sundance-communications.com/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX VoIP & Cloud Phones, Hosted PBX, General IP Phones What do you think of this VOIP setup? Please help!

Do you guys think I will have any problems with this setup?

Mitel 3300, 50 phones with 5-10 moderate to heavy users. Dedicated cat6 to both phone and pc. About 15 phones and pc's (same building, separate office) are about 250-300 ft away from our main closet. For these 15 phones, we plan to put a switch in a secondary closet and cat6 that to our main closet the 250-300 feet away.

Here is what I would like to do. Four procurve switches, two poe 2610's and two gig 1800's. Each set totaling 72 ports each. Phones go into the 2610 and pc's get the gig ports off the 1800's. The 2610's are layer3 managed with all the standard bells and whistles. the 1800's are "lite-layer3" aka "smart switches".

Are these 1800's worth the trouble? Anybody have experience with these models?

Does the distance to the 2nd closet concern anyone or does the the 2nd switch in that closet mitigate that? Maybe fiber to this closet?

Any and all comments are welcome. I'm desperate for input, thanks!

why cat6?

the cat6 is already installed. should've mentioned that. what do you think of the rest?

I would put fiber between the closets.

I haven't used the 2610s, but I looked at the specs and they look ok. I've installed 24-port 1800s and I'm not aware of any problems.
I may be a little paranoid, but I always make sure to have proper airflow around them, I do that with all fan-less switches I install.
Fiber between the closets sounds like the better idea - 300 ft cuts it a bit close for UTP. Both switches can accept fiber transceivers so that's helpful.

We're doing almost the exact same setup - (5) 2610s for switching, Mitel 3300, one closet, and prob closer to 80-90 phones. For data (which is going to be kept seperate) we have existing Procurve 2824s (24 port gig).

Procurve's should work fine. Make sure you designate one switch as the "core" and the others as "edge". Make diagnosing a network so much more easier with the procurve tools. The 2600's should be capable of handling the PPS needed for the # of IP phones you are talking about. Either set-up VLan's or keep the network's seperate. A typical VoIP phone using ULAW will generate a packet about every 20ms. Keep that in mind when figuring out switching needs. The bandwidth is not the issue, it's the number of packets per second that the switch can handle that count in VoIP. Since you are using good switch gear it shouldn't be a problem for a single switch to handle it all. 50 phones time 50 packets per second equals 2500 pps. On a lesser switch (like something from office depot), you'd kill/over heat it. 10/100 is more then adequate as far as bandwidth goes.

Thank you so much nfcphoneman. There is money in the budget for that and it is better to be safe than sorry.

Hey SPH thanks for the input on the 2610's. Actually, I meant to say those are layer 2 switches, NOT layer 3.

Most of the sales reps I talk to keep pushing layer 3 but I think for the number of phones, the 2610's (layer 2) can do the job if configured correctly with the features it has.

orion3311 - What are the drawbacks of keeping voice and data seperate? (Excuse my limited knowledge, I'm still learning as I go here.) I understand you now manage two instead of one, but what else do you lose? Is it just the softphone?