Phones new location
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Not really - the digital phones we currently stay up as long as the UPSs are alive. The VOIP ones do as well, but they are in the other building where all VOIP are on POE with UPSs.
If they already have VoIP and PoE then you just get to keep that, I assume?
The main location is spread over two building, building one has the old InterTel DIgital system
Building two has the Mitel VOIP system.I could keep the Mitel, ditch the old interTel digital, and replace all digital phones with Mitel VOIP ones, and then deploy Mitel phones at the new office and bring them in via VPN to the main office...
Or I can keep the Mitel and it's VOIP, replace the brain on the InterTel to a VOIP enabled one that happens to support the Digital handsets I have, and still install Mitel phones at the new site connected via VPN.
Or I could ditch everything I have and replace it all with asterisk and all phones with new VOIP phones (though I've read that I can use my current Mitel phones with Asterisk). Still needing the VPN to bring the connections back to the main office.
-
Oh, I missed somehow that the Mitel system was VoIP.
-
If the Mitel phones are SIP then you should be all set. Last I knew, they used SIP.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
If the Mitel phones are SIP then you should be all set. Last I knew, they used SIP.
I asked about that. Mitel uses it's own protocol (if memory serves) but phones support SIP as well.
I asked the vendor about using SIP trunks, and they told me they only support specific vendors, etc. A lock lock type situation.
-
@Dashrender said:
I asked the vendor about using SIP trunks, and they told me they only support specific vendors, etc. A lock lock type situation.
Which vendor? If you switch to Asterisk you have no lockins. That alone is a killer feature.
-
I don't know, once they said only our specific SIP providers I stopped listening.
It was the same when Cox said they provide it, but they must provide all of the infrastructure as well, and I was like, what's the point? They said it was the only way they could guarantee good service.
-
@Dashrender said:
It was the same when Cox said they provide it, but they must provide all of the infrastructure as well, and I was like, what's the point? They said it was the only way they could guarantee good service.
Well you never get any service (email, phones, web hosting, DNS, etc.) from your ISP. So talking to Cox isn't a good place to start. You would want to talk to SIP trunk providers. If you go through Cox not only are you completely beholden to your ISP but you lose key VoIP features like unlimited portability, ISP failover, low cost, vendor independence, etc.
-
Someone mentioned they liked Asterisk, any reason to use them over FreePBX? or others?
-
@Dashrender said:
Someone mentioned they liked Asterisk, any reason to use them over FreePBX? or others?
FreePBX, Ultimate PBX, Elastix, PIAF and many others are distros of Asterisk. Think of Asterisk like Linux. Everyone "talks" about using Linux but you never, ever just "get" Linux. You get a distro build on Linux like RHEL, Suse, CentOS, Ubuntu, etc. Same here. Think of Asterisk as a PBX kernel but you need a whole distro or else you are stuck building your own and that is a LOT of work. Normally it takes teams of people to pull that off.
So when people say that they use Asterisk, they mean that they use one of the any Asterisk distros.
-
Generally FreePBX would be the first choice, Elastix second, these days.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
Generally FreePBX would be the first choice, Elastix second, these days.
I'm interested in the new PIAF/Incredible PBX with all the Schmooze stuff removed.. It is on my task list to install it and give it a spin.
-
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Generally FreePBX would be the first choice, Elastix second, these days.
I'm interested in the new PIAF/Incredible PBX with all the Schmooze stuff removed.. It is on my task list to install it and give it a spin.
Yes, when I finally have free time (um.... if) I'd really like to take a look at that too.
-
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Generally FreePBX would be the first choice, Elastix second, these days.
I'm interested in the new PIAF/Incredible PBX with all the Schmooze stuff removed.. It is on my task list to install it and give it a spin.
I was going to look at that for my house, looks interesting. Although Schmooze has done a good job with the most recent FreePBX release.
-
@coliver said:
I was going to look at that for my house, looks interesting. Although Schmooze has done a good job with the most recent FreePBX release.
Do not misunderstand that I think the FreePBX platform is suddenly bad. It is a great platform. But they are also no longer an independent company. Sangoma may stay hands off or they may tweak things to not be so freely workable.
I tried the Asterisk @Home platform like 6 years ago (I think) and it was obviously an abandoned branch as switchvox had been out for a couple years by this point.
-
@JaredBusch said:
@coliver said:
I was going to look at that for my house, looks interesting. Although Schmooze has done a good job with the most recent FreePBX release.
Do not misunderstand that I think the FreePBX platform is suddenly bad. It is a great platform. But they are also no longer an independent company. Sangoma may stay hands off or they may tweak things to not be so freely workable.
No that wasn't my impression at all. Isn't FreePBX released under the GNU Public license? If Sangoma were to change things for the worse someone would probably fork the distro and fix it.
I tried the Asterisk @Home platform like 6 years ago (I think) and it was obviously an abandoned branch as switchvox had been out for a couple years by this point.
Never tried Asterisk @Home, it just seems like Asterisk is a great solution for a home phone system. Especially since I can setup a SIP client on my fiance's iPad so she can walk around the house with it. Although wireless SIP device really aren't that expensive either.
-
FreePBX is open source, yes. But forking it is a big pain. I think someone would move past it and make a competitor rather than forking it. It just isn't good enough to fork
-
@coliver said:
Never tried Asterisk @Home...
That's a product name, not a reference to using it at home.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
Never tried Asterisk @Home...
That's a product name, not a reference to using it at home.
Yep, I got that.
-
I use Asterisk at home and have for years. It has been great. And because we use an IVR to get to us, it blocks ALL spam calling. No auto-dialer gets through to us.
-
Pretty cool that everyone in the house gets their own voicemail too. So you don't leave voicemail for the house, but for a person in the house.
