My husband and I are both semi-retired computer professionals, and we also own a large ranch. There are a number of buildings scattered around the property, and, being geeks, we want to put voice and data in all of them.
The distances are far too long for a copper based data solution, so we're pulling fiber. We are interested in avoiding pulling copper also, since it's an additional expense and one more system to manage, so we are looking into VoIP solutions. We will have a star configuration with a 100baseT central switch and distribution switches in the more data intensive buildings (House, guest house, detached office)and single ports in the less intensive buildings. (barn, garage.)
I am ever the skeptic. I was also tortured by VoIP while working at Cisco in the Bad Old Days, so I've been scarred for life. Hubby dear is trying to talk me into not pulling copper, but I want to be sure that the phone will Just Work, and I know how to make copper do that. I'm also not convinced that VoIP will provide us the cheaper solution, given how much consumer gear is out there for standard telephony.
We will need a voicemail solution that can handle multiple incoming lines (aka the renter in the guest house line, the boarders in the barn's line, the home line...) and has the capacity to selectively distribute calls based on what line they came in on. (Don't want the renter to get my phone calls, and god knows I don't want to hear what her boyfriend says to her in the middle of the night when he calls!) I assume these aren't huge obstacles, but I'm curious what the cost is, and how stable these systems are.
You folks seem pretty knowledgeable about the current state of the art in this stuff. We will obviously have plenty of bandwidth to build a solution without compression, and we have some older but not ancient hardware lying around that could be dedicated to running sotware for the voicemail system. What do you think? Should we just pull the copper, or am I going to be happy with VoIP?
Thanks,
-jennifer
The distances are far too long for a copper based data solution, so we're pulling fiber. We are interested in avoiding pulling copper also, since it's an additional expense and one more system to manage, so we are looking into VoIP solutions. We will have a star configuration with a 100baseT central switch and distribution switches in the more data intensive buildings (House, guest house, detached office)and single ports in the less intensive buildings. (barn, garage.)
I am ever the skeptic. I was also tortured by VoIP while working at Cisco in the Bad Old Days, so I've been scarred for life. Hubby dear is trying to talk me into not pulling copper, but I want to be sure that the phone will Just Work, and I know how to make copper do that. I'm also not convinced that VoIP will provide us the cheaper solution, given how much consumer gear is out there for standard telephony.
We will need a voicemail solution that can handle multiple incoming lines (aka the renter in the guest house line, the boarders in the barn's line, the home line...) and has the capacity to selectively distribute calls based on what line they came in on. (Don't want the renter to get my phone calls, and god knows I don't want to hear what her boyfriend says to her in the middle of the night when he calls!) I assume these aren't huge obstacles, but I'm curious what the cost is, and how stable these systems are.
You folks seem pretty knowledgeable about the current state of the art in this stuff. We will obviously have plenty of bandwidth to build a solution without compression, and we have some older but not ancient hardware lying around that could be dedicated to running sotware for the voicemail system. What do you think? Should we just pull the copper, or am I going to be happy with VoIP?
Thanks,
-jennifer