Upgrading to VOIP

[brianCFCU]

We have a mixture of VOIP Gateways and the older Prologix equipment in our branches. We are currently looking at MPLS and having everything on VOIP would make life much easier.

I know there are some devices out there that will convert digital to IP, can anyone recommend some?

To outfit the current equipment would cost more in software upgrades than a brand new g350 so was hoping to find a cheaper, quicker solution to potentially roll this out earlier.

 

[jimbojimbo]

Depends on what you have and what you are trying to do. I've "IP Enabled" a traditional system by adding a G700/S8300 ICC and connecting to the traditional system via a ds1 interface. Helpful if you need IP but have a larger system and don't want to absorb the cost of the RTU upgrade at the current time or if what you have meets your needs. There are also several gateway manufacturers that will offer something along the same lines such as Quintim/Tenor, MultiTech, or Asterisk.

Before making your selection, you need to be acutely aware of feature/function delta's. Don't for get things like CDR capabilities/compatability. Mixing and matching can be very functional and cost effective but may leave some threads hanging out.



James Middleton
ACSCI/ACSCD/MCSE
Xeta Technologies
jim.middleton@xeta.com

 

[brianCFCU]

Jim,

Thanks for the response. Feature wise, we don't need a whole lot and to be honest I'm actually thinking of just going without any sort of equipment out there. While our branches are convenient for our customers they aren't terribly critical in terms of our organization continuing to run. Their call volumes are also extremely low. Each branch has 6-10 phones.

Was thinking of deploying IP phones, using a MultiVOIP Analog Adapter for 911 calls and calling it a day.

Has anyone had success with a setup like this? With redundant connections to the MPLS network I can't see why I would even need a gateway. If I'm overlooking something, please point it out. Thanks.