TDM or VoIP?

[NastyNed2]

Starting a new thread. This is a slight shift of topic from thread 798-1427344.


Well, now BR2, you may have just started a conversation that will enlighten me. Or help me keep my boss' feet on the ground.

We're currently Nortel, with an Option 61C we call our main switch and several Options 11s scattered around town. We're working with our vendor to IP enable the 61C to accomodate buildings that are to small to justify another 11.

The boss, however, and the Mayor to a degree, are starting to think IP and Cisco are the greatest things since sliced bread. My feet aren't planted in the TDM cement, but I'm not ready to abandon TDM just because people are watching Cisco commercials on TV.

Can some of you with IP experience help me out with some of the pros and cons? For now, we're just going to add a signaling server and media card to the 61C, and our remote building with only 10 phones will be on our enterprise phone system instead of a few POTS lines of their own.

 

[911guru]

Nasty- Nope, it's not Howard, but thank you for the welcome!

Now as far as your 4 digit dialing to the 'pound', there is a way to integrate that into your dial plan on the Nortel. You can assign a 4 digit DSC DN to the pound, and then in NARS/BARS you do a DMI that converts to the 10 digit number. Viola, you have 4 digit dialing, albeit it is only one way.



911Guru

http://pbx-e911.com

 

[NastyNed2]

Sorry 911guru. Bad my. I was dyslexic. Howard is guru911 @ some domain.

Is there a 911 forum here? We will be letting proposals on a new 911 phone system soon.

 

[bigdperry]

My company was in an almost identical situation about five years ago, we had three 81c's with fnf numerous opt11c sites and probably 50 or so Norstar's, we started looking into VOIP and decided to leverage our existing Nortel equipment by IP enabling it, keep in mind we are a Cisco shop as far as the network side of the house, so this was a fight from the start, but I can honestly say after 4 or 5 years of migrating to VOIP
that it was the right move, of course we had some challenges early on with power when Nortel and Cisco could not agree on a power standard but that has all been addressed. I have to say that the cisco network gear along with Nortel voip works great we use Cisco poe switches and have enabled QOS on layer 2 and 3 and our voice quality has been as close to toll a possible I believe, yes we are reliant on the network but we have put as many ups and other preventative pieces in place where needed. There are some definite advantages to VOIP one that stands out is the flexibility of rollout once the initial systems are in place rolling out new sets is very easy, we also love the Nortel I2050 softphone it has been great for remote users and we actually use the I2050 for our DR plan so lots of flexibility with VOIP. If I had it to do over I would go with Nortel simply because it works great from the TDM side and why not leverage what you already own and know. One side note we have two large call centers and have chosen to go with a 1 for 1 ratio with digital and VOIP, our thinking is if we lose our network we still have the digital sets and same if we lose the Nortel tdm,your existing Network will be the key to a successful rollout but that is the case regardless of the vendor you chose. Also remind the shot callers if you go with Cisco the digital and analog that rocks with Nortel will be gone, it becomes very messy with Cisco

 

[johnpoole]

ip can be just as stable as your network.. work out the 911 problems before jumping in with both feet. a couple of the people here went voip at home to save money.. since they are techs they don't seem to mind booting the router 3 times a week. they back up that service with cell phones as well.. if i was buying a new system i would have a combination of tdm and voip... as you stated, locations that are to small to install an 11... BUT remember the system will be down as often as their portion to the network is.. the water treatment plant, not a problem but i wouldn't have just voip at the ymca/city pool area..

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[MagnaRGP]

With 5.0, you are only vulnerable in as much as your IP network. 5.0 is survivable to multiple call servers, so if one goes down, another will pick up the system and it's FAST.

The only real downside now is that you are only as good as your network and to paraphrase the wise Mr. Poole:

"Some IT people couldn't fix toast without re-booting the toaster".

Personal experience has proven time and again that most VoIP outages that I have had to deal with were created because some network guy forgot (who only recently learned how to Spell "IP" from a CISCO EXAM brain dump found on the internet) to add a VLAN to a trunk port when they made changes to their network. They will NEVER tell you what they are doing and will also NEVER tell you they made a mistake and will ALWAYS blame the VoIP equipment.

You will need to learn how to troubleshoot IP routing issues. Most savvy voice people can become better data people than data people trying to learn voice.

 

[baolaniyan]

i want to set up a vpn for a transportation company. There are about 300 driverswho should be able to communicate independently with the control station. Also the control station should be able to send data via IP to about 100 different points on the network.Pls advise on what i need to do

 

[baolaniyan]

i want to set up a vpn for a transportation company. There are about 300 drivers who should be able to communicate independently with the control station. Also the control station should be able to send data via IP to about 100 different points (bus stops) on the network.Pls advise on what i need to do

 

[acewarlock]

baolaniyan: your question has nothing to do with this thread, so please start a NEW THREAD of your own.




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