Business VoIP with Existing PBX

WizZard

I'm not very familiar with VoIP in a business scenario. however, my company makes hundreds or international calls every day and thus I think VoIP may be a very good cost saving opportunity for us.

I would not like to purchase a new PABX if I can help it.

Are there any gateway products out there that can convert/adapt a regular digital PBX to use VoIP for outgoing calls, or even a Skype adapter. I found this and this but am not sure if they are the only products available.

Ideally we could also switch back to PSTN lines if both of our internet connections were to drop.

Any advice appreciated

Jaden

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.

Assuming you have a PRI or BRI and a Nortel type PBX, you can do this:

Setup Asterisk on a PC, with a PRI card. Put it in between your existing PBX and the line. Use it to pass all incoming calls straight through, but divert outbound over a SIP trunk. Should the SIP call fail, it can be made to use the PRI/BRI instead.

If you want ot go mad, buy a 2N Voiceblue GSM SIP gateway, and use some SIMs to get a Mobile-Mobile call rate.

Using Asterisk, Voiceblue and Blueface, I've made my €3K per month phone bill drop to ~€500 a month.

I liked Asterisk so much that I bought IP phones, and sold my Nortel Option 11 and all handsets.

www.italk.ie is a good place to start if you want to go down this route.

619C

WizZard wrote:

I'm not very familiar with VoIP in a business scenario. however, my company makes hundreds or international calls every day and thus I think VoIP may be a very good cost saving opportunity for us.

I would not like to purchase a new PABX if I can help it.

Are there any gateway products out there that can convert/adapt a regular digital PBX to use VoIP for outgoing calls, or even a Skype adapter. I found this and this but am not sure if they are the only products available.

Ideally we could also switch back to PSTN lines if both of our internet connections were to drop.

Any advice appreciated

Hi WizZard,
If It was me - I would purchase an Analogue to VoIP converter like the linksys PAP2 or similar.
Then free up 2 analogue line positions on your PABX.
Connect them up to the Linksys.
You would have to complete some PABX Least Cost Routing as follows:
All Data calls (Modems & Faxes) would need to be set up to go out on your existing ISDN or Analogue Eircom or Other 'normal' provider circuits.
Your ordinary voice calls could then be routed over the VoIP converter as first choice and then overflow to your existing Circuits.
In that way you could minimise your expence, Test out the quality of service of Voip and Make enough savings to justify a full blown setup in the future.
What kind of PABX are you running?
Regards
Edd

WizZard

Good plan actually. I'm running a Panasonic TDA-200 system with ISDN lines.

619C

There is a specific VoIP card available for that model - dont know the price or anything like that or if you have 2 free slots for it.

KX-TDA0480 4-CHANNEL IP GATEWAY CARD (IP-GW4) 1 2.24 lbs. 85045-7
Supports up to 4 IP connections. • H.323V.2, ITU-T, G729a and G.723.1
compliant. • 1 card requires 2 universal card slots. • Please refer to system
capacities charts on page 21 prior to configuring a system.

I dont know if your system does allow a voice phone to dial an outside line access code and go out on a VoIP Converter and at the same time allow a fax/modem to dial the same outside line code but go out on ISDN but you could always give the modems/faxes a different ISDN access code - however your programmer/maintainer should know more on that.

Yeah from what i can gather you can have up to 8 'tenants' on that system
Tenant 1 could be your voice phones - 1st route VoIP - 2nd Route ISDN
and Tenant 2 for your Fax/Modem calls - 1st Route ISDN
May have to allow tenants to dial eachother aswell

sirlinux

Ive done a few of these panasonic pbx's, if you want to stop some of your eircom lines and replace them with voip isdn cards for an asterisk box cost about 30 euro per line, you just need a spare pc, thats totally transparent, again if your pbx has spare isdn lines you can do the same. If you want want to keep all your eircom lines it might be a bit more complicated as you have to bridge in, you would need to let us know how many isdn's you havne

WizZard

We don't have any fax/modem's calling through the PBX so that should make it simpler.
A card for the PBX sounds ideal, but it would depend on price. I presume that the card wouldn't limit VoIP providers?

sirlinux, do you work for a telecoms equipment provider?

I had thought of the PC between the PBX and the lines for Skype, but never thought of IT for Asterisk. €30 per line sounds too good to be true tbh

sirlinux

WizZard wrote:

sirlinux, do you work for a telecoms equipment provider?

I had thought of the PC between the PBX and the lines for Skype, but never thought of IT for Asterisk. €30 per line sounds too good to be true tbh

nope just do voip a lot, the isdn card work well, but you have a limit of 4 cards after that you have to move quad or octo BRI card which isnt to cheap, if it's beefy pc/server you can run a windows VM on it as well and a skype uplink for skype connectivity for the traditional phone system, all transparent. PM me ill give you a run down on what you need to know.

WizZard

619C wrote:

There is a specific VoIP card available for that model - dont know the price or anything like that or if you have 2 free slots for it.

KX-TDA0480 4-CHANNEL IP GATEWAY CARD (IP-GW4) 1 2.24 lbs. 85045-7
Supports up to 4 IP connections. • H.323V.2, ITU-T, G729a and G.723.1
compliant. • 1 card requires 2 universal card slots. • Please refer to system
capacities charts on page 21 prior to configuring a system.

On further inspection it seems that this card is only a gateway tor other Panasonic IP-PBX's
Or am I getting it all wrong?

Voice Over IP

The KX-TDA IP PBX system can be equipped with an optional VOIP card that permits you to connect the system to your existing data network providing an inexpensive alternative to route calls between two KX-TDA IP-PBX systems.

sirlinux

WizZard wrote:

On further inspection it seems that this card is only a gateway tor other Panasonic IP-PBX's
Or am I getting it all wrong?

your biggest problem with that card is going to be that it is h.323 not sip, a lot of providers are sip only, there is a few h.323 but most are heading down the sip route.

619C

Yes that VoIP card looks to be just for linking Panasonic to Panasonic.
Cheapest option would be Analogue converters like the Linksys PAP2 or similar.
Put them onto line positions on your PABX - the fact that you wont need Fax/Modem changes then all should be fine.

gibo_ie

www.vosky.com
4 similtaneous lines over skype using skype out.
Nice piece of kit.

WizZard

sirlinux wrote:

nope just do voip a lot, the isdn card work well, but you have a limit of 4 cards after that you have to move quad or octo BRI card which isnt to cheap, if it's beefy pc/server you can run a windows VM on it as well and a skype uplink for skype connectivity for the traditional phone system, all transparent. PM me ill give you a run down on what you need to know.

What type of cards would I need for the PC?
Any brand names, or make/model? Any recommendations?

sirlinux

any HFC 'Cologne' chipset card, the billion ones are easy to come by, they are easy to identify, the chipset has two white tower things and it usually says cologne, last time i checked marx computers did one for 25 quid, they are good enough for one or two or three lines, past that you need a quad or octo BRi card.

WizZard

I was hoping to add-in about 4 lines via an Asterisk server as you have said, so to the PBX it would just look like a couple of extra (outbound) lines.
Then I can program the PBX to give those lines a higher priority, and our call reporting/costing/timing software wouldn't have to be changed that much (it works with our PBX).

sirlinux

Id say try a cheap hfc card and see how you get on with one line, a quad bri card is about 700 euro an octo bri card is about 900 euro. I have seen systems working just fine with 4 hfc cards in them though......
There is actually a billion USB hfc isdn adaptor that works just fine, but the pci is a slicker solution.

lzbones

I don't know about othre providers but freespeech supports a nice feature where you can register multiple phones and they all ring at once, if one is busy the other rings.

This can be used with a PAP2 (which supports two accounts), for example, to register 2 accounts, then plug into free analogue ports on your PBX...voila two extra lines ..with a type of hunting.

WizZard

Does the FXO/FXS stuff matter?
Please excuse my ignorance of these things, but I can't seem to find a lot of info on Asterisk to PBX setups, usually it's Asterisk to phones...

sirlinux

WizZard wrote:

Does the FXO/FXS stuff matter?
Please excuse my ignorance of these things, but I can't seem to find a lot of info on Asterisk to PBX setups, usually it's Asterisk to phones...

nope thats analog, you just need an isdn crossover cables (which is just differently wired to network cable) this is digital.

WizZard

Ah, ok. So the adapters on the Digium site are no good to me?

sirlinux

no, the quality on the analog cards would be poor compared to teh ISDN you are used too, if your pbx has an analog trunk card you could use them. Digium are due to release a BRI ISDN card very soon, but for the moment they only do T1 and E1 (primary rate) Junghanns and beronet do multi BRI cards for isdn with asterisk.

WillieFlynn

How many calls do you wish to place at the same time over VoIP? If it is more than just 3 or 4 you will need to go for a proper multiport solution (try looking at the likes of cisco, etc.)

For just a few lines have a look at:

AVM german company do multiport ATAs which also easly interface to isdn lines. Their stockest in Ireland is Marx computers.

sipura ]
linksys ] --- both owned by cisco
netgear

I have setup and used stuff from both sipura, avm and netgear. For flexablity I would say that sipura products are the best. However to use the more advanced features fully requires a reading the manuals and a good bit of thought.

I would suggest that you do a trail using a few outgoing lines first and based on your experance slowly migrate more lines, rembering to keep enough capacity on your ISDN lines in case of internet failure, also put a UPS on the ATAs and network equipment so that you don't loose phones in the event of a power cut / glitch.

sirlinux

agreed the fritzbox is a good quality ATA, howvere it only takes an isdn line, it wont provide one to a pabx, only 2 analog lines, the sipura's are the best of the analog ata's, instead using asterisk and some BRi cards, some cisco routers with a bri card can provide an isdn lines to your pabx and place/take valls over voip using h.323 sip or cisco's own call manager protocol, the cisco stuff is rock solid.

WillieFlynn wrote:

How many calls do you wish to place at the same time over VoIP? If it is more than just 3 or 4 you will need to go for a proper multiport solution (try looking at the likes of cisco, etc.)

For just a few lines have a look at:

AVM german company do multiport ATAs which also easly interface to isdn lines. Their stockest in Ireland is Marx computers.

sipura ]
linksys ] --- both owned by cisco
netgear

I have setup and used stuff from both sipura, avm and netgear. For flexablity I would say that sipura products are the best. However to use the more advanced features fully requires a reading the manuals and a good bit of thought.

I would suggest that you do a trail using a few outgoing lines first and based on your experance slowly migrate more lines, rembering to keep enough capacity on your ISDN lines in case of internet failure, also put a UPS on the ATAs and network equipment so that you don't loose phones in the event of a power cut / glitch.