VOIP Design

[JeremiahL]

I'm sure you all see these types of posts alot, but I'm going to add to the pile.

I've been put in charge of setting up a voip network and by coporate standards it's an appreantly easy design. I'm not a VoIP person, had no reall formal training.

I have 4 sites total on this design, A and B are connected via WAN, and both have call managers, A and C are connected via WAN and A supplies C with Call Manager service. Sites B and D are in the same area and B supplies D with service. I won't get into B and D as I have no control over those.

Now my question is, I have a Call Manager at site A and a majority of the phones, site C has a small number of phones and does not have a Call Manager, what would be the best way to get Call Manager service from site A to site C. I have looked at some possible solutions, like I said I don't know much about this so I'd appriciate any suggestions

Thanks.

[timmektrakarn]

Just point your phones back to your CM at site A or create a seperate partition for those phones at site C on the CM.

[a.fink]

Your phones on Site C _can_ use the callmanager of Site A from remote. The question is if it _should_ do so.

Questions you should ask yourself are:

a) is the investment for a separate call manager or call manager express worth the flexibility.

b) how reliable is the link between A and C

c) do you have enough bandwith for calls between A and C.

d) how many phones are on site C.

e) how do people on site C make calls. Do they always call out over site A or do they have local numbers they have to call locally.

The answer is not that easy to give without knowing all the facts.

from my knowledge, I would go with Call Manager Express on every site. Its small, cheap and works. The "big" call manager is much more complex, runs on a "invitation to viruses and worms" operating system and gives you all kinds of headakes in the configuration. Sure you can do more than with call manager express but for normal offices with a bunch of phones and basic functionality, the big call manager is usually far too big.