Telephony solution for small network?

Question

Hi this is a home work assignment, i am to connect two sites together, and i want to introduce VoiP, but i am not sure if this is the best solution.. can anyone suggest.

There are two sites, each site has less than 15 employees, i just want the staff to be able to make phone calls, but what is the best solution?

Answer 1

It depends on what sort of calls these employees will make i.e. between offices or to external parties

It also depends on how many concurrent calls each site will make

And where you live in the world will also dictate if VoIP will actually be the cheaper option

Don't assume VoIP is necessarily cheaper as phones tariffs are very low in comparison to the cost of network connections

You may get away with putting in a couple of telephone lines at each site that are shared on a key system for instance and find that's cheaper than having to rent an Internet connection AND pay for more expensive VoIP phones AND purchase a VoIP service from a third party OR a VoIP system of your own

There is no one size fits all here. For a business you have to work out what's the most cost effective solution

And until SIP trunks replace the standard PSTN line, digital and analogue phones are here to stay

Oh and don't forget you'll probably have to factor an analogue FAX machine into your equation

Answer 2

Why do VoIP if you just want phone calls to be possible and not go with a basic phone call between sites?

now onto the question the best way to do that is to connect the sites together in a underground Ethernet CAT 6 or CAT 7 cable or optical of which is dependent on what your switch and/or router will support. The hook up the Ethernet compatible phones to the network on which you have the cable leading between sites plugged into or a switch plugged into that. After doing that follow the directions in the users manual on how to set up your VoIP network.

Answer 3

VoIP would work great for this purpose. With VoIP you can easily give both sites one central phone number which can go to a voice menu, while also having separate phone numbers for each office that they could give out to potential customers. It's hard to tell what kind of business this is for, but VoIP is really the way to go over a traditional phone system.



VoIP phone systems typically cost much less than traditional land lines. Especially if you want some fancy voice response menus and to link the two sites, phone companies charge way too much for these features, and they are typically at low cost to the consumer.



Additionally, if you pick VoIP, you can get a pure data internet connection run to your business, not a split voice/data T1. Split T1's are EXTREMELY expensive in comparison to a pure data Cable line or pure data T1.



The reasons to pick VoIP over standard phone are endless. You can take a look at this website (http://www.gausscomm.com/features.php) for some more benefits to VoIP.