Voice Over IP Are We Ready for Prime Time ?

Copyright [Louis Hammond] [2005]. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Voice Over IP Are We Ready for Prime Time ?

Melissa Martyr-Wagner

Manager Of Customer Service - NTS

mmw@umn.edu

Louis Hammond

Assistant Director NTS

louis@umn.edu

Goals of This Presentation

• Provide commentary on the voice & convergent communications market and suggest implications for higher education

• Discuss VoIP solutions, based on research findings as well as vendor proposals & presentations

• Highlight the pros & cons of an open source PBX solution

• Discuss a model for rollout of services

What have we been doing?

• 1998 Evaluated VOIP - It wasn’t ready• 2001 Completed a 35,000 port PBX upgrade• 2004 Deployed a new E911 system• 2004 Started evaluating a few VOIP platforms• 2004 Started Beta testing with current vendor • 2005 Completed a 60,000 port network

upgrade for over 228 buildings

What have we been doing?

• 2005 Upgrading Voice Mail to Unified Messaging - 18,000 users

• 2005 Installed VOIP fed legacy PBX partition - 100 users

• 2004 Need to deploy VOIP services!

VOIP Gaining momentum

After 10 years of relatively slow growth, VoIP is generating a renewed interest among consumers. – increase in broadband – improvements in quality of service– hookups that allow VoIP calls over ordinary

telephone handsets

The Problem

• VOIP vendors and providers gaining momentum

• Vendor enterprise systems are marketing very nice systems

• Many Universities have on site PBX’s

• Many have Local Centrex Services

• We don’t want to get left behind

The Problem

• The Commercial Market is still flux– Vonage now for sale, AOL and Earthlink

selling to residential, Packet8, Nikotel, NetCentrex, Broadsoft, etc

– Microsoft ?– EBay to Acquire Skype– There are over 450 providers for US – www.voipproviderslist.com

Decisions Decisions

• Many Universities have newer networks

• Closet infrastructure issues

• Many have Current PBX’s that can integrate to VOIP

• Some have already implemented VOIP

• Lots of claims of cost savings

• Hidden costs

Our issues

• Current PBX depreciates in 2008

• So far any VOIP platform is separate from current PBX and expensive

• Vendor support for SIP is limited

• Power issues for end stations

• Closets not ready-Few Generators and no UPS’s

More issues to think about

• Network QOS - application or port based

• E911, CALEA, and Security

• Fire, life, and safety support issues

• Allowing phones to move about

• On and off campus

More issues to think about

• Soft Phones - XTEN, SJPhone, others

• Licensing

• Who owns the phone numbers

• Do you need phone numbers

• Call Centers and applications

• Proprietary or SIP based systems

More issues to think about

• VOIP over Wi-Fi

• Cell and Roaming Integrations

• Peer to Peer solutions

• Open Source ?

OpenSource

• SIPFoundry

• PingTel

• YATE

• Asterisk

Asterisk

• Supports SIP

• Supports many vendor instruments

• Supports several softphones

• Supports video and presence

• Developed IAX and IAX2 protocols

• Has Unified Messaging/ can integrate

Asterisk

• Jabber and push to talk features

• Runs on many OS’s Windows, MAC, Unix, Linux

• Can be built in high availability clusters

• Can peer with other Asterisk servers and PBX’s

Asterisk Pro’s

• Truly free all you need is hardware

• Seems to be reliable - they do offer an enterprise version

• Application development

• Partnerships with many vendors

• Large co-operative support

• It works- turn key systems available

Asterisk Cons

• You can’t blame the vendor

• You need to commit staff for this

• You need commit other resources to this

• Some integration interfaces need to be built

Our Plans

• Finish a few priority projects - UM, WIFI upgrade

• Finish a design effort, service plans, and bundles - We know it works lets get on with it

• Figure out 911• Use IAX2 devices as well as SIP• Build up support

Our Plans

• Advertise supported solutions• VOIP will be use to augment our current

PBX• Cost savings in new facilities and off

site locations• Figure out how to roam off campus• We will be open to specialized Call

Center solutions

Our Plans

• Continue to grow the VOIP offerings as a replacement strategy for the current PBX

• Make sure it is bullet proof• Make sure it’s the right solution for the

customer • Be open to multiple solutions• Begin peering with other institutions

Last Thoughts

• You should expect to be flexible and ready to try evolving elements as they become available it may be that the PBX as we know it will no longer be needed as more peer to peer and Opensource applications emerge