this is a very involved question. i hope my experience helps...
lets start off with VOIP theory. in theory putting VOIP and Data on same lan works. in reality it does work sometimes and sometimes you have issues. even with COS, stuff happens...especially when on the same pipe with data all the way into the cloud. i would never put Voip calls on the same lan as data.
my first recommendation is to implement a VLAN based system, layer 3 would be optimal. This will allow you to segregate the offices if needed and overlap the core services if needed.
VLAN 1 could be voip traffic to and from the asterisk box as well as out the door into the cloud.
VLAN 2 could be shared services of the office...your back up server, any shared printers.
i would give yourself some vlan numbering space up to 10 for any future growth, ideas, etc.
VLAN 10-17 will be your offices.
Now the really cool part of doing this is that you can turn off the ports leading to vlans on and off at will through a managed switch. this will control your access issue. and this will do it more securely than through your ip setting on the server solution.
this will also give your users ability to be as isolated or open as they wish. lets say you have a client that actually take up two offices...you can bridge those vlans and they can be on their own network, while the other users cant see their data.
it provides both flexibility, manageability and most important, security in your set up.
my next recommendation would be to have two connections out the door...one for your data only traffic, and the second for your voice. I only have experience with Shoretel, Packet8, and Avaya, and have no experience with Asterisk...but i would bet large sums of money that the systems work better when you have them travel out their own connection.
This will ensure that no amount of data spike will kill your VOIP traffic. VOIP traffic is sensitive and the day that i split my vlans and had the voice travel through its own dedicated connection was the happiest day of my life.
as for internet usage control. there are many tools out there, but if you have the ability to bring in linux (i bring this up as you mentioned it laer in your post)...i would have you check out Cacti. its just a reporting tool. but its a damn good reporting tool.
as for the actual bandiwdth throttling...it all depends on the rest of your hardware and servers. it can done with a linux box and a router using openwrt (i have been told) all the way to enterprise solutions. give me an idea as to the actual hardware resources you have and i can guide you in the right direction.
and lastly backup...check this out.
http://sourceforge.net/pro
dont know what your budget is, but this should definitely be well within your budget ;).
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by: MikeHolcombPosted on 2009-10-31 at 07:54:05ID: 25709990
Segmenting the Offices
Ideally, your router would have an interface (physical or logical) for each office to connect their router directly to which would help segment each office from the other and allow for easier management of your customers. This would also help with your next question on Internet Usage Control in case one customer wants to consume all of the available bandwidth by using P2P file sharing for downloading music and movies.
Internet Usage Control
It would depend on the type of equipment you have, but in the Cisco world you can enable Netflow (http://en.wikipedia.org/w
You could also use an open-source application such as Cacti (www.cacti.net) and Nagios (www.nagios.org) to watch each of your network interfaces for bandwidth and performance issues, along with the equipment itself.
Telephony
Sounds like you're off to a good start. Just make sure to monitor your hardware for any performance issues, especially for CPU and memory utilization that could affect voice quality.
Data backup
Others might have suggestions for you, but you can get a start with the list at http://www.linux.org/apps/
Hope this helps...
Mike