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cyb
Grünschnabel


Registration Date: 22.07.2006
Posts: 123

Are virtual (hosted) PBXs ready for prime time? Post Reply with Quote Edit/Delete Post Report Post to a Moderator       IP Information Go to the top of this page

We are a small company with around 6 staff based all based in different locations. I think a solution like PBXes would be a good solution for us as we can have a single inbound number which we can configure to ring the required extensions each with voicemail etc. It is also scalable for when we get more staff.

I have a few questions though - mainly to do with quality and reliability of service.
Is the call quality affected in any negetive way buy it passing through PBXes?
Will there be an increase in latency - perhaps because of the extra routing through the PBX?
If I receive a call on my extension and wish to pass it onto another extension will the call quality drop, will there be delays or echo?
What is the up time of this service? Is there any guarantee for uptime?

We will all be using hardware SIP phones or analogue phones connected to ATAs going through routers with QoS onto ADSL connections with a minimum of 256K upstream.

My real question is the service reliable enough and of good enough quality to be used for the main line into our company?

22.07.2006 08:49 cyberdude is offline Search for Posts by cyberdude Add cyberdude to your Buddy List
i-p
Super Moderator


Registration Date: 14.01.2006
Posts: 4774

RE: Are virtual (hosted) PBXs ready for prime time? Post Reply with Quote Edit/Delete Post Report Post to a Moderator       IP Information Go to the top of this page

You're right. Quality and reliability is a main criterion on telecommuncation systems. PBXes can be considered to be as or even more reliable than a locally installed iPBX. Any neccessary maintenances are announced in advance (in this forum). You can sample the quality by using our Free Account.

The Free Accounts have a monthly availability of approximately 99.5% . By added redundancy the Premium Accounts are about 99.9% available on monthly average.

However, we can't guarantee a certain uptime to you. This would not make too much sense because there are other components involved that could fail, too. So we suggest to have multiple SIP providers and extensions. To be on the safe side communicate two phone numbers to your clients (e.g. your main line and the direct dials or your main line and the mobile extensions). In case one of your trunks fails you will still be in business.

This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by i-p on 02.08.2006 at 01:08.

22.07.2006 12:59 i-p-tel is offline Search for Posts by i-p-tel Add i-p-tel to your Buddy List
Dia
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Registration Date: 03.03.2006
Posts: 1443

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Since your last question has been addressed by Pascal, I will attempt to answer the first three. Please keep in mind that, the Internet topology (location) of the users and the telephony providers do play a role in the call quality.

Zitat:
Is the call quality affected in any negative way buy it passing through PBXes?

That depends mostly on the provider (vocoder used) and the quality of the firewalls which are in front of your SIP endpoints. In general the voice quality is not affected or can even be improved through the PBX.

Zitat:
Will there be an increase in latency - perhaps because of the extra routing through the PBX?

In general, if the provider supports Re-Invites, then only the signaling will go through the PBX. The voice packets should go either between the SIP endpoints or between the SIP endpoint and the PSTN gateway at the remote end.

Zitat:
If I receive a call on my extension and wish to pass it onto another extension will the call quality drop, will there be delays or echo?

If only the signaling goes through the PBX then the voice quality should not be affected. A Re-Invite should direct the voice packets to the new SIP endpoint.

Zitat:
My real question is the service reliable enough and of good enough quality to be used for the main line into our company?

To help you answer your last question, I can tell you the following. The only way to find out if the PBX is the right solution, to be used as the main line into your company, is to try it. There is no commitment to get a free account, and the Premium account fee is on a monthly basis.

So set up an incoming number, a couple of extensions, and ask a couple of friends to call you. They will be the best judges, especially if you don't tell them it is VoIP based system. Blind tests are the best.

As your confidence builds, add more trunks and extensions. Within two months you will know if you have a winner, or you have to move on to another solution.


PS. If you need more in-depth explanation or help with the setup send me a PM.

22.07.2006 21:06 Diafora is offline Search for Posts by Diafora Add Diafora to your Buddy List
cyb
Grünschnabel


Registration Date: 22.07.2006
Posts: 123

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Thanks for the replys. It all sounds positive and I'm aware that there are many things in the chain that can effect quality. We have been using a VOIP provider for 3 years for all our our outbound international calls. My concerns were what effect the PBX would have due to the extra routing but my question has now been answered. Are the any disadvantages to using Re-Invite? Are call logs still maintained?

I have opened a free acount to experiment with but for some reason am having trouble getting my Cisco ATA186 to register with the PBX as an extension. I can get a softphone to register no problem.

The ATA configured directly to my current VOIP provider (Dualtalk) works fine.

23.07.2006 15:21 cyberdude is offline Search for Posts by cyberdude Add cyberdude to your Buddy List
dub


Registration Date: 01.01.1970
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I have a setup in the US running on a Cisco ATA186. I'm in Asia at the moment. If you haven't sorted the problem, I can pull my settings. The configurations for pbxes.com are very straight forward.

I would start with a factory reset on the box. Here is a link to instructions on how to do that:

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/...3.htm#wp1094880

Half of your problems with registration deal with NAT transversal. I would start by enabling stun if you haven't done so. Two popular stun servers are stun.fwdnet.net and stun.xten.com.

The earliest ATA 186's didn't support STUN. If your box is that early do a firmware upgrade. There are a number of bug fixes that have been fixed including one major security problem. Here is a link to more information on upgrading your firmware.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/g...0800b4c38.shtml

Good luck!

16.08.2006 07:14 dubaistu is offline Search for Posts by dubaistu Add dubaistu to your Buddy List
cyb
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Registration Date: 22.07.2006
Posts: 123

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Thanks Dubaistu. I still haven't been able to get the ATA to register so would appreciate if you could let me have the settings just to make sure I have my ATA correctly configured and to eliminate it from the trouble shooting.

I suspect it could be my NAT but the strange thing is it worked when the ATA is configured to register directly with the SIP provider rather than the PBX.

I have the latest firmware on the ATA but haven't tried a STUN server yet. I wasn't aware you could use a STUN from another provider. I'll give that a go too.

16.08.2006 07:53 cyberdude is offline Search for Posts by cyberdude Add cyberdude to your Buddy List
dub


Registration Date: 01.01.1970
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It will be the weekend before I can get the information to you. You can ABSOLUTELY use these stun servers with pbxes.com. I personally use Xten's.

16.08.2006 19:02 dubaistu is offline Search for Posts by dubaistu Add dubaistu to your Buddy List
cyb
Grünschnabel


Registration Date: 22.07.2006
Posts: 123

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OK Dubaistu. I'll wait till the weekend. I tried your suggestions of factory resetting the ATA and configured the ATA with what I think are the correct parameters to register with the PBX.

I have also forwarded the following ports (5060 and 16384) on my router to the ATA.

It still doesn't work so I await to see what you come back with.

18.08.2006 12:48 cyberdude is offline Search for Posts by cyberdude Add cyberdude to your Buddy List
 
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