Just curious to see if any small business has turned to voip and is it reliable? What setup are you using?

Someone at work was reading something today that was along the lines of VOIP overtaking normal phone lines I think for new connections but cant remember exactly

once this 100 m/bit connections come in the voip servers at ISPs just that little bit more reliable. Until its 99.9% reliable i doubt it will take over.

Not really voip now days runs on a G729 codec which uses bugger all bandwidth 15kbits to start then drops to 7 or 8kbits so it would be handy but the only problem is setup and start costing for the gear. Voip phones especailly cisco ones are not cheap can cost a small fortune, then you have setup cost as well. For a small business with 3 external phones lines or less I would keep to the line rental for now what a little longer to see what options open up for them with the new broadband network.

If the codecs are using bugger all bandwidth then maybe the fibre will improve reliability! Especially from an ISP perspective. The problem i have with my home service is the fact it goes down every now and again. Not as reliable as land line. If this was for a business it wouldnt be expectable. What other options are there other then utilising an ISP for VOIP?

I'm using the iinet naked DSL, VOIP solution and haven’t' had any down time at all.. I think a majority of time the problems lie with the equipment that has been purchased. Get what you pay for... My last place of employment had a full Cisco Call Manager solution. over 3000 phones. The issue with it was a 3rd party app that supplied voice mail (IPFX) . I believe this has been fixed up with later releases of the software.

We currently are in the market for a new VOIP solution to replace the END OF LIFE (in Dec09) Exchange.. As it is a relatively large solution 700+phones plus a call centre. It went out to tender. 56 vendors submitted, it is now down to 3. All 3 vendors using different technologies (Nortel, Cisco and can't think of the third) The big driver for this solution though is it has to have seamless integration with OCS. Something that is light on in Australia, and there haven't been very many sites that have been available for us to go look at..... Can't wait to get rid of this "Uniden" piece of crap next to me...

Gents
Most medium to large businesses are running a Voice of IP solution, Resource companies and multi nationals have the largest to gain from this technology whilst small business and home offices the least. The major benefits from a VOIP solution are:
1. Shared infrastructure - reduction in the requirment for structured cabling, telephony using the same network hardware as the data network
2. Reduced telephony call costs - company internal calls are routed across internal WANs and LANS, as opposed to via Telecomms providers like Telstra's PSTN
3.Shared Management - IT service providers and internal IT departments can manage the Telephony, reducing overheads and increase the speed and flexibility at which changes can be made.

If you're in IT then it is an advantage to have at least a fundamental understanding of VOIP particularly for network engineers.

My brother-inlaw is looking at running a system at work that his handy technician is sourcing for him. Sounds pretty neat I will get details soon, its mainly for small business as he has a resturaunt so only looking at 10-15 phones max. Basically most phone calls go outside. So instead of paying for 10 phone lines out he has sourced a small PABX that also has mobile sims attachments. The system checks the number and goes through to find the cheapest option for calls optus to optus, virgin to virgin and so on. Sounds like a neat little system for small business to cut costs down.

If I get the name and pics of the setup I'll post soon.

You dont need a PABX as such, all you'd need is a call manager....ie a computer running software with a gateway
http://www.asterisk.org/
for example

JackTheTech wrote:Not really voip now days runs on a G729 codec which uses bugger all bandwidth

While G.729 (not going to get bogged down in the variants) only uses 8 kbit, when planning VoIP bandwidth requirements you need to take the whole session into consideration.

So G.729 at a standard sample rate of 10ms and two samples per packet is sized at 20 bytes. 50 pps = 8000 bps.

So then we need to incorporate the RTP header of 12 bytes, the UDP header of 8 bytes and the IP header of 20 bytes for a total of 40 bytes.

Then we need to consider the actually medium that its travelling over. Standard ethernet has a header of 18 bytes.

So all up we have total of 78 bytes @ 50 pps = 31200 bps.

For G.711 which everyone should be using at home (why sell yourself short on an ADSL connection?) its 160 bytes + 58 bytes @ 50 pps = 87200 bps

Keeping in mind that this doesn't include RTCP or the actual call control protocol (H.323/SIP/MGCP/SCCP) requirements.

Blacky wrote:You dont need a PABX as such, all you'd need is a call manager....ie a computer running software with a gateway
http://www.asterisk.org/
for example

Call-manager typically refers to the Cisco product running MGCP, H.323, SIP and SCCP protocols, SCCP being proprietary and until CUCM v6, SIP functionality was very limited.

Asterisk is a PBX product taking the role of a SIP Proxy and Registrar (SIP being built as a p2p protocol) which also supports MGCP and H.323