Nutter helps a reader weigh his options on where to locate VoIP-to-analog gateways
We are considering deploying voice over IP later this year or early next year. In order to control costs, we don’t initially plan on giving everyone VoIP phones, but would stay with the single-line phones that are at several locations in various buildings. We have decided on doing the implementation using Cisco’s hardware. What we are trying to decide is where to put the VG200 VoIP-to-analog gateways – in the buildings where we have the largest concentration of analog phones or in the central phone wiring room where all the copper comes in from the various buildings. Do you have any suggestions?
– Via the Internet
There are good arguments for placing the VG200 at either location. It will be a matter of pros and cons as to which will be the better location. If you place the VG200s at each building where they are needed, you will probably want to add UPSes where each VG200 is located so there will sufficient power when commercial power isn’t available. When placing VG200s remotely, you will want to ensure that you have sufficient bandwidth coming into the building where the VG200 is so all calls have sufficient bandwidth to run on. A disadvantage with remote placing the analog gateways is that if you have to take one out of service, all extensions serviced by that unit will be down until the unit is replaced or repaired. Assuming that you are running fiber between buildings, you may also want to consider running the VG200 over more than one fiber connection so if one fiber link fails, things can continue to run over the remaining fiber.
By putting the VG200s at the central location where your existing wiring terminates from the other buildings, you have the potential for making the cutover process a little easier as you just might be able to move one extension at a time, thereby minimizing downtime by having to move all extensions at once. If your copper plant is in good condition, this is an option that could be easier to deal with. You shouldn’t have to buy as many individual UPSes, but instead just add additional capacity to the existing UPS you probably already have in the existing phone wiring room. A positive with this approach is spreading a single building across multiple VG200s, so if one were to fail or have to be taken out of service, you wouldn’t lose an entire building, but rather parts of several buildings. While losing service is not good regardless of how it happens, wouldn’t loosing a few extensions in a couple of buildings be better than losing all extensions in a single building?
