Questions about Mitel products 6

[unclerico]

My company is in the discovery phase of our VoIP implementation. We have had vendors in for Fonality, Inter-Tel, Cisco, Mitel, Shortel, and Avaya. We REALLY liked the Mitel offering; we are looking at a 3300 IPC, 5330/5340 handsets, and the Mitel Applications Suite. We have three locations that will be connected via QoS enabled T1 MPLS circuits.

Now, I have heard time and again that Mitel is a legacy brand; however, I have been unable to dig up exactly what these other guys are referring to. One said that Mitel still uses TDM at its core at it has been retrofitted with IP capabilities whereas other products were built on IP from the ground up. If this is the case, what is the drawback?? Is Mitel a good offering for a multi location implementation?? Does it offer good survivability in case of a link outage or a losing a site completely?? Thanks ahead of time for your answers.

I hate all Uppercase... I don't want my groups to seem angry at me all the time! =)
- ColdFlame (vbscript forum)

 

[busster]

An External AudioCodes 4 port device which supports t.38 will run less than $400.00. You can put your fax machine on one of these ports and fax out or get faxes in via SIP trunking, as long as your provider supports it. Yeah, Digium is proud of their hardware, but is using a 2U server, you are probably looking a an external interface anyway.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

A tenant in my building has an Asterisk system. Judas Priest! From my perspective (as a 29-year telecom veteran) it is probably best described to the uninitiated as a duct tape telephone system. Yes, it certainly is dirt-friggin' cheap and maybe even the ideal phone system for a business where reliability doesn't matter. My question is, if Asterisk is sufficient, wouldn't a couple dozen Magic Jacks work just as well?

I'm today with a large (Fortune-500) company where the rules are as follows:
1. The phones simply must always work
2. If everything goes down at once, get the phones back first

The phones are so vital to day-to-day operations that we've been wrestling for some time with how to migrate to a VOIP platform without compromising the reliability. That's the reason the bulk of them are still on TDM today (Mitel SX2000) - The old SX2K system (18 per nodes) is all -48DC powered with dual redundant GNB battery systems and redundant chargers backed up with dual-redundant diesel generators (2 separate power legs). Succinctly stated, there can be no redress or petition from the stipulations herin laid down and presented: the phones simply HAVE TO work, period!

After much blood & sweat we now have a tentative design to move ahead with Mitel VOIP, but it's going to be a little pricey. For openers, the decision was made to have a physically separate voice network (not merely a VLAN off the data network) and will include redundant core routers providing redundant GigE backbone fiber feeds to each of approx 190 48 port POE etherswitches. AC Power will come from Liebert carrier-class UPS systems (already in place) and backed up w/dual 350-KW generators & 5-day fuel supply with committment from the supplier for ongoing replenishment for up to 30 days. (Also already in place) Much to Cisco's chagrin, their best sales effort didn't convince management, so the phone system will be Mitel, by G_d, running on a pair of MXe MCD Servers (resilient) (hopefully by then SUN) with what has now grown to 4 MXe trunking Gateways in a ring configuration for TDM trunk handoff and to drive a couple 2K per nodes for the nuisance analogs we just can't seem to ever get rid of (fax, modems, Polycom, elevator entrapment and security gate ARDs, etc). We're about halfway there. Yet to do is the voice network cabling & etherswitches (this year). I have the MXe gateways already in the rack and running. Full implementation is slated for 2010. We'll also be buying approx 1600 IP instruments at that time, tho model is yet to be finalized since these tend to evolve from year to year. If it were going in today the phones would be a mix of 5340, 5330 and (mostly) 5312, tho I'm pushing for all self-labeling phones just to get out of the DESI-typing business.

I was asked why continue to leverage a couple old 2K per nodes for the analogs rather than put in a shiny new AX or two. Simple matter of economics; The per node analogs don't need licenses and will gradually go away. I'm also drowning in MC320 cards and PER cans. Those analog devices that don't go away may also eventually migrate to SIP ATAs. For right now it's expedient and very cost-effective to leave them on house pairs. None are in broadcast or pickup groups and may not even be worth clustering. Less than a dozen are even considered 'critical'. Having a PER node around is also handy for E&M trunks for paging zones and building those non-busy exts to make key appearances out of them, stripping callerID to create totally anonymous mailboxes, etc.