to give them a few options, basically using a BSR application or forklifting the older switch and hanging a gxxx/lsp off of my 8710 at the "remote" location.

Any thoughts on BSR as an inexpensive alternative to doing a heavier gateway install?

 

[Trav4620]

Cost wise, BSR is probably your best bet. If your existing systems in both locations are fairly up to date, then it wouldnt make sense to just junk one and hang an LSP or ESS. If you need to replace one anyway and there is money to do it, then go LSP or ESS. We use BSR very heavily between two locations for Backup, overflow, business continuity and contingency purposes.

If you do go with BSR, use point to point trunks between your 2 locations. We had a client once that decided they wanted to do BSR over the public network and after 4 months of trying (and failing), they scrapped the idea and put in point to point circuits.

For our current situation, BSR works very well, and the business is quite happy with how it works.

 

[dmthames]

Thks Trav....I was wondering about the pstn functionality, so that input helps. We'd definately setup some ip trunks if we went this route.

The cust is looking for a "low cost" solution, so this might be it.

 

[highfive]

I use BSR on a fairly large scale over both dedicated and PSTN circuits without any issues.

The BSR checking needs to be over an IP(dummy trunk) or Dedicated trunk but the voice interflow can go over the PSTN just fine. There are some things to watch for as inbound toll-free traffic from a carrier going back to the same carrier may carry the call type flag through the pbx when it gets routed out so you may need to assign a valid service/feature to the route pattern(SDN).

It takes some planning and testing(we turn up/down several DS3's worth of PRI's a year) to ensure it is setup correctly.

 

[dmthames]

Thks highfive,
After some consideriation and general my interest in geeking out on bsr, I think we're just going to deploy IP Agent to the remote locations and have them login to my "main" switch. My customer doesn't have a business continuity / failover requirement at the moment, so we're just gonna keep it easy until they do.