Question

Simple to Complex VOIP questions (Part II)

Asked by: egeiyioglu

Hi there

We have an office with 100 people in it, and we have a Samsung PBX. We also have an 8 mbit DSL connection to the internet.

I'd like to enable VOIP for this office so that we can have cheap international communications. We especially call Turkey and USA a lot. Could you please

list the equipment we'd need (we can do it the Cisco way or the Asterisk way and are open to suggestions)
Explain how to connect the Asterisk or Cisco to the PBX
Explain how the Asterisk or Cisco will connect to the VOIP world? We dial a bunch of numbers in the US and Turkey so I'd guess that we need a VOIP provider for us that'd basically give us a dial tone?

I'm new to this stuff and would love it if you could help me and give advice.

thanks,

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Asked On
2005-09-05 at 11:15:11ID21551254
Tags

voip

Topic

Voice Over IP

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
15

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Answers

 

by: grbladesPosted on 2005-09-06 at 01:44:08ID: 14827505

I am assuming that the Samsung PBX does not have a VoIP feature?

If this is the case you will need to link the PBX to Asterisk. You need to consider how many simultaneous phone calls you wish to be able to support. Up to 4 calls you can get a 4 port analogue PC interface but if you need more than that I would suggest you get a E1/T1 interface for the Asterisk PC and probably for the PBX aswell unless there is a spare in it already.
The PBX is probably currently configured so that when you dial 9 you get an outside line and it sends the call over your normal telephone line(s). You would need to reprogram it so that if you dialed 8 (for example) it sent the call over the analogue/T1 interface to Asterisk.

On the Asterisk box you would simple accept calls on the analogue/T1 interface and pass it straight onto the VoIP provider to decide to use for the voice calls.
A popular provider is Vonage (http://www.vonage.com) and for business use it is common to pay a monthly charge for free calls to the USA and then pay extra for other international calls.

Lastly you need to make sure that voice traffic to the provider has priority going out your DSL line. Ideally you would have a dedicated line as that way you have fixed bandwidth available inbound and outbound. However you can use your current DSL connection but you will need a router where you can prioritise the traffic such as a Cisco one.

 

by: dwright1542Posted on 2005-09-07 at 07:10:09ID: 14836828

If you are happy with your current PBX, bringing asterisk into the mix is overkill if you just want Voip LD.

Depending on the number of simultaneous outgoing calls you wanted, puchase a few Sipura SPA-2000 boxes, each has 2 ports.

Connect your PBX via analog trunks to the SPA-2000's, and assign those trunks to a dialout #, say 8.

The SPA-2000's then can connect to Broadvoice, which will give you international calls for peanuts....most countries are .02c or .03c /min.

In fact, you could just sign up for broadvoice and get the SPA-2000's from them.

-Darren

 

by: egeiyiogluPosted on 2005-09-07 at 15:23:05ID: 14840641

great. I'm not a PBX person.. how do I configura the PBX then? :)

 

by: grbladesPosted on 2005-09-08 at 01:42:21ID: 14842866

Is you PBX managed by anyone or a company?
You would need to get someone to reconfigure it for you.

 

by: egeiyiogluPosted on 2005-09-08 at 15:14:10ID: 14848529

it's not. but I'm a fast learner. Just show me a way to connect the pbx to a laptop and I'm sure I can manage the rest. It's just that I don't see any connection ports on the PBx :)

 

by: grbladesPosted on 2005-09-09 at 00:42:36ID: 14850456

The configuration method will be specific to that make of PBX. Sorry I dont have any experience of that make so cannot help.

 

by: dwright1542Posted on 2005-09-09 at 03:59:36ID: 14851150

It may not be via a laptop.....you may program thru the phones.   However, I would look for an RS232 port, which could be a DB9 port or may be an RJ45 labeled "console".

Do you have any manuals?  If not, I'd call the MFR. It is going to be very difficult to implement this otherwise.

To test the setup if you are currently using analog trunks, I would just pull one of the known analog trunks out of the PBX, and plug it into the SPA-2000.

-Darren

 

by: egeiyiogluPosted on 2005-09-10 at 14:49:01ID: 14857455

ok I see what you mean, thanks. I don't see how the VOIP provider would provide me "dial tone" though.. do they use a routing protocol, or how does it exactly work?

 

by: grbladesPosted on 2005-09-10 at 14:55:17ID: 14857480

The dial tone would be provided by your local telephone device (PBX or SPA2000 for example).

 

by: td_milesPosted on 2005-09-11 at 17:10:54ID: 14860953

In terms on reconfiguring your PABX, if you don't know how to do it, it is best left to those that do. Do you really want to break the phone system for your whole 100 users ? In addition, if the PABX is on some sort of maintenance, you could void it by trying to do things yourself. I'm not trying to say you should be charged the rip-off prices that a lot of PABX companies charge for small changes, just to be aware of the consequences.

 

by: egeiyiogluPosted on 2005-09-20 at 12:47:00ID: 14923371

That's ok. but say I sign up with Voyage and they give me the ATA box and I connect it to the PBx and it works great.. How does the ATA box provide me dialtone? Does it use SIP or H.323 or something like that?

 

by: td_milesPosted on 2005-09-20 at 14:14:35ID: 14924104

As grblades said, if you plug an analogue device into an ATA, the dial tone is provided by the ATA. It uses the normal telephony signalling methods where by when you pick up the handset it signals/generates dial tone. If it is an IP phone, than dial tone is generated by the phone itself when you take it off hook.

 

by: muriusPosted on 2005-10-21 at 13:52:28ID: 15135570

If you sign up with a VoIP line provider such as Vonage they will give you a router which has ports on it for a regular analog line like at home, you can then connect that to your PBX just like you would any other incoming analog line. What Vonage does is assign a telephone number and dial tone to the analog line coming out of that router, that is how you get a dialtone.

To dial out on that line your users will either have to manually select that line# or you can get an additional piece of equipment such as that produced by Netfabric to automatically route calls via the cheapest line.

The Vonage type solution is great for the US since you only pay a monthly flat rate, for Turkey you will most likely have a lower long distance rate but it will still be billed based on how often you speak. IF however the location you call in turkey is one office/supplier etc, you can :

Give them a Vonage or other VoIP router, once they connect that to their internet connection they will have a ‘US’ based number that you can call for local rates(assuming you are in the US) .

This can also be done by bypassing the VoIP service provider such as Vonage by purchasing a VoIP phone system for your company and having an IP phone in Turkey/other location.

You really should call a telecommunications consultant for some advice if you have such a large volume of users you could save quite a bit.

I hope I made everything clear, feel free to inquire further.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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