Voip technology?

[Lucio]

Not as simple as plagarism being spelled wrong is it? Is the whole sentence lifted from somewhere? is OP going to plagiarise us?

It was a subtle dig at the OP for getting us to write parts of his essay for him

[colin_e]

Is VOIP the future?

Yes-

For a lot of large companies it's already here as the standard desktop phone.

It's a natural fit for PC-integrated audio, so you can easily do things like route calls to the right desk/machine based on where the user logs in (for hot desk environments).

For consumers, things like Skype, SIP phones and mobile->WiFi gateways are progressively making "everything data".

There are some caveats and risks-

Many smaller companies don't realise their data networks are not up to the level of quality, resilience or management required to support voice. If your data network slows down a bit at lunchtime, or has an occasional 15-minute outage it might be bearable. If the the phones start to make people sound like cybermen every lunchtime that doesn't go down so well.

If you have to put in a parallel high grade data network for voice, a lot of the cost benefits go away.

You're at home. 2 hours into a power cut you trip in the dark and break a leg. Your VOIP desk phone won't work because there is no power for your LAN. Your mobile might not work because the power to the cellular tower is off too, or you had no mobile coverage and were using a GSM microcell. EVERYTHING depends on your home router, and the power is off! Convergence tends to create single points of failure. Many homes in the UK no longer have a landline phone connected.

Regards: colin_e

[Fatboy40]

This doesn't help the OP, but I've been watching this thread and I'm surprised that no one has mentioned security at all in regards to VoIP/SIP.

The amount of brute force SIP attacks are increasing at a rapid rate, port scans against IP's trying to find people who are silly enough to to have ID's and password that are identical etc.

And tools like SIPVicious don't help us at all

[Fatboy40]

This doesn't help the OP, but I've been watching this thread and I'm surprised that no one has mentioned security at all in regards to VoIP/SIP.

The amount of brute force SIP attacks are increasing at a rapid rate, port scans against IP's trying to find people who are silly enough to to have ID's and password that are identical etc.

And tools like SIPVicious don't help us at all

Hopefully this is just pure coincidence, but a brute force attack occured on our phone system over the weekend, probably using just such a tool as above.

Very secure passwords on the SIP id's along with a few other measures dealt with this, however, it did cause a few log files to massively balloon in size which in itself could cause a failure of the phone system.

So there we have the perfect example of how security is king when using a SIP server that is presented to the Internet. You could limit the range of IP that can connect using your firewall, but that's not so easy if you have a bunch of roaming users who run remote extensions from hotels etc.

[nvfx-dragon]

Hi im very sorry to hear about that happening, i bet your glad the correct security proceedures were in place though! one day people will actually respect each other!

[kidzer]

So there we have the perfect example of how security is king when using a SIP server that is presented to the Internet. You could limit the range of IP that can connect using your firewall, but that's not so easy if you have a bunch of roaming users who run remote extensions from hotels etc.

Remote-Access VPN and don't expose it to the internet? Or is that not a suitable option in your case?

[Jonatron]

VOIP will be the future as soon as Steve manages to set up the new kit we've got at HEXUS

[htid]

We've just got Cisco VOIP phones for our new offices, we were a bit dubious at first and are having a few teething troubles (today for example they all just froze then said "Registering DNS" continuously...none of us have a clue about this and having no phone system did NOT please the MD!) but I'm sure they'll work out better in the end!

[Fatboy40]

We've just got Cisco VOIP phones for our new offices...

7000 series or SPA's ?, are you running then against Unified Communications Manager ?.

(sorry for the questions, I just like knowing what others are using in the field)

[Fatboy40]

Remote-Access VPN and don't expose it to the internet? Or is that not a suitable option in your case?

Well, our security is of a reasonable strength so it's not realy an issue.

However, our users can't cope with using a softphone (a more 'senior' sales force) on their laptops so that kicks running one over a client VPN out of the question, so it's hardphones for them. So then we're on to a SIP phone that support STUN as they have a right old mixture of Internet access at home and can on occasion use the hardphone in a hotel or at an alternate location.

[htid]

7000 series or SPA's ?, are you running then against Unified Communications Manager ?.

(sorry for the questions, I just like knowing what others are using in the field)

All of what you've said went over my head I think my MD just got a consultant or something in to tell us what would be best for us and we went with that, none of us have an idea of how they work in detail (yet!). SPA504G is what's written on it, but as for this Unified Comms Manager, not a clue, sorry!

[therac]

Just a warning.
We have been using VOIP for a number of years (Asterisk, with ISDN and analogue lines in, plus Skype and Sipgate). For convenience we put up an external VOIP link for homeworkers with a seven digit random password, and didnt lock it down to IP address or VPN only (mistake)...
We got a call from BT to say we had had unusual access with a lot of calls to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan (oops) over a weekend, with an extra billing of nearly 300 quid (which of course was down to us as not BT provided equipment). Spent the next day looking at logs on the firewall. The hackers had spent nearly 3 months on a brute force attack to the password.... Turns out there is a 'feature' in SIP (or at least the version we had up) that means you can continue to test passwords at speed.
Be warned. Thank heavens BT were efficient on this occasion.