Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice
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Once you have done initial discovery, and know how your current PBX operates, you can then figure out the best place to put your new FreePBX system.
This will be different for every organization and has to be based on what works best for the business.
You have two choices.
- Host it on your internal virtualization infrastructure
- Host it on a public virtualization platform
Can it be installed elsewhere or other hardware? Sure, but you would not want to run your main line of business application on random hardware, so why would you run your phone system that way?
You have to base this decision on a number of things.
In no particular order:
- Do you have a solid virtualization platform in place locally
- If not, go hosted
- Do you have more than one site needing to register phone to this PBX
- good reason to be hosted, but not a must do
- Do you have solid backups locally
- If not, go hosted
- Do you have solid internet for the total concurrent call volume
- If this is no, this will affect service provider choice as well.
- Do you have solid internet for the total concurrent call volume and well as extension to extension volume
- If this is a no, then you need to have the PBX local
There are always more reasons, but each of them need thought about without emotion to determine what is best for the business.
Part of the FreePBX 13 Setup Guide
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Do you follow the 1 trunk for every 3 employees rule? I've been reading about VoIP and this seems to be a common thing mentioned. I know very little about it, but seems to be the type of work your doing would influence this more than the amount of employees.
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@wirestyle22 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
Do you follow the 1 trunk for every 3 employees rule? I've been reading about VoIP and this seems to be a common thing mentioned. I know very little about it, but seems to be the type of work your doing would influence this more than the amount of employees.
We have a DID for every employee where I'm at currently, and it's completely overkill in my opinion. But it looks great on a business card. (ha)
With an appropriate amount of lines, and properly configured PBX no employees need a dedicated DID. So the 3 to 1 rule would likely work well in most cases.
Or better, for every 3 phones have 1 available trunk. This of course assumes only 1/3 of your phones will be dialing out or receiving calls at any moment.
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@wirestyle22 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
Do you follow the 1 trunk for every 3 employees rule? I've been reading about VoIP and this seems to be a common thing mentioned. I know very little about it, but seems to be the type of work your doing would influence this more than the amount of employees.
When I started here we had 12 incoming lines (all POTS lines), shared by 60 people. It wasn't uncommon to hear that someone couldn't get an open line to make calls. We had a carrier based voicemail box that took vmail when all 12 lines were full (this was used fairly frequently). All 12 lines showed up on a phone console for the operators and the office manager.
When we did a phone upgrade, we moved from POTS lines to a T1, nearly doubling our phone line count, and saved money doing it. We've never had a complaint that someone needed to make a phone call and couldn't because we were out of trunks. But we encountered another problem - inbound calls could now stack up in a queue that the operators couldn't handle. The operators could see that queue and would freak out that callers were waiting to long to get answered. Callers where given the option to leave a voicemail, but often wouldn't take this optional route, and instead would rather wait in queue. The operators constantly complain (because they have visual into the queue depth) that they are soooooo busy. Management doesn't like to hear these complaints so they want a technical solution. It was suggested that we force people into voicemail after X amount of time of waiting to basically mimic the old system with the added advantage that if an operator becomes available before that timeout period, the operator could take the call. This was denied.The moral here - make sure management is prepared for influx of calls if you change the amount of lines you have to a higher number.
Now back to your regularly scheduled JB post
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@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice
With an appropriate amount of lines, and properly configured PBX no employees need a dedicated DID.
What? What's wrong with dedicated DIDs? Sure you could have an autoattendant that allows an inbound caller to dial an extension, but the convenience of a DID is sometimes warranted.
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@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice
With an appropriate amount of lines, and properly configured PBX no employees need a dedicated DID.
What? What's wrong with dedicated DIDs? Sure you could have an autoattendant that allows an inbound caller to dial an extension, but the convenience of a DID is sometimes warranted.
Sometimes, but not to this extreme. We have 120 employees all with their own DID. Sadly I don't have any reporting to back up this statement, but we are not on calls so often to warrant spending as much as we do for these lines.
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@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice
With an appropriate amount of lines, and properly configured PBX no employees need a dedicated DID.
What? What's wrong with dedicated DIDs? Sure you could have an autoattendant that allows an inbound caller to dial an extension, but the convenience of a DID is sometimes warranted.
Sometimes, but not to this extreme. We have 120 employees all with their own DID. Sadly I don't have any reporting to back up this statement, but we are not on calls so often to warrant spending as much as we do for these lines.
Lines? So you have 120 trunks? or you have 120 DIDs? We pay $5/month for 20 DIDs, so for you that would be $30/month. Sure it might not be really needed, but it's a drop in the bucket.
Now if you're saying that you have 120+ trunks, OK, yeah that seems like overkill.
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@Dashrender DID's.
Drop in a bucket... sure.. still insane overkill.
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@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@Dashrender DID's.
Drop in a bucket... sure.. still insane overkill.
If management wants it, it's not worth your time even worrying about it. Assuming you make $50k/yr, you spending 30 mins on this just cost more than they pay in a month for it.
Go find a company phone someone doesn't need/shouldn't have, and you'll save more money.
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@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@Dashrender DID's.
Drop in a bucket... sure.. still insane overkill.
If management wants it, it's not worth your time even worrying about it. Assuming you make $50k/yr, you spending 30 mins on this just cost more than they pay in a month for it.
Go find a company phone someone doesn't need/shouldn't have, and you'll save more money.eh... management just knows they want people to be able to receive and makes calls whenever they need. I refuse to believe that they want everyone to have a business call with a DID on it..
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@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@Dashrender DID's.
Drop in a bucket... sure.. still insane overkill.
If management wants it, it's not worth your time even worrying about it. Assuming you make $50k/yr, you spending 30 mins on this just cost more than they pay in a month for it.
Go find a company phone someone doesn't need/shouldn't have, and you'll save more money.eh... management just knows they want people to be able to receive and makes calls whenever they need. I refuse to believe that they want everyone to have a business call with a DID on it..
Really? Why? what difference does it make? The employees already have the cards, right? Assuming they do, if you take the DID away, they'll need new cards.
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@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@Dashrender DID's.
Drop in a bucket... sure.. still insane overkill.
If management wants it, it's not worth your time even worrying about it. Assuming you make $50k/yr, you spending 30 mins on this just cost more than they pay in a month for it.
Go find a company phone someone doesn't need/shouldn't have, and you'll save more money.eh... management just knows they want people to be able to receive and makes calls whenever they need. I refuse to believe that they want everyone to have a business call with a DID on it..
Really? Why? what difference does it make? The employees already have the cards, right? Assuming they do, if you take the DID away, they'll need new cards.
Maybe 20 of all staff actually hand out business cards. We aren't the kind of business that needs them.
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@wirestyle22 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
Do you follow the 1 trunk for every 3 employees rule? I've been reading about VoIP and this seems to be a common thing mentioned. I know very little about it, but seems to be the type of work your doing would influence this more than the amount of employees.
This is one of the dumbest things I ever heard.
A trunk is a connection to a provider. With SIP, there is no relation to a trunk and the number of calls that can be handled unless the provider sets an artificial limitation for billing purposes.
In the old POTS world, a trunk was a single phone line. After that, it was a T1 capable of handling 23 simultaneous calls.
Anyone trying to tell you anything else does not know their ass from a hole in the ground.
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@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
Now back to your regularly scheduled JB post
Don't get me started on how stupid your CEO is in regards to handling people issues.
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@JaredBusch said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@wirestyle22 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
Do you follow the 1 trunk for every 3 employees rule? I've been reading about VoIP and this seems to be a common thing mentioned. I know very little about it, but seems to be the type of work your doing would influence this more than the amount of employees.
This is one of the dumbest things I ever heard.
A trunk is a connection to a provider. With SIP, there is no relation to a trunk and the number of calls that can be handled unless the provider sets an artificial limitation for billing purposes.
In the old POTS world, a trunk was a single phone line. After that, it was a T1 capable of handling 23 simultaneous calls.
Anyone trying to tell you anything else does not know their ass from a hole in the ground.
Specifically why I asked you. Thanks for the info
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@wirestyle22 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
Do you follow the 1 trunk for every 3 employees rule? I've been reading about VoIP and this seems to be a common thing mentioned.
I've never even heard of that rule, but it's a really bad one. Every company is completely different in how they use phones and any rule like that would be useless. It might be a median or something, but that just makes it kind of a starting point for discovery, not a useful guideline. You can easily need one for each employee.... or one for every one hundred.
Also, they mean "line" or "concurrency", not trunk. You only need one trunk for unlimited users. Trunks carry as many calls as you want. So you never need more than one trunk no matter what. You easily might have tons of them, but you don't need more than one.
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@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@wirestyle22 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
Do you follow the 1 trunk for every 3 employees rule? I've been reading about VoIP and this seems to be a common thing mentioned. I know very little about it, but seems to be the type of work your doing would influence this more than the amount of employees.
We have a DID for every employee where I'm at currently, and it's completely overkill in my opinion. But it looks great on a business card. (ha)
Actually, it looks like they are out of touch and wasting money which, in turn, means that they are not business savvy. Only looks good to non-business or consumers. Like good to family members, bad to other businesses. Makes you look small.
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@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice
With an appropriate amount of lines, and properly configured PBX no employees need a dedicated DID.
What? What's wrong with dedicated DIDs? Sure you could have an autoattendant that allows an inbound caller to dial an extension, but the convenience of a DID is sometimes warranted.
A lot. In most cases it is a silly waste of money. You don't use a dedicated IP address for each person, right? DID is just a telephone address. DIDs are not really a convenience in the modern world, once you are dialing numbers by hand you've already left convenience behind.
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@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice
With an appropriate amount of lines, and properly configured PBX no employees need a dedicated DID.
What? What's wrong with dedicated DIDs? Sure you could have an autoattendant that allows an inbound caller to dial an extension, but the convenience of a DID is sometimes warranted.
Sometimes, but not to this extreme. We have 120 employees all with their own DID. Sadly I don't have any reporting to back up this statement, but we are not on calls so often to warrant spending as much as we do for these lines.
Lines? So you have 120 trunks? or you have 120 DIDs? We pay $5/month for 20 DIDs, so for you that would be $30/month. Sure it might not be really needed, but it's a drop in the bucket.
Now if you're saying that you have 120+ trunks, OK, yeah that seems like overkill.
The REAL cost of DIDs is not your monthly fees. It's the lock in, confusion, management overhead and other factors. Using loads of DIDs reduces your vendor options.
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@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@Dashrender said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@DustinB3403 said in Setting up FreePBX 13 - Host Choice:
@Dashrender DID's.
Drop in a bucket... sure.. still insane overkill.
If management wants it, it's not worth your time even worrying about it. Assuming you make $50k/yr, you spending 30 mins on this just cost more than they pay in a month for it.
Go find a company phone someone doesn't need/shouldn't have, and you'll save more money.eh... management just knows they want people to be able to receive and makes calls whenever they need. I refuse to believe that they want everyone to have a business call with a DID on it..
Really? Why? what difference does it make? The employees already have the cards, right? Assuming they do, if you take the DID away, they'll need new cards.
You use DIDs and extensions for that. You drop the DID whenever it is prudent. There is a simple transition plan so that extra money is not needed for new cards or whatever.
