Have been approached with the idea of using a TSIP and losing our traditional carriers. Here is the situation, we have 10 T-1's across 4 sites ld/toll free, have went to the carriers and said i can guarantee you X amount of toll free traffic can you waive the charges for the T-1 ($450/month) they say no. So now looking into using a TSIP where can front end the traffic with an Asterisk or similar system and can not only reduce costs but also have my own in the cloud DR plan via the Internet. Have dedicated internet for Voice only at all locations. Have been running call center via IP Telephony for the last 5 years with no issues as we have dedicated network for Voice and separate for data.
looking to see if anyone else has heard of this or is even using it and how is it working out.
So essentially you want to take termination and origination by SIP, consolidate your lines, and then deliver them to the locations via VoIP?
Sure, that's essentially what I do with my hosted call center platform. I will tell you to not go cheap on the collocation facility. Try to find a place that offers a bandwidth mix with at least 2 Tier-1/2 carriers, access to other Tier 2/3 carriers, an N+1 infrastructure, amps per rack availability, etc. Stay away from places that stumble when you mention VoIP.
As far as the Asterisk part is concerned you will have about a 250-ish concurrent call limit. Depending upon how much processing you are doing it can be as high as 300 or as low as 200. Conferencing be the most needy in terms of channels and Hardware.
If you do go with Asterisk you can also do some interesting things as far as delivery to the endpoint. The most notable being IAX. You can also use software codecs that compress the stream pretty good without much of a degradation in audio.
It's somewhat relative to the infrastructure you already have tho.
Ok very cool. In the interim the plan would be to front end the Tadiran as the PBX is still in great working condition and see no need to scrap it just yet and then have to purchase all IP phones. However long term the possibility is also there to convert with very little problems.
Have you had any luck with clustering Asterisk servers at each site as in an HA mode?
All I use is Asterisk in various clustered infrastructures. So i've had luck clustering it using different file replication or database control methods.
Can you tell me what HA is?