Hey guys, here's a good laugh...

As you may remember, the company I work for is due to move into a new 
building that's nearly completed now. Well apparently when they turn the 
phones on in this new building, the phones in our existing buildings 
will stop working. And apparently that happens this week.

But all is not lost. According to our Director of Lab Operations, all we 
need to do is go down to the nearest shop and buy a couple of those 
new-fangled "Skype phone" thingies and all our problems will magically 
go away. (Don't you just love it when managers who know nothing about 
technology come up with technical solutions?)

Well anyway, obviously I know precisely nothing about VoIP. I understand 
that such a technology could theoretically exist, but it's news to me 
that it has ever been deployed on a large scale.

(Certainly for home telephony it would seem to present a vast range of 
disadvantages too obvious to enumerate. OTOH, some people look only at 
price and don't really think these things through properly... Anyway, 
whether it's suitable for home use is rather irrelevant here.)

So, here's a few questions:

1. How much bandwidth does a system like Skype require? [You'll recall 
that where I work we are desparately short of bandwidth.]

2. Is Skype really trustworthy? [You can guarantee that no matter how 
much I warn them, if we end up using Skype and some person manages to 
steal confidential data as a result, it will somehow be "my fault".]

3. Is Skype really reliable enough to run absolutely mission-critical 
functions? [My personal preferance would be to buy a couple of real 
mobile phones. Last time I checked, mobile phone network operators have 
actual *laws* they have to abide by. Skype is not so-encumbered.]

I see that the guys at Google have their own VoIP software that you can 
use for free - but it doesn't appear to allow access to the PSTN, so I 
don't think it will be of any use here. Indeed, presumably *any* system 
that can talk to the PSTN will by definition cost money...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
...
> Well anyway, obviously I know precisely nothing about VoIP. I understand 
> that such a technology could theoretically exist, but it's news to me 
> that it has ever been deployed on a large scale.
...

I suggest that you read about Asterisk:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk_PBX

- and SIP:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Initiation_Protocol

-- 
Tor Olav
http://subcube.com

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
...
> 1. How much bandwidth does a system like Skype require? [You'll recall 
> that where I work we are desparately short of bandwidth.]
> 
> 2. Is Skype really trustworthy? [You can guarantee that no matter how 
> much I warn them, if we end up using Skype and some person manages to 
> steal confidential data as a result, it will somehow be "my fault".]
...

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype#Security_concerns

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype#Practicalities

-- 
Tor Olav
http://subcube.com

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 1. How much bandwidth does a system like Skype require?

Note that you can get VOIP without using Skype, also. Lots of places do 
that. Whether it'll work over your internet connection is a different 
question.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Skype is banned in our company...

VoIP bandwidth is usually around 40 kbps per call IIRC.

I don't know of any good temporary solution for you, presumably if your PSTN 
connection has been turned off then any new hardware that plugs into the 
PSTN is not going to be able to work either?  (eg we have a small Cisco VoIP 
router that our 5 VoIP phones plug into one side, and it plugs into the PSTN 
lines the other side).

If your internet connection is working in both buildings, then you could 
make a VPN connection between the two buildings, and bring over a few of the 
new VoIP phones to use in the old office until you move over?

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Darren New wrote:

> Note that you can get VOIP without using Skype, also.

Oh, sure. Skype is simply the most well-known such system.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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scott wrote:

> VoIP bandwidth is usually around 40 kbps per call IIRC.

Right. So with a theoretical 2000 kpbs of bandwidth available, that's 
theoretically 50 calls. (At least, until somebody decides to open an RDP 
session or twelve...)

> I don't know of any good temporary solution for you, presumably if your 
> PSTN connection has been turned off then any new hardware that plugs 
> into the PSTN is not going to be able to work either?  (eg we have a 
> small Cisco VoIP router that our 5 VoIP phones plug into one side, and 
> it plugs into the PSTN lines the other side).
> 
> If your internet connection is working in both buildings, then you could 
> make a VPN connection between the two buildings, and bring over a few of 
> the new VoIP phones to use in the old office until you move over?

We will have Internet access in both buildings, so the idea is to route 
incomming calls over the Internet usiong VoIP to run the building that 
has been disconnected to the PSTN. (I'm not *actually* sure if our 
switchboard can transfer incomming calls to other telephone numbers...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> VoIP bandwidth is usually around 40 kbps per call IIRC.
>
> Right. So with a theoretical 2000 kpbs of bandwidth available, that's 
> theoretically 50 calls. (At least, until somebody decides to open an RDP 
> session or twelve...)

Well you should be guaranteeing bandwidth for VoIP, if you're sharing data 
and voice over the same wire.  People are much more tolerant to their 
download going a bit slower than their phone call going crazy.

> We will have Internet access in both buildings, so the idea is to route 
> incomming calls over the Internet usiong VoIP to run the building that has 
> been disconnected to the PSTN. (I'm not *actually* sure if our switchboard 
> can transfer incomming calls to other telephone numbers...)

I guess you need to speak with the dudes that set up your phone system...

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