Meridian 1 Option 61 "IP Enabled"

[newrsoul]

Hi all,

When I moved jobs I got a new PABX to grapple with, this comapny have an Option 61 on one site (hugh thing!) and a couple of other sites with Option 11's.

I've got to grips with building new sets, adding hunt groups, DDI, etc, but I see "IP Enabled" on one of the card doors, and wondered to what level this was, is it just IP Sets, or could it be intersite trunking?

I'd like to link the sites over IP trunks, but can't really find a simple guide to understanding what I actually have ability wise in the switch. On the Option 61 with Symposium, Call Pilot, Agent Greeting, Meridian Mail, and Nortel TAPI which we use with our application.

Any pointers to simple docs on how these hand together and also network over IP would be much appreciated (the Nortel one's are all a bit deep, although useful when looking a specific items)

To help I've included a simple SLT list form LD 22 below

LD 22
REQ slt
ANALOGUE TELEPHONES 32 LEFT 1 USED 31
CLASS TELEPHONES 0 LEFT 0 USED 0
DIGITAL TELEPHONES 144 LEFT 26 USED 118
DECT USERS 0 LEFT 0 USED 0
IP USERS 4 LEFT 4 USED 0
BASIC IP USERS 0 LEFT 0 USED 0
DECT VISITOR USERS 0 LEFT 0 USED 0
ACD AGENTS 78 LEFT 39 USED 39

PCA 0 LEFT 0 USED 0
ITG ISDN TRUNKS 16 LEFT 11 USED 5
H.323 ACCESS PORTS 0 LEFT 0 USED 0
AST 4000 LEFT 3971 USED 29
RAN CON 4 LEFT 4 USED 0
MUS CON 30 LEFT 30 USED 0

TNS 32760 LEFT 32435 USED 325
ACDN 24000 LEFT 23948 USED 52
AML 16 LEFT 13 USED 3
IDLE_SET_DISPLAY NORTEL
LTID 32760 LEFT 32760 USED 0
RAN RTE 512 LEFT 512 USED 0
ATTENDANT CONSOLES 32760 LEFT 32759 USED 1
BRI DSL 10000 LEFT 10000 USED 0
DATA PORTS 32760 LEFT 32745 USED 15
PHANTOM PORTS 32760 LEFT 32740 USED 20
SIP ACCESS PORTS 0 LEFT 0 USED 0
TRADITIONAL TRUNKS 32760 LEFT 32659 USED 101
DCH 254 LEFT 250 USED 4

Thanks Peter

 

[allenmac]

It appears that you have 4 licenses for IP phones, and 16 licenses (5 used) for ITG ISDN trunks.

the ITG trunks were the earliest form of IP trunking available on the Meridian 1 platform.

You don't have any H.323 or SIP trunk licenses.

What release of software are you running on your 61c?

 

[nessman]

Huge thing? Looking at your SLT, that's just a baby. Try an 81C with 10 columns and 4000 sets.

But to answer your question, you'll need to determine if you have ITG's at your other sites. If not - then you'll need to add equipment to those sites. But before you dive in to this, consider the business need and ROI first. With with the cost of the hardware (media cards, sig servers, ELAN switches, etc...), vendor programming, etc... the project it can get up there in terms of capital costs. You also need to consider whether or not your WAN can handle VOIP traffic - not so much for bandwidth, but latency - anything over 80-100 ms and you're going to have quality degradation. Keep in mind you're looking at around 128 kbps per call (depending on codec) - so if your WAN is a bunch of single T1's to each site, and you have heavy data utilization to begin with - bandwidth will also become an issue.

Personally, given this day and age of cheap/free/unlimited long distance, unless your LD costs are skyrocketing out of control and you need to leverage least cost routing to reduce costs, you'll never see the ROI to implement IP trunking across your enterprise in an effort to reduce long distance calling costs between sites. You shouldn't be paying more than a few cents/minute for LD these days. If you are - change carriers. So crunch your numbers first and see if you'll achieve a ROI before your existing equipment fully depreciates and hits end-of-life.

 

[newrsoul]

OK, so I need to research ITG's then, from your explanation it sounds like this ITG system requires it's own dedicated links, not just bandwidth/qos across our WAN like the Mitel IP Trunks did?

Of huge, I meant physical size, 4 stacks compared to the last system I administered a Mitel MN3300 at a couple of U's!

In terms of ROI etc, the reason for doing this is for ACD, at the moment we pipe the call out back onto the PSTN network and take it back in the other end, so although your right on the costs, it's more flexibility where after.

I understand that many years ago the company has some frame relay links for this traffic, so I suspect that the Option 11's already have the hardware...

Thanks for your time replying, off to research ITG.