VoIP

[jimmm33]

A company I do work for is asking about VOIP. They have 3 phone lines and about 12 machines using the net on a standard DSL connection. I have heard of many residential users having good experiances, but is it reliable for business? What is a good system and how much bandwidth is needed? Where can I go to get a more complete picture of the requirements and drawbacks?

[TechZ]

What speed do you mean by standard DSL? at the moment internet is quite reasonable in the US, you can get quite high speed lines for excellent prices.

From what I hear & have seen, Skype, a free (for pc-to-pc) VOIP communication app, seems to be one of the best out there.

and it works with quite a varied set of OS's http://www.skype.com/

[jimmm33]

The DSL connection is 1.5/256

They will need something more robust than Skype. They would like to have 3 lines, voicemail, forwarding and other features. I have been looking alot today but can't seem to find any FAQ or guide to voip for a small business. I have a good idea of how voip works. What I need to know is who provides it, how is it managed, how much bandwidth is needed, who provides the bandwidth, what are the real costs?

I helped setup a voip system a few months back. It was for a company with an office a few hundred miles away. We used a Zulty's voip box and a VPN router on each end. Now the offices can call each other for free. Calls to the outside world still get routed to the local analog phone line. There is no monthly fee. Just buy the equipment and set it up. This is a great solution for them but it will not work for the other client.

They would like to send and receive all calls over voip and also connect to another office. I think this is a different thing altogether. Surely a monthly fee and probably remote managment.

On a sidenote. Is there a way for a small business like myself to sell a voip router and a one hour setup fee to residential users? That might be a good market to get into.

[TechZ]

For businesses, I've read ISP's offer packages and equipment for VoIP.

[Zonie]

You might want to take a look at this: http://www.vonage.com/?refer_id=clickeyvonage

[arch0nmyc0n]

They would like to send and receive all calls over voip and also connect to another office. I think this is a different thing altogether. Surely a monthly fee and probably remote managment.

I've just got a very basic understanding of this but doesn't both ends have to have VoIP capable stuff? I don't see how all voice calls could be VoIP unless a phone number would connect to VoIP switch of some sort. Would this be the case?

[MobilePCPhysician]

With Skype yes, with Vonage no. I use Vonage at home for 16.00 get 500 minutes of local and long distance. Sweet deal, as the wife calls all over the continental 48 to talk to friends and family.

[emr]

With Skype yes, with Vonage no. I use Vonage at home for 16.00 get 500 minutes of local and long distance. Sweet deal, as the wife calls all over the continental 48 to talk to friends and family.

Actually with SkypeOut you can call any phone number. You pay of course but it does allow you to call regular phones.

emr

[arch0nmyc0n]

so there is some sort of VoIP switch that allows normal calls... any idea on how to set one up? how much it would cost? is there any program that would use a voice modem or something?

[MobilePCPhysician]

so there is some sort of VoIP switch that allows normal calls... any idea on how to set one up? how much it would cost? is there any program that would use a voice modem or something?

Look for Zonie's post and click on his link. Look for FAQ's which explains how the thing works.