Multi-tenant, isdn30 UK

[MikeS]

Hi,

Only the second post here, having lurked for a couple of months, so be gentle with me !

I have an opportunity to quote & demo an install.

Requirements:-

ISDN Pri, 8 channels to start, up to the full 30 later.

Exten, 16 to start, up to 100 later.

4 fxo & 4 fxs for legacy stuff.

Multi-tenant setup, with a2billing & poss CRM.

A few voip trunks, limited because of low bandwith ADSL

Firewall & ADSL bonding boxes.

POE switches, 2 to start, with fibre interconnect on site.

2 Ups, one for the box, switch, firewall & ADSL bonding & one for a switch.

Got 10 days to put this together, big problem is up against BT quoting for a Mitel 3300AX complete with bells & whistles. Hence the plea for help !

Any pointers, comments, examples, WHY welcome !

Mike

 

[jmullinix]

The PIAF part of this is pretty straightforward. I would buy a Sangoma A20202D analog card and an A101D E-1 card. I chose this because there is a timing cable to interconnect the two cards to allow Fax inbound on your E-1 and back out to an analog fax machine.

100 users implies about 25 simultaneous calls. I would use some sort of low end server hardware. I like Intel processors, Intel boards and SATA drives. 2 GIg's of RAM should be plenty.

In the wiring closet, I would use on-line UPS's. They are more expensive, but they are worth the money in my book.

If you have limited bandwidth, you might want to avoid VOIP trunks. If you can get a dedicated connection for the phone system, you can figure about 80 kbits/second/call and estimate your bandwidth requirements from there.

I use PFSense as a firewall. It is open source and it works, but I don't know how well it will handle bonded ADSL connections. When I put in a second ADSL connection, I dedicate it to VOIP and do not try to load share or bond the connections. PFSense handles that well.

Hope this give you some guidance.

 

[jroper]

Hi

I'd be worried about the multi tennant part of the job.

You do not want one company parking a call and another company picking it up.

Options to consider are using 2 boxes, one virtual server, with a virtual instance of of a PBX for each company, and a second box with the E1 card and A2Billing.

Joe

 

[jmullinix]

Joe,

I like that solution. I had not thought to do it that way.

 

[jroper]

Hi John

I think you can get it down to one box, with E1 and A2Billing on the base operating system, while the virtual servers occupy the virtual servers, but I've not played with this.

Joe

 

[MikeS]

Thanks John & Joe.

A little food for thought.

The bonded adsl is more for internet access, I had intended to bond 2 pairs of lines, 1 pair for the net & 1 pair for voip.
If I have to, I can use an off the shelf black box for the bonding, but that goes against the grain.

Agree UPS's

PFsense yes, few other flavors of unix firewalls to investigate.

If the excess infrastructure charges for installing the E1 are massive, ie requiring fibre rather than copper pairs, the customer will start with a few circuits of ISDN2.

Virtual servers, an idea to investigate. may be 2 servers in one case, one as the virtual server, one as the base server. Interesting problem to work the routing ?

I have seen a few offerings of multi-tenant software for *.
I was hoping something similar could be, or has been, achieved with PIAF.

Parking, I was hoping a little creative dial plan work, with separate number ranges for parking would work ?

Things like this I have to think about.

May have to consider the *appliance route, but that would be no better than the Mitel switch

Off topic, what do you sail Joe ? & do you get time any more ?

 

[jroper]

Hi

I think the VPS route would be easier, Multi Tenant and FreePBX are not good bedfellows. Best to leave freepbx the way its designed for simplicity

For piece of mind, I'd go for a black box solution for bonding ADSL.

Yep, still sailing, and living on the boat, Elfin Lady, she's a Camper and Nicholson Bluewater 476.

Joe

 

[Reddog]

Bonded internet sounds sensational but it aint that great. We use Pfsense and have paid the support guys to setup a load balancing box and then a failover box. The load balancing box is fun but it isnt the wonderful thing you think it will be. Its a pain in the ass and was a bit of a support nightmare. I would get a single fat pipe and a smaller one and setup load balancing to favor the fat pipe.