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Which Asterisk Or Other VoIP System To Deploy?
ubercombatwombat is looking for a bit of advice: "On the 9th of November, I have a meeting to discuss an Asterisk based phone system for a new elementary school. I am the network admin for the district. Currently, we are migrating from a T-1 based Nortel (option 61, 2 x option 11 and 7 x Norstar 8x32's, for those who care) to 1GB data fiber and a 2nd pair per site — to allow simple copper-to-fiber for the split T-1/Norstar's. We also just got a 10MB (scalable to 100MB) connect to the Internet. I can keep the VoIP basically on a separate network if need be as well.
What do I install? Are there Asterisk vendors that are available and have enough experience?"
"The hardware support we can handle just fine, it's the software that's the big issue. One thing to keep in mind is that E911 is priority one for any brand or type. No exceptions. Other than that one thing, the field is fairly open.
I see two possibilities:
- A Cisco system or Shortel system — education budgets vary wildly from year to year and recurring cost have to be kept down.
- Hybrid of Cisco, Snom, or Polycom handsets with a custom Asterisk box with good third-party support. I see a few options such as Fonality or Digium. If anyone is aware of online options with good service, please suggest them.
Trixbox may or may not be what I use. I have had systems going 24/7 for over a year and am very happy, but the product's future is unclear just now.
So, what and who? I won't go there without third-party support. What suggestions can Slashdot offer me?"
I see two possibilities:
- A Cisco system or Shortel system — education budgets vary wildly from year to year and recurring cost have to be kept down.
- Hybrid of Cisco, Snom, or Polycom handsets with a custom Asterisk box with good third-party support. I see a few options such as Fonality or Digium. If anyone is aware of online options with good service, please suggest them.
Trixbox may or may not be what I use. I have had systems going 24/7 for over a year and am very happy, but the product's future is unclear just now.
So, what and who? I won't go there without third-party support. What suggestions can Slashdot offer me?"
My company works with Mac OS X. I wonder the same ask slashdot, but for Macs only.
No I'm not a fanboy. I just need a solution also.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
How about ZoIP?
Why not just use freePBX? It's the web frontend/configuration that Trixbox uses. It can be installed on basically any distro (I run it on debian), so you can pick the one you're most comfortable with. Having it installed separately also means you can upgrade components separately.
Speak before you think
As gregmac pointed out, FreePBX can be built and used on just about any distro. We are using it, with Asterisk, on CentOS servers at two of our facilities, with two more to come in the next few months. We do both hardware and software support in-house, so the situation isn't quite the same as yours.
*** Just my opinion, but of course anyone who disagrees is still wrong.
You will need many layers to this project. As an Asterisk Consultant I can advise you but am far to busy to help.
. .
Network Layer - Proper planning and routing on paper a month before install.
Hardware Layer - People care about phones, they may not mention it but they do. For a school where emergancy services are key I would look for a ten year solution. Water cooling, oversized tyan system with raid->lvm->xen->ntp,bind,asterisk,www,tftp,etc...
Software Layer - For optimal performance I would document the current system and call flow. Then redocument it with the receptionist. Submit this to a professional like Digium to work your dialplan and config the needed modules.
Training Layer - Users will have to see some change or they will start complaining that it is not the old system. Be calm and polite, normal personel rules apply.
Documentation Layer - Extension Directories, move-add-changes, redundancy systems. You and others need to know how it all works, and the users need to know who to call.
The GPL, for those that truely understand.
#1 - do not cheap-out on hardware. your project will fail miserably if you buy all cheap phones and cheap linecards. Echo will live in your nightmares and make you fail. get real digium cards, nothing else. This stuff actually works. Get decent phones. If it says budgetone on it it is absolute crap and you need to stay away from it. Figure $150-$200 per phone for decent quality. Watch it buying used Cisco SIP phones. I have been burnt buying used onesthat are locked and nobody knows the codes, cisco dont care so they will not help.
#2 - E911 is very easy. you need a real analog line in that area for the e911 outgoing line. set up a dialing rule that routes any 911 calls out that analog line and voila! 911 works perfectly.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've installed 6 or so Asterisk systems in the last 8 months and they all work very nicely. I've done a bunch of Cisco VoIP stuff and actually used Asterisk as the voicemail end of the Cisco Call Manager Express system we were running here in the office up until March of this year. Take the time to learn Asterisk and hand write the config files. It's a bit of a learning curve but there are a ton of people out there that have proven quite helpful. Of course, when 1.4 comes out there's supposed to be a GUI but I haven't yet looked at it. Either way, I'd go Asterisk just because of the control you have and you're not always worrying about support contracts and such, unless you decide to go with the business edition. Tom
Get Digium's version of it that they provide support for. Buy their cards. I suppose you can use SIP phones, although that's far more expensive than just keeping the copper wiring, getting a channel bank, and using analog phones. SIP phones do offer a number of benefits, although people may be more comfortable with simple analog phones. I suggest asking the actual users of the system for their input.
Why not give the personal version of CommuniGate Pro a try for testing? Its a enterprise level mail server that for the last two years has been promoting SIP capabilities.
CommuniGate Pro operates on dozens of platforms [Linux, UNix, Windows, VMS, OS/2...check out their website]. The same binary that runs a free 5 user license is the same one that operates clusters of millions of users.
Technically, it could replace all computer communications with email/SIP/video/VoIP. Here is an article [pdf] outlining their attempt to expand to home users: HERE
One other compelling reason to go Asterisk based is Zimbra and click to dial functionality. While there exists a way to get Outlook to integrate with an Asterisk box, we are kind'of belong to the anti-exchange group and don't want users of Outlook. The split is 85/13/2 Mac/PC/*nix. So, we went to Zimbra for email and such for our 700 or so users. It may be possible to integrate Zimbra with Asterisk as Digium and the Zimbra folks are part of the Open Ajax Alliance. http://www.zimbra.com/partners/open_ajax_partners. html
To be clear, I have the Asterisk Zimlet running on a non-production box and have seen no recent advancements in this arena. I figure once someone catches their breath...That they will put some energy back into Zimbra/Asterisk.
As it is, Zimbra displays NXX-XXX-XXXX phone numbers as calto: links and http://www.asteriskguru.com/idefisk/index.php has a VoIP client that accepts this tag and will place a call.
In six months or so I see full directory integration with Zimbra/Asterisk. Possibly being able to drag multiple contacts to a conference bridge and have 2-10 way audio conferences on the fly.
Robert
I've built and configured asterisk numerous times. My production server attempt was a dual AMD 64 Opteron but I am having VoicemailMain quality problems. Have you, or anyone else here, who have installed asterisk numerous times, run into anything like this? I can't be the only one. See my email at asterisk forums for more detail. Any insight is appreciated.
If you don't know the answers, why are you selling yourself as an expert to this poor school?
In a school You should keep real phones with real 911.
I am a former tech coordinator for a public school district. One of my last projects before I left was to develop a district-wide communication upgrade plan. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands and/or have a local vendor who can support it an Asterix-based solution is probably not a good idea. There are a lot of vendors out there that are experimenting with it, but I have yet to see one that has a solution I would call "fully baked". Whatever you go with, a proven track record and a local vendor who is certified to support your gear (and also has a good track record) is paramount. Nothing will make you look worse than a phone system that is a pain to use or is flaky. People have very high expectations when it comes to the behavior of phones, and absolutely will not tolerate the kind of BS they up with from their computers.
- A Cisco system or Shortel system -- Education budgets vary wildly from year to year and reoccurring cost have to be kept down.
I find it laughable that you mention keeping costs down and Cisco or Shoretel in the same sentence. I have a Shoretel system in my office at my current employer, and it's very nice. However, it is also very expensive, and it's less costly than than Cisco... You are factoring in handset costs and extension licensing when you look at the cost of the system, right? Right? You are, right?
The best solution I found (and the one I recommended before I left) is the Rauland Telecenter VI. It gives great bang for the buck and is a highly integrated complete comm system designed for schools, so if you have bell, intercom, and clock systems that need to be upgraded as well, you get to do that nearly for free. It also lets you use Voip phones where you need big feature sets and $10 analog phones where you need "just a phone". Handsets are where a huge portion of the expense of a big phone system deployment go, after all. There also is no per-handset licensing, if I remember correctly. http://www.rauland.com/education/tc6/tc6_home.htm
http://www.swyx.com/ is a fantastic product, the graphical scripting editor is amazing, get a good reseller and you'll have top notch support and you might well find the TCO is lower than for alternative systems like Asterix. If you give Swyx a call, they can probably recommend you a good reseller. (Full disclosure: I work for a UK-based Swyx reseller)
The number of endpoints that you must support on this system is an important factor in deciding which solution to look into.
How many endpoints are you planning to support?
What other features are the staff expecting to have on their system?
The Inter-Tel CS-5000 supports up to ~100 SIP phones and has the ability to throw on extra digial endpoints as well. It's a very feature rich system and fits nicely for our office. Not cheap, but priced more competitively than a ShoreTel system.
The E-Rate folks just approved VoIP solutions. Before it was only centrex type services, but now they are allowing VoIP. That just went through last week or so. You may be able to afford more than you think, or even outsource the whole project as a service if needed.
That said, I have very little experience with VoIP. We have not deployed it yet as we were waiting for ERate to help a bit. I have installed and currently have a trixbox running for my personal testing and I had a cisco demo kit (call manager, unity vm, several phones) installed for a few months. As several people mentioned, regardless of solution:
1. Make sure you get good folks to iron out your dial plan. Yours shouldn't be too bad as it's one school, mine has 40 sites off of 5 different CO's, it will be a challenge.
2. Iron out the 911 stuff with your phone company. Also make sure to have analog lines and regular non-powered phones off of them just in case. Make sure the process is documented and trained. (ex. call 911 from your desk, if it doesn't work, alert the office, the office staff will call using the analog line OR dial plan will forward all 911 calls to the office staff first, if no answer, dial 911 for real, etc.) 911 MUST work in all cases. We will be migrating from ISDN phones, which have been known to go down (backhoe's, dead batteries, etc.) so our folks are trained now that if their phone is dead, contact the office which will call 911 from the fax machine or other analog line if needed.
3. The phones are the interface to the people. Don't get cheap ones. The ones that feel cheap will give a bad taste in the users mouths.
I like the trixbox solution, it was easy to set up and get working (Linksys SPA941 and Cisco 7960 hard phones, xmeeting for OS X, X-Lite for OS X and Windows softphones, Cisco 5350 for dialin-out) but I haven't done any dial plan support, just basic call in/out type stuff. HUDLite is neat as a master interface (office/receptionist staff)
The Cisco solution worked great too. It was more difficult to get running with the 5350 for call in/out and there was a delay when placing calls (took a few seconds to ramp up the H323 call to the 5350 and grab the PRI line) The integration and management of the phones was great though. Being able to provision extensions, reset phones, etc. was great. (I believe you can script similar solutions for trixbox, but it's not setup out of the box)
We will most likely be going with the cisco product because that is what we are familiar with (routers, switches, remote survivability, general integration with what we already have, etc.) and it works well. We also are very confident in our VAR in working out our dial plan, E911, etc as well as out line carrier being very familiar with the product.
Chris
-- Chris Martin, System Administrator
http://www.spherecom.com/ -- I've had experience with this and it's pretty decent. I don't know if this'll meet your requirements, but they claim their system scales to over 30,000 ports.
If you can afford a 100 MBit private network, why not just buy an off the shelf solution? Geek cred?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
My suggestion is dont use forums. Use mail lists instead.
Yeah, I probably could have spent a month of my time crafting an Asterisk solution, but I wanted something that worked day one. The desktop software works brilliantly in conjunction with the desk phones (the softphone is a license option that is available through the desktop software, we went all deskphone).
Everything is pretty well thought out:
the trunk testing tool on your pc server shows all activity in real time, and is very very impressive.
All admin is done through a localhost IIS install ASP driven interface. It works very well for my needs - apparently there are some defiencies in templates for advanced soft button programming, but we don't have the need.
Desktop software - the call history, Outlook integration are all very nice.
Sometime's it's nice to let other people do the work.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Hi, Despite the good things with Asterisk many of the issues mentioned here are right on. Support can be a hassel, and there are some things Asterisk doens't do well. Callers on-hold often hear significant static or white noise, RTP streams usually pass through the servers so high loads/peak calling can impact performance, and you are, as you mention, left with dealing with a 911 issue. One option you haven't looked at is a hosted key-system or PBX platform. They offer a lot, remote access via the web and practically zero integration no truck rolls, etc. and usually have more benefits than any IP based premise system does. Hosting providers tend to be regional, if you want to PM me I can make some suggestions, not sure where you are located. Mike
Whatever you end up doing do NOT go with an Avaya IP office solution. I've been supporting one for over a year and a half and find myself waking up in the night just to _hate_ the goddammned product. It's so hard to get the platform to be stable, I wouldn't know where to start with the complaining....
I work for a var that does fonality PBXtra systems that is based on asterisk but the interface is a nice, clean web based interface and it scales nicely. Voicemail can be emailed to you and you can have extensive and complicated menu systems...We have menus that are for specific numbers calling in from people that we dont want to deal with and they go straight to voicemail or whatever. CMP recently did a story on fonality vs shoretel and others and fonality toasted them. We have a redundant system that uses rsync to mirror config files, voicemail, everything. We transfer calls to cell phones automatically if someone doesnt pick up their office phone within x number of seconds, etc. We are putting in a 120+ phone system for a client with a mixture of aastra and polycom and our existing clients are quite happy with it. Fonality also comes with tech support and updates every few months assuming you have the service contract. It sells itself easily and you get 20% off as a reseller.
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
Thanks for the tip, I'll hold Digium's feet to the fire if necessary. I'm hoping to be able to use their product in the near future, but support is the key issue (otherwise I'd just roll my own).
If you are running Asterisk and have local termination capability in your area code and would like to exchange this termination capability for capability in other area codes around the US and Canada, check out http://www.voipsyndicate.com/
This is NOT a commercial network and this is NOT an advertisement for a business.
Is it specific area codes, so I provide access to area code X and I want to terminate to area code Y or is it just I provide area code X and I can use whatever anyone else in the network is providing in exchange? John
The latter, so you provde area code X (or a country code + area code if outside the US and Canada) and in exchange, you get to access any area codes or country that other members of the network are providing. It is not on a call by call basis either, as long as you allow calls to be made through your line you can make as many calls as you want out (assuming that no one gets abusive or tries to use it for a commercial termination service).
Have you determined if your schools are E-Rate eligible? If you're in the US, a PBX is eligible for E-Rate reimbursement, though the handsets are not. If you are a poorer school, you'll be able to fund most (up to 90%) of the cost of the PBX through E-Rate.
You're district administrators, board members, and tax payers will want something that 1) the current staff can manage, 2) someone else can manage if they ever have staff leave, and 3) get support in case of an emergency. This is one of the scenarios where I recommend a school thinks like a business by purchasing something that makes good strategic economic sense. I am a Linux and OSS bigot but I wouldn't recommend an OSS phone system for your environment. I would recommend something that anyone with a little networking experience can manage. I would recommend something that I can get top-notch support for at 3am when a maintenance window goes south. This is the return on investment for your money people.
There is likely an Asterisk-based solution that will suit your needs but IMHO it's not the best solution for the environment. If you were to ask if I thought you should run Linux servers and Linux lab PCs then I would say oh hell yeah. A phone system is a different beast entirely. It's not simply a new app to learn. You have to develop a completely different mentality towards your management practices. A system like that demands 5 9s at the least and absolutely no downtime if students are on the premise. The potential (but unlikely) cost difference between a commercial solution and an OSS isn't worth the liability if something were to happen while your homegrown phone system was down. Like I said, were this question about servers or some other service then I would say go the OSS route if you have the ability. This is a phone system though. You just can't take the risk.
In closing I would also recommend the Cisco solution because you will get an excellent discount from Cisco through your local VAR. You can also write off the vast majority of it in E-Rate. Best of luck.
We install asterisk (and others) in Australia. From the information you have provided Asterisk sounds like a good alternative. There are a number of reasons.
1. To set up a mini-test system can be done very cheaply. If you can't make it work little or nothing has been lost.
2. It can be configured with either IAX2 or SIP trunks. IAX2 trunks use much less bandwidth than SIP once concurrent calls are being routed over the net. This may not be an issue if you have plenty of bandwidth.
3. Remote extensions are a definite advantage of VoIP, one can connect to the PBX to make calls from home or anywhare a decent network connection is available. This is so only if the extension is an IAX2 extension! If it is a SIP extension it will not get through the firewall which your PBX sits behind. To make it do so is quite complex and simply not worth the effort! If remote extensions increase communications efficiency for the school then asterisk is the only viable option. We can supply freshtel IAX ata's they work very well and can even be used over a dial up connection to facilitate remote extensions. You could also purchase them direct from freshtel.com.au.
4. I don't know how schools work where you are. But in Australia teachers and staff are mobile within the school and often also have students offsite (excursions and camps). We have been able to connect GSM gateways to Asterisk. These gateways can be an asterisk trunk or an extension. This makes the teachers mobile an extension of the PBX.
It works very well and solves the mobility issue without relying on flakely wireless LANS and expensive or extra WiFi phones. This means staff from the school can be contacted through the PBX to mobile and vice versa. There are many advantages to this, for example parents can contact teachers when teachers are away from the school without the teacher having to give their mobile phone number. Peace of mind, security and call tracking are enabled.
Call detail records from the PBX can be used to differentiate personal from mobile calls. Mobile phones do not need Power over Ethernet supply. The UPS would only be needed on the PBX, modems and gateways.
5. In Australia we can purchase business plans from mobile phone carriers. These plans allow calls between the phones in the business group (and the SIMS in the gateway) to be free or almost free. I don't know if this applies where you are.
6. 000 OK. I just realised you are probably in Australia because you asked about 000 and not 911, but I guess you could still be somewhere else. With asterisk 000 is as easy as putting a digium card with an FXO port in the system and a dial plan for 000. Its that simple. 000 will work as long as the PBX is running.
7. Snom phones are probably an overkill to supply throughout the school, our experience is that users only actually use a small proportion of the functions available and never use the rest. Simplicity and Voice Quality are the most relevant factors. Linksys IP phones will do the job easily and provide good call quality with a quality build and feel for
a much lower cost.
8. Support, once hardware is connected support (configurations, trouble shooting, changes adds and so on can be provided remotely). Hardware failure and how quickly it can be responded to is another matter. As the IT guy I would suspect that connecting and replacing hardware would be a simple task for yourself. Once connected and mapped it would be easy for us, or anyone else to maintain.
9. Digium cards. A total IP solution is much simpler and less buggy in our opinion. But most clients wish to retain there existing PSTN phone numbers! Poring an existing PSTN number to an adequate IP provider may or may not be possible. If not the appropriate cards need to be added to the PBX or an IAD devices placed between the PBX and the PSTN.
10. Another advantage of Asterisk is that it is open source. It may also be considered a disadvantage by some. But it does mean you are locked into a particular Vendors hardware, and i