Hello Friends... I'm sorry for resurecting an old post,
but I don't feel as though I succesfully closed this thread out for any future users who want an answer to this same question later... so here is the final status of this.
Three Site VPN, with NEC IPK Elite IPK II You don't need a T1 to do VPN's for phones. :read: I had to configure 84-05 with the internal IP Address of the current box and 50-03 with the internal IP Address of the remote boxes. I'm sure that's not everything that we did, as he created F-Routes and virtual ports and extentions for extra-building transfers and updating of extention-in-use lights between buildings. But those were the basic setup items and I'm up and running.
We have occational problems with the VOIP going down, while the VPN is still up and active and I have to press the reset button on the VOIP card in the affected building. We also had an inital bug with the first install because there was a service pack that contained a flaw which crashed the VOIP card after 4 and a half or five minutes of conversation. Upgrading to the proper pack fixed that... but we still loose it from time to time. My installer is still working on that...
But
my conclusion is that I do not need to spend $1600 a month for T1 lines in all three buildings. FIOS is cheaper ($100 / month / location for static IP's... so $300 total rather than $1600), faster and better than small, limited bandwidth channels. The routers we have are capabile of class of service and quality of service, however with 5mb Download and 1.5 MB / second upload speeds, we haven't found the need to configure this. Occationally, we hear echo in our conversations, but I hear you get that on a T-1 connection too. But contrary to Ken's initial response, My experience says to me, that Yes, it really actually is, just as simple as "jumping into the Internet cloud" and then "just popping out" at the other end. To quote the loud booming voice from a PBS show I watched as a child...
"I CANnnnn... BE DONEnnnnn!"
Thanks everyone for your help!! If I wanted to do further experimentation , I'd take down the VPN... Do a little network sniffing to see what ports I'm using and then setup the Routers with port forwarding on those ports. Then I'd go into 84-05 and 50-03 and change the interal IP addresses to the outside static IP's of my FIOS connections to see if it would work without the VPN. I'd venture to say that it would, but I haven't tried it yet... (If it aint broke, don't fix it).
CARD SETUP... ESIB (16) running IPK II
COID (4)
COID (4)
CCISoIP(24)
