Posts made by NetworkNerd

@scottalanmiller said:

It was bound to happen. Voice controls are a big part of mobile devices. I still have not enabled Siri though.

I do not use Siri either. It doesn't do much for me...at all.

I agree a deal to some is not so much a deal to others. The beauty with SIP providers is that you can increase / decrease the number of "lines" (or concurrent calls) when needed to save money and only use what you need. Some bundle LD while others do not. Some providers like Intelepeer have plans where you pay per minute whether local or LD, and you get unlimited lines / concurrent calls. Definitely shop around to find a provider that works for you.

Remember you will want 87-100Kbps of upload bandwidth per concurrent call. I can definitely understand having a tough time swallowing ISP pricing, but if it is going to ensure phone clarity,management will pay it.

I have used Elastix with great success using T.38 and a SIP provider. That is how I have it at another site. Our SIP provider uses T.38, and we us the virtual fax capabilities in Elastix for receiving faxes via e-mail and even sending via the GUI. At this particular location I have a physical fax machine (HP Officejet x476) attached to the same model ATA mentioned here. It is setup as a SIP extension in Elastix and in fax passthrough mode. It works for sending and receiving faxes without any issues. But it is not traversing through a VOIP gateway either.

This one is an interesting one. Here's the architecture:

Elastix is running as a VM on ESXi with a Vega 100 G VOIP gateway connected to the PRI for inbound and outbound calls. Inbound and outbound calls work beautifully. We have a Grandstream HT701 connected to a physical fax machine and registered as a SIP device on the Elastix box. The HT701 is set to fax passthrough mode. That is the only setting that has been changed other than registering an extension. The fax machine is an older Sharp fax machine that has a max baud rate of 33.6K and is supposed to be auto-adjusting for lower speeds.

The primary use for this fax machine is for outbound faxes. When we try to fax outbound, the number gets dialed, you hear the fax tone on the other side like it connects just fine, but when trying to send you get a busy message which causes the fax to bomb. I feel like it is baud speed related but cannot validate that claim. There is no way to decrease the baud rate on the fax machine that we could fine. However, what makes this odd is that when we set an inbound route in Elastix to the extension for the fax, an inbound fax worked without a hitch. I am guessing maybe when the fax came in the speed was fine since it came over TDM first.

My thought was to maybe try putting the ATA in T.38 mode and enabling that on the Sangoma as well, which will bring the baud rate down to 14.4 Kbps and may succeed in sending faxes.

Has anyone else ever run into this? I have talked to folks in similar scenarios and remember them having to lower the baud rate to get faxing to work. Any help is much appreciated.

Elastix plays really, really well as a VM. I think it likes ESXi best personally, but Scott may disagree.

I actually really like Broadvox (recently acquired by Fusion and named NBS) in addition to the others that were recommended here.

One thing to watch out for is that most providers will charge you based on the number of concurrent calls your organization needs. If 10 people need to be on inbound / outbound calls at once, you will likely pay a set monthly fee for 10 concurrent calls. It depends on the size of your organization. VoicePulse is a good one for home as it is dirt cheap. With Broadvox, I have used their GoLocal! plan where you pay a set fee per concurrent call but get free local calling and then pay a very low monthly fee for LD. The phone bill is literally about $400 or less for 4 companies and 15 concurrent calls. That is amazing compared to what it was when we had PRI.

@scottalanmiller That's quite funny. I'd be all for it.

We have VIPRE on all workstations here at my 9-5 and have USB devices set to scan by default.. I received some notifications about high risk spyware being quarantined, and it turned out to be a machine not far from my desk. I went over to ask the user if she had plugged in a jump drive, but in fact it was her LG phone that triggered the scan and quarantine (plugged into a XP box). This is an older version of VIPRE, but I was still pretty impressed:

Scan Date: 3/3/2014 3:47 PM
Software Version: 4.0.3907
ThreatDB Version: 27044
Policy: Workstations

Threat: Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT
Category: Trojan
Severity: High Risk
Action: Quarantined

Traces Found:

File: G:\download\musicoasis.exe

Threat: Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT
Category: Trojan
Severity: High Risk
Action: Quarantined

Traces Found:

File: G:\download\musicoasis-1.exe

Threat: Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT
Category: Trojan
Severity: High Risk
Action: Quarantined

Traces Found:

File: G:\download\musicoasis-2.exe

Threat: Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT
Category: Trojan
Severity: High Risk
Action: Quarantined

Traces Found:

File: G:\download\musicoasis-3.exe

I feel it most appropriate to only say Water Closet in a British accent. Any other way you say it just does not do it justice.

If you have as many monitors as A.J. does I would be pretty impressed.

As long as each site has a minimum of one Elastix box, I'd be on board.