SIIP/IP Telephony

RE: SIIP/IP Telephony

Glenn Hodgson — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 19:58:59 GMT

"Are these different to VOIP? I al also very interested." -

I read this >> https://askozia.com/voip/what-are-sip-or-voip-phones/ Seems that SIP is one of the ways that we can make VOIP calls.

Thanks for all that info. Nice to hear reliable. I am primarily thinking of the move as BT have refused call diverts initially on 2 occasions for me in the past and taken hours to set them up. With SIP/VOIP I can log into an internet from any device and divert all incoming calls instantly :-)

I love it that you have managed this your self Ian, hats off. We cheated. We use Intellia, a local firm, and they supplied an LG IPECS phone system and everything for us. £30/month and some far more expensive hardware (sadly) but if anything breaks they fix/replace. <£50 (all inclusive all calls to anything aoart from premium and abroad) vs pour current nearly £250/odd/month for 4 ISDN2 lines, upfront costs will soon be reaped back. And we can then not do business with BT which is ideal :-) Still bitter after our lines went down for 6 days....

Also cheaper to do call recodring/logging etc etc.

For those of you using less phones Cloud phones sound interesting. The computer/hardware bit is hosted out in the cloud. We were quoted £21/month for all calls from a £120 phone. All through broadband with all you can eat calls. We have 12 handsets and 4 lines so 12x£21 dose not work as well for us. This was through BT and they wouldn't support as well as our local company.

Backup. We are dedicating plenty bandwith to the voice and the rest to data. This stops calls 'going funny' if someone else is using too much internet. Our router (£250 odd draytek model) also allows a backup 4G in the rear and hosts a seperate channel for wifi for the clients.

We are not getting a backup line. If it goes down we will do the internet and redirect to the on call mobile and "forward if busy" to 2 other mobiles in the practice.

RE: SIIP/IP Telephony

Ian Mostyn — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 19:21:09 GMT

We have used VOIP phones for about 6 years now, the current system being almost 4 years old. We started off using a hosted system with Gradwell for outgoing calls and kept the incoming calls through the BT network. Siemens Gigaset range do phones that can connect to IP and the BT copper network so the same handset would do both calls. This enabled us to make outgoing calls without tying up our incoming line but it wasn't a great system.

About 4 years ago we had a major refurb physically at work and I used the opportunity to upgrade the phone system to Digium's Asterisk. We have two sites each with an Ubuntu server running - the actual hardware requirement is not too great, an i5 processor with a 240Gb hard drive, 8Gb RAM is plenty for 10 concurrent calls - the Asterisk software. Our BT copper lines terminate in a PCIe card in the back of each machine which then transfers the calls from the analog to a digital signal. This then passes out to our extensions, corded Cisco 5 series phones throughout the building over our existing IP network - cat5e cable and a normal ethernet switch is OK. The bandwidth requirement is only about 64Kb/s so with our fibre broadband and a normal network we can have every phone in the building in use at the same time.

All this gives us 3 incoming lines, unlimited outgoing lines, internal calls across both sites and the ability to transfer across both sites. Call parking, paging is done through the phones themselves, vocemail is pre-recorded and all the bank holidays are set up to run automatically. The best bit is the software is free! Large call centres with hundreds of staff will use the same system so it is very robust. The actual connections are IAX2 rather than SIP as it is simpler to set-up the connections between surgeries and I have a connection at home so I can make calls off the same system using works caller-ID.

Echo can be a big problem if you terminate analog calls into a digital system so I spent a little bit of money on a decent echo cancellation card for the servers and the system for the last few years has been very stable and successful (ie no staff complaints!!). Our call costs are about £50 per month for unlimited landlines and approx 800 mobile minutes so MUCH cheaper than BT for an equivalent system. For outgoing calls we have 2 seperate broadband lines with load balancing done through our router in case of failure.

In the future I am planning on going completely digital, transferring the BT lines to a pure IP system, probably next year. I am looking at a backup connection, either a 2nd IAX2 / SIP provider or using a 4G connection as a redundant backup first and I may even set up the Asterisk system on an Amazon EMC cloud account to save my hardware costs. I will stick with Asterisk though as it is a great system. Downtime happens occasionally if the network provider goes down but this is very rare and is quickly resolved.

Sorry about the complicated answer but I have not once regretted a VOIP system. I do the system admin myself but Digium doing a Switchvox system and many providers will host the system themselves, saving you the hassle. Money saving, powerful system, great call features and quality. Go for it.

Ian

RE: SIIP/IP Telephony

Michael Woodhouse — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 16:52:23 GMT

Are these different to VOIP? I al also very interested.

RE: SIIP/IP Telephony

Gillian Mostyn — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 16:26:27 GMT

Yes- but it is nowt to do with me...I'll nudge Ian to come on here and post some info.