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I have three buildings and three IPK boxes. I want to hook them all together so that we can intercom and transfer and act like we are all in one building, seeing each others status on the Quick Touch buttons. I want all three locations to have shared access to CO lines. I want all three locations to share the same voice mail card.

I've been told to get a PRI card for each box and Point-2-Point T1 lines to connect our buildings. But a T1 line seems like antiquated technology when I have '5MB DownLoad/1.5MB UpLoad' fiber for my internet connection. Is there a better, cheaper, faster way to connect these boxes?

Rather than going T1 with "channels" and "MPLS" or something like that... can't I just do some port forwarding on a router, and get some card to plug them into the network, and give them the ip addresses of the other two boxes? Or are these systems not that smart? Thanks.

-- Drew in SE Pennsylvania --
welcome to the BB.

I am not an IPK, or network, engineer, but it sounds like you have been talking to a network CG. Sounds easy, just assign an IP address and away you go. Sorry, telephony is a bit more complicated than just "jumping into the Internet cloud" and then "just popping out" at the other end.

If you will look at the "Installers" tab at the top of the page you should find a qualified installer or contact your original installer to address your wants and desires.

Good Luck.
You've been given a quote on connecting 3 separate systems to function as one. The installing dealer is planning on using KCCIS to link all three systems to function as you have described.

Depending on how many phones will be at the outlying sites, you may be able to install a PVA card for each site and use IP phones at each site instead of using 3 separate KSU's.

The IPK has a maximum of 120 ports (including virtuals), while the IPK II has a maximum of 256 ports (not including 256 virtuals).


** I would suggest upgrading your main site to an IPK II and running IP phones at your remote sites via 2 PVA cards.

D
If the 3 systems he is talking about are the IPK and not the IPK II, the PVA card will not work, they would need the IAD, if the decide to go VoIP on the 2 locations
PVA cards will work in an IPK as long as it has the proper firmware loaded on it.
All that paperwork that I have, short of the actual install receipts, say that the two boxes we currently have are IPK I's expandable to 144 ports. I don't think we've discussed going up to the IPK II at the new facility or not.

++ Youth Office = 16 extentions
++ New CLC building = at least 16 to start, might go up to 48 inhouse phones
++ Old NLPC building = dropping down to 6 extentions for now... one cable modem into that facility.

I will have a master phone on my desk with quick touch buttons for every single extention that we own. With the IP phones, will I have a realtime "are they on the phone" light for their quick touch button?

Here is info from the quote he sent me for networking two site...
Networking 2 sites
(2) PVA(X)-U10 Cards
(1) CPUI R4700 Upgrade Kit

Setting up the PRI connection at one location
(1) PKU 192-2U Upgrade
(1) PRI(1)-U20 PRI Card
(1) CLK6-U10 Clock Card
**Networking requires T1 connectivity between locations**

But I guess what I don't get is, what is the difference between a point to point T1 making the connection where the Telco and the lines create the link between the two boxes with some kind of a box on each end doing load ballencing between voice and data... and using fancy routers and a VPN like thing between two IP addresses to accomplish the same link.
Quote
Originally posted by p2ii:
PVA cards will work in an IPK as long as it has the proper firmware loaded on it.
Tell me more.. As far as I know the IPK1 system hardware will only recognize the old IAD card which is now out of production..
They don't even make the IAD cards anymore do they?

PVA only.

D
If thats the case with the PVA card working in the IPK I have learned something new.

Thanks
Dan S
Just like the IAD cards where you load the firmware for whatever application you are using. Basically, the same is done on the PVA card.
Looks like p2ii is correct that you can install a PVA as a 8 or 16 port Megaco card in a IPK1 system. The card is configured in the IPK as a ESI8 or ESIB16 card. No mention of it being used as any form of trunk card..
Are your 3 buildings together at one site??
If so, you might want to atleast consider installing copper pairs. We ended up installing 1000ft of 100-pair between two buildings. The cost was comparable, to the other options, but the option comes without all of possible problems
that the other options risks. I have a good clean install, buried underground, with excellent quality. My longest cable run is over 1600 ft. (we have two huge buildings.)
If these 3 buildings are on the same campus, you can run them all of off one IPK I KSU if you can get tie cables runback to the main building. Otherwise,I would recommend going with the PVA cards & set up CCISoIP. This is easy to do & works great.
Have you considered the monthly cost of 3 point to point T1s. If you can not run copper pair to the other sites you might be better off going with Centrex VoiP or a VoiP system
Hello Friends... I'm sorry for resurecting an old post, frown 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!" aok

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)
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