I talk mostly about technology and technical specifications as they pertain to VoIP, today I started to think about the business end of things. Let me explain;

Technology is something that we focus on here at Voipwonders.com but most small to medium businesses don’t really care about technology. These companies may already have someone in-house for the IT infrastructure support and they normally turn to a traditional phone company for VoIP implementation, this does not work very well.  Traditional phone companies normally push a single vendor to their clients. There may be a company that traditionally used to sell Samsung systems, well if approached about VoIP they would still push a Samsung system with some add-on cards to use the data network.

To have a successful implementation and take advantage of all the benefits of VoIP, you need to look beyond the traditional phone system suppliers. You need to look at hybrid service providers, specifically someone that started out in the IT infrastructure side of things and then moved into VoIP. Such companies can make sure the IT infrastructure, required to support your VoIP deployment is already in place and will be able to handle the traffic loads.

You need to look for someone who can source a variety of systems to avoid vendor lock-in, some of the major pure VoIP systems come from 3CX, Fonality and Cisco. Companies such as PC.Solutions.Net (PCSN, http://www.pcsn.net/) can provide analysis and implementation services on a variety of VoIP platforms without the worry about trying to push a specific system on you. Such a company will need to be contacted at the assessment phase to determine the correct system for now and for future, you’ll need to share your company’s growth plan, rate of growth and then sit back and enjoy your phone system that just works all day every day and grows along with your business to support all your users at every branch, even remote users.

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You probably haven’t tried to configure 3CX with Cbeyond’s SIPConnect service, as it’s not publicly supported yet. I’m testing a 3CX connection to Cbeyond’s SIPConnect  as a trial and here are my findings so far;

First of all, it was the simplest easiest SIP Conversion I’ve ever done. We were done in about an hour from start to finish. Keep in mind my 3CX system was already running, extensions were already setup, the only thing I didn’t have was a connection to the PSTN.

In 3CX you should see Cbeyond as a VOIP provider, if you don’t see this option, then first thing you should do is upgrade your 3CX to the latest version. Once you do that, you can use the wizard to add Cbeyond VOIP.

You’ll notice that the wizard auto fills in the SIP proxy addresses, these may be different for your area. Since this option is dimmed out, you need to leave the default addresses, click Next, then click Back, now you’ll notice they are not dimmed anymore! You can now enter the addresses you got from Cbeyond.

Follow the wizard providing your primary phone number as the authentication ID and username along with your Cbeyond provided password. Once configured, go back into the SIP settings for the connection you just created and make sure you have g.711 Ulaw codec selected.

At this point you should be able to register with Cbeyond. Once registered, if you are not able to make outbound calls but your call rules are setup correctly, go into VOIP provder settings and go into Gateway/Provider Outbound Parameters. Now change the “from: user part” to “LineNumber” external number of line. You should now be good to make outbound calls. Reasoning for this is, by default 3CX sends you extension to Cbeyond as the number trying to make the call, and as Cbeyond does not know or care about your local extensions, it denies access. Changing it to the external number lets the call go through.

I will be testing the system over the next few days and will report back. On a side note, sound quality is impeccable over SIPConnect.

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What most of us understand as unified communications (UC) is really not true unified communications. Some organizations are now moving on to UC with a twist by unifying landline and cellular networks.

The capability required to do this is the ability for users to seamlessly switch from landline at the office and move out of the office while staying on the call. This would mean then, that the handheld or cell phone becomes the primary business phone as well. This is not your regular UC, this is mobile UC!

This setup obviously requires some infrastructure, WiFi coverage inside the office and the systems to handle handover from WiFi to cellular without user intervention.

All this technology is here today and just waiting for companies to make their users more productive.

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With the huge number of VoIP providers out there and the flux of them coming and going, it can be hard to make the correct choice.

You want to sign up with a company that is easy to work with and where every once in a while you can get hold of a human being if you need support.

Voipreview has a review along with customer ratings here: http://www.voipreview.org/service.all2.aspx?serviceType=1

The list is not in any specific order, so don’t go by the order of a company in the list but look at the stars representing how users reviewed each provider.

Top customer rated companies are as follows:

Phone Power 5 star rating
ITP 5 star rating
VOIP Your Life 5 star rating
Mylowphone 5 star rating
Tincantalk 5 star rating
Sunrise 5 star rating
HyperDogDigital 5 star rating
UnifiedDirect 5 star rating

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There has been severe backlash against ISPs blocking certain types of traffic, specifically peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic. The backlash has even caused some ISPs to reverse their decision about blocking or throttling such traffic.

In the enterprise, however, where the data network may also be carrying voice and video traffic, sooner or later you will have to prioritize traffic and at some point you’ll run into the issue of either throttling or totally blocking P2P, especially file sharing applications that end users may be using without management approval or even without knowing they are running such applications.

There are several applications that allow P2P sharing, Limewire, BitTorrent, Azureus, Kazaa and eDonkey are a few that come to mind, I have my own favorite but that’s an article for another day.

The problem with P2P applications is that they are designed to worm their way through firewalls. Unlike IM software that can use port 80 (which is required for web browsing), P2P applications will usually use a specific port other than the ones normally used for DNS or web browsing.

The trick to blocking such applications is to first identify which applications may be running on your network, then putting filters into place to block the specific ports the applications use. There are some P2P software that will use port 80 for transfers. Blobster and Piolet use port 80 for transfer, the way to block them on your network is to block the initial connection they try to download the peer list from. For Blobster and Piolet the IP you want to block is 128.121.0.0 with subnet mask of 255.255.0.0, block all port 80 traffic to this segment and you’ll render Blobster and Piolet useless.

eDonkey is pretty easy to rein in, simply block TCP port 4662 at the firewall and you’re done. Simple enough right?

Now let’s talk about trickier applications, the ones that use the FastTrack network like Kazaa, Grokster and iMesh. FastTrack is the most popular P2P network around and uses any open TCP/UDP ports to search and download files. This behavior makes it impossible to block them by IP or by blocking specific ports. To block this type of traffic you need a Network Based Application Recognition mechanism, like the one that can be implemented on Cisco for their IOS software. Here is a sample code that will block such traffic for IOS software release 12.2(13) T:

class-map match-any p2p

   match protocol fasttrack file-transfer *

policy-map block-p2p

   class p2p

      drop

int FastEthernet0

   description PIX-facing interface

   service-policy input block-p2p

Gnutella network is another network that requires NBAR for filtering. You can block Gnutella traffic by adding the Gnutella-matching line under the same class-map, the rest of the code will be same as blocking FastTrack traffic:

class-map match-any p2p

   match protocol gnutella file-transfer *

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I think it needs mentioning, on the Cisco UC500 series appliance, you cannot seperate the wireless access point, network switch or firewall from the rest of the appliance. These are not seperate pieces of hardware that connect together but instead is one hardware device with different software licenses allowing you to use components that you need.

So if you are thinking you can get a UC500 for your phone system and use the wireless access point separately at another location, forget it, it’s all bundled together in one unit!

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You probably have an idea by now how I don’t like Skype, well today I’ll go into some of the details as to why I don’t like it.

Skype is a peer to peer application and under some circumstances, the Skype client uses the specified bandwidth of between 24 and 128KbPS. If you have a high speed internet connection and your firewall is not very restrictive, your PC with Skype might become a “supernode”. In this mode, Skype starts to relay signaling for other Skype users that are behind NAT (network address translation).

You can test this behavior. Run a packet capture on your network before installing Skype, then capture packets after installing Skype. You’ll notice that if you are directly on a publicly routable IP address, your machine starts using a lot (if not all) of your available bandwidth. You’ll notice traffic going out to all sorts of addresses around the globe.

The bandwidth usage can be so considerable that in certain circumstances it has brought down Linksys routers (typically used as residential gateways).

Skype uses both TCP and UDP ports for this traffic and in tests can use up all bandwidth in a 100MbPS connection. Now think about multiple users running Skype (not even using it) at the same time.

So until Skype starts to ship with some sort of a management tool to enterprise to limit this “supernode” mode, I will not recommend anyone use Skype, besides it’s not like it’s free. Why would you want to use Skype when you can use other VoIP services for free!

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Voice over IP works great over WiFi like I’ve blogged before. If you’re in an office and need to have Wifi coverage for only a small area, pretty much any WiFi access point (WAP) works. When you start considering covering an entire campus or several acres of property with a signal, you have to have specific equipment in place.

There are many manufacturers that make WAPs that can be configured in a mesh configuration, Aruba, Cisco, Orinoco and Juniper come to mind, but these are all high dollar WAPs. When you’re on a budget, look no further than companies providing devices for small/home business, like D-Link and Netgear. Netgear actually uses technology licensed from Aruba, but I’m not a big fan of Netgear, I’ve had too many bad experiences with their products.

D-Link makes both indoor and outdoor devices that can be used in a variety of configurations including Wireless Distribution System (WDS). -Link’s DWL line of WAPs, specifically DWL-8200AP, DWL-3200AP, DWL-7700AP and DWL-2700AP do a great job of covering your campus in a wireless mesh.

It’s always a good idea to not have too many wireless hops, use hard links via cable whenever possible to keep you latency low. If you need to deploy a large number of WAPs (I’m talking about 500) then it’s always a good idea to go with a company that specializes in this area like Aruba. As the number of WAPs increases, so does the need for a better management solution.

I’ll blog about management solutions and interfaces in another blog.

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“Your PBXtra server and all associated hardware will arrive pre-configured and tested from Fonality. Once you have it in hand, your PBXtra server will need to be connected to the Internet via an Ethernet cable. You will also need to configure your PBXtra server to work on your network in accordance with our PBXtra Installation Guide” This will include assigning your PBXtra Server a static IP address, setting up and plugging in your phones, and then entering all of your user information for each phone extension. After that, you will need to configure how you want your PBXtra to handle your incoming calls through the Fonality Web-Admin tool. These last two steps, adding user information for each phone, and configuring your queues and call treatments, will require access to a PC on the internet with a web-browser (You can not use the PBXtra Server itself as it has no web-browser). That’s it! If you have any issues with your installation, our Customer Care Team is just an email or a phone call away! Also, with each PBXtra shipment, we schedule an Installation and Training appointment to ensure that your server is set up correctly, to answer any of your remaining installation questions, and to show you how to use the most common features your new phone system.” This excerpt from Fonality’s website FAQ section would lead you to believe that the PBXtra installation is a very straight forward procedure and the end user can set up a PBXtra up without technical help.

Phone systems are complex and business critical and as with any other phone system PBXtra requires you to thoroughly understand your current infrastructure and business process. I have yet to see a Fonality install where local technical help was not required and end user was able to get the system successfully running. What’s more troubling is the fact that I have seen Fonality systems that were not correctly configured before being shipped to customer site. Lot of times end nodes have been delivered with wrong IP information to connect to a phone system that does not exist.

Before you get excited about ordering a system and setting it up, get technical help, perform an assessment, build your call routing on paper before you even place the order. Find out what kind of routers, firewalls and VPN devices you already have on the network. Find out if your network switches have enough bandwidth to be used for voice, if you have network hubs instead of switches, replace them! If you are replacing your network hubs with switches, look into getting POE (power over Ethernet) switches, so your voice communication keeps working even if there is a power failure. Think about how will people call emergency services if need when the main power is out.

Get a good UPS (uninterruptible power supply) for your phone system, something that can keep the system and end nodes running for couple of hours in case of power blackout. Remember, UPS systems need to be checked every year to make sure they are able to handle the power load.

Proper planning and the right help can make your new phone system installation a positive experience and at times can even give you insight into your processes where they can be improved.

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Lets face it, most small businesses won’t be implementing an elaborate voice system comprising of various components like Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express, and all the related hardware and additional software.

To ease the implementation for small business and lower the cost while providing more value, Cisco has come out with the UC500 appliance which does not require a Windows Server (it’s stand alone) and can be bundled with a POE Switch, WiFi Access Point and Voice in a nice, tightly integrated package.

It is inevitable, companies will be looking to integrate UC500 with their Exchange 2007 infrastructure. The good news is, UC500 can work with Exchange 2007 UM with some configuration. You have to make sure the UC500 can see the Exchange 2007 server, you have to allow h323 to h323, h323 to sip, sip to h323 and sip to sip. You have to setup dial-peer and define the IP of the Exchange 2007 server. Remember the codec is g711ulaw, and you should be good to go.

The actual configuration can require a little effort but is easliy doable, remember to apply Exchange 2007 SP1 before even trying!

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