A Thousand Points Of VoIP

We all know that voice over IP has significant advantages over PBXes. Using the data network for voice saves on toll charges and systems are easy to change. But rolling out VoIP to remote offices has been an obstacle to widespread deployment, particularly when you're talking small branches that lack dedicated IT staffs.

Avaya's Distributed Office, a SIP-based, distributed VoIP system, aims to simplify remote deployment and management. Avaya will preconfigure its IP gateways, the i40 and i120, to fit your remote branches, and its VoIP phones are included with gateways, which support a variety of third-party VoIP and analog phones. It offered good call quality and useful features, and was easy to manage.

On the downside, Distributed Office is a voice-only platform. If you're looking to integrate voice with other applications, such as e-mail, or if your branches would benefit from an all-in-one system that supports functions such as firewalling and routing, you should look elsewhere. Avaya is aiming at companies that will find the low starting price of $350 per seat for 20 users and ease of deployment a square trade for all-inclusive hardware.

Cisco, Avaya's main competitor, is taking a different approach. Its UC500 with Call Manager Express is similar to the i40 in voice service, but it also provides WAN access, routing, and a firewall. If a branch has more than 50 users, it would have to move to the ISR line, increasing costs significantly and maybe providing more horsepower than you need.

Distributed Office starts with Avaya's SIP Enablement Services Edge switch, which handles incoming SIP connections at corporate headquarters, routes calls among branches, and provides a management workstation to remotely administer the i40 and i120 gateways (see diagram below).

Next are the gateways. The i40 is a 2U rack-mounted unit that supports as many as 40 users. It has 10 power over Ethernet ports to power phones directly. The 4U rack-mounted i120, which supports up to 120 users, has 40 PoE ports. If you need to support more phones, add a PoE switch, from either Avaya or a third party.

Voice mail is stored locally on the gateway on a 1 Gbyte (i40) or 2 Gbyte (i120) compact flash drive. Voice mail can be sent to an FTP or SCP server to move it into long-term storage. If you have Avaya's centralized Integrated Management for Distributed Office, server backups can be automated, scheduled, and saved there via the network configuration manager application.

The i40 is appropriate for as few as five to 10 users, because pricing is based on seats, not a flat hardware cost; it starts at $350 per user, with volume discounts available. Distributed Office includes Avaya's One-X VoIP phones in the per-seat price. They have basic features, such as forwarding, conference calling, and speed dial, and niceties such as auto-attendant, announcements, and routing. The i40 and i120 include fax ports.

Avaya will ship the platform pre-configured to your specs. For $100 per system (not per seat), Avaya will load a profile configuration, test it, and place the unit and endpoints in a single box. This can save a lot of time, allowing for a much faster cutover because the primary configuration is done. The base price includes pre-configuration of media modules. And if you prefer not to install the gateways, Avaya Services will do it--for a fee, of course.

We tested two i40s and an i120 connected by the SES server and an assortment of the IP phones. We used a workstation with the Avaya Integrated Management console to configure and manage the devices. Call quality was good in a variety of scenarios, including three-way calls and calls to remote devices off the IP network through the PSTN.

As with any VoIP product, you must enable quality of service to ensure that voice traffic gets sufficient priority. Branches should have at least a partial T-1 to handle voice calls, but it can make outbound local calls through POTS lines, or you can route calls back to a central location.

The Avaya Integrated Management console is accessed via a Web interface. We could view the network by device type, subnet view, or a VoIP system view. We could push software updates remotely to both phones and gateways in branches, all from a central location. Install the Integrated Management Console on a workstation at your branch to administer all phone functions.

We ran into only minor problems, including an i40 that reset itself with no explanation. A One-X phone also reset and wouldn't reconnect until we physically pulled the PoE plug. Also, the screen on the One-X is small compared with some of the Cisco 7900 series.

Source:http://www.informationweek.com/news/