SUGGESTIONS New Platform Recommendation

[Fred Pinto]

First time posting here. This community is great.

I need some advice. I have two locations. They were both being serviced by a Cisco Call Manager connected using a 50mb point to point but when it went end of life I decided to migrate to an Asterisk system. We wanted to keep our Cisco 7941G desk phones and Cisco 7921G wireless handsets so we had a local asterisk var set us up on Thirdlane version 6 running Asterisk 1.4 for the primary SIP desk phones and a plain asterisk 1.8 server running SCCP for the 7921G. One location has 125 SIP desk phones and 25 SCCP WLAN phones and the other has 60 desk SIP ones and 120 SCCP WLAN phones. It's been running well for the past couple of years but we have some unhappy users because the var couldn't get the remote party ID to work so they can't see the name of the person who they are calling. Part of the install also required us to add a couple of Astra 57i, Unidata 7800's, Yealink T22P and T46G phones. The directory is also an issue because it's difficult to manage across different vendors. So I need another solution. The VAR who did the first installation won't touch it because the Cisco phones require too much programming. I found another one that will do the upgrade to Thirdlane 7 for the SIP servers but won't touch the SCCP boxes and he wants $12k. I decided that I want to try and do this myself.

I started by looking at FreePBX and managed to get the SIP phones working in a test environment and I got them to display who we were calling. I then started on the directory and that's when I saw PIAF and IncrediblePBX and now I'm not sure if FreePBX was the way to go.

I need to run the servers on a hyper-v 2012r2 server at each location. I did virtualize the smaller SCCP box but I haven't tried the larger one yet.

My goal is to have one box at each location running a newer version of Asterisk supporting both SCCP and SIP phones. We need to be able to transfer calls across the point to point internally. I would also like to have one directory to manage for both locations or manage each directory locally but have them merge when being searched from the phones. An LDAP integrated directory would be ideal so I could use my Active Directory. Being able to see who we are calling internally is also required as well as an easy to use interface.

What is your recommendation? PIAF, IncrediblePBX, Elastix, FreePBX or Asterisk?

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

 

[wardmundy]

You already have a substantial investment in ThirdLane which is Asterisk-based. Have you tried contacting them directly for support? They have gurus that can make anything work, and it would be considerably cheaper than starting over IMHO. Alex is a great guy and will take good care of you. Tell him we sent you, and you might even get the brother-in-law special.

 

[Fred Pinto]

I see a lot of walkthroughs for the 7941 phones on PIAF and I also see some people running chan_sccp on FreePBX but I don't see any one talking about doing it on Thirdlane. Do you think that Thirdlane will be able to do what I need it to do?

 

[wardmundy]

If Asterisk can do it, ThirdLane can do it as well.

 

[Fred Pinto]

If I don't want to stick with thirdlane, what would you recommend? There just isn't any support on how to do a lot of things and I don't want to pay for everything I need.

 

[Fred Pinto]

Also, according to it's FAQ, Thirdlane is using 1.8. I want to at least use Asterisk 11.

 

[wardmundy]

PIAF-Green with Asterisk 11 and FreePBX 2.11 is our most stable platform based upon your requirements.

 

[Fred Pinto]

Ok great. I will start there. do you think it will be possible to run sccp and sip on the same box and and manage them using them both with the gui?

 

[billsimon]

The 7921G is already end-of-sale (three years ago) and will be end-of-support in January 2017. You may be able to replace these with SIP-capable wireless phones and set up a new PBX for less than the cost of keeping the SCCP constraint that you currently have.

 

[Fred Pinto]

We are slowly migrating to Unidata 7800 phones but it's hard to beat $5 yearly maintenance from a thirdparty cisco support vendor. Do you think it's possible to run both SIP and SCCP on one box?

 

[rjaiswal]

It's possible. That's what I have running at my office. I have a bunch of spa phones running sip, and 5 or so 79xx series phones running sccp.

There is a guide on the forums on how to set it up. Also, you should subscribe to chan-sccp-b mailing list, so you can get support on your sccp phones.

They are very responsive to help new users setting up sccp devices.

 

[Fred Pinto]

Thanks rjaiswal! Is that guide here or in the chan-sccp-b forum?

 

[rjaiswal]

It's in the how to's on the pbxinaflash forums. On my mobile, so I can't look it up for you. Just search for sccp, and you should be able to find it.

 

[wardmundy]

Read the entire thread before you begin: http://pbxinaflash.com/community/index.php?threads/sccp.13145/

 

[voip_user]

Interesting another company leaving cisco call manager. I do quite a few installs and I can say from what I've seen PIAF will take care of the majority of users. I have no clue why people make such the substantial investment in cisco.

 

[Fred Pinto]

I think the major reason is support. It's tough to find good reliable support you can count on and companies are willing to pay for that. That and the fact that since the phones and pbx are all Cisco they cover it all. I know working with some asterisk VARs its tough to get them to stand by their work. My existing system was configured with my existing Cisco handsets but when I wanted to upgrade to a newer version of Asterisk they refused the job. This is why I am here now. Cisco would have made them work if the phones were still supported but they rob you for the upgrade. They wanted six figures to upgrade the two systems. I think our systems are great for what we paid for them but I still miss the support that I got from Cisco.

 

[voip_user]

I agree cisco TAC is excellent when an issue comes up, but again I only see that investment when companies reach for a certain size. My size to start discussing cisco options is around 100-200+ handsets. Usually when companies are that size they will want the investment in such a system and the support that goes around it. I just recently did some work with a company who bought a cisco cucm systmem. They were 25 people. They purchased 2 Cisco UCS servers, 2 call managers and 2 unity connection systems and spent about 20K in professional services. They also spend thousands a year on smartnet and support cost. There is no way you can tell me that PiAF system would have done the majority of what they wanted and they could have saved way more.

 

[Fred Pinto]

PIAF would have handled it without a doubt. I am actually at the 200 extensions with 2 locations platform and I still don't use Cisco. It's just too much money. I actually wouldn't even be thinking about upgrading my Thirdlane PBX if I could just get remote party caller ID to work on Asterisk 1.4.

 

[voip_user]

One thing that I forgot to mention about asterisk consultants not standing by there work. From what I have seen is that there are far too many people out here who are buying cheap hardware from ebay without testing it, or knowing why its gray market, not fully understanding the system(PiAF, freebox, etc) and just doing a general "cash grab". They don't set expectations with customers, and are afraid to say no which puts them in some bad spots where they do not wanna answer the phone.


If you read my other thread a lot of times they don't even know basic networking as some guys have come from desktop or applications based backgrounds where the infra suture is not something they deal with on a daily basis. I've seen people go from asterisk to cisco just because the asterisk consultant made a /16 VLAN and put all the servers, phones, and PC's in the same broadcast domain which just causes problems.



When you are in the VoIP business you need to have setup standards on how you deploy your system. While I have yet to choose my platform I do know that when I start setting up boxes for customers, it will be on standard new hardware, no root access as long as they are under support with me, and they won't be allowed to install any other software on the server. That way I'm fully in control of what goes on that box, and I can rebuild or restore when needed.

 

[compuguy1088]

I see a lot of walkthroughs for the 7941 phones on PIAF and I also see some people running chan_sccp on FreePBX but I don't see anyone talking about doing it on Thirdlane. Do you think that Thirdlane will be able to do what I need it to do?

Honestly the 7941 and 7961 are finicky with sip firmware. The only cisco enterprise phones I've used on sip firmware that work great with asterisk are the 7940 and the 7960. I pulled out my 7941 and I'm pulling hairs just having it register with pjsip (had issues with the older sip driver as well).

As for using a directory, there is a tutorial showing how to connect the cisco directory to the asteridex....that could be used as a basis to connect to your current directory.