8 seperate lines in office... what do i need?

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 4

greetings. i recently placed my order with vonage, and after speaking with someone who, although nice, was not from this country... i am now set up to receive 8 lines from vonage for my office. currently, each phone jack in the office runs a different phone line. only one line in the office is used for internet and it's running into a netgear wgr614 router.

thus far, my experience in ordering from vonage hasn't been the greatest. the initial call was difficult to understand at best (i have a theory: if you're selling a product and/or service to an american market, use english-speaking individuals who live in the country) but the representative was a trooper. unfortunately, she didn't tell me anything about what i'd be receiving via mail nor how much my credit card would be billed initially.

so what i'm wondering is this: of the nine lines coming into this office, only one of them is used for my dsl. this dsl is fed into the netgear wgr614 router. this router only has four ports on it. will vonage supply me with some sort of device to go to all eight seperate lines? will i need to buy a switch of some sort?

i understand the whole voip concept, but this is a bit more advanced than i'm used to.

thanks in advance.

Posts: 216 · Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 12:48 pm Post subject:

Well, the first thing that I would ask you is what is your DSL speed at the office? You will need a lot of bandwidth to run 8 lines. Very Happy

Then, I suppose what you will receive depends on what they ordered for you. I suppose they could be sending you 8 different adapters. Or maybe they will send you 4 adapters and configure 2 lines on each. Did you sign up for a business plan since this is a business?

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 4

sure did and got a decent deal on a business account also. unlimited on all lines. i attempted to ask them what they were sending me, but apparently the language barrier was too much. i'm just hoping that i don't have to go out and buy more networking equipment, although no matter what, the ends will justify the means (i'm saving more than $1k a month on phone service).

Posts: 216 · Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 12:56 pm Post subject:

So what is your DSL speed at the office?

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 4

doh! i knew i forgot something. i'm in the process of getting this upped by my isp, but at the present second it's an astounding...

487 down/721 up

again, this is pre-isp upping...

Posts: 423 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Oct 03, 2005 Posts: 423

I would try and get double those speeds... 8 vonage lines times 90 kbps = more bandwidth than you are likely to get on your best day with current DSL service. And don't forget you may want to get your computers on line at somepoint during the day.

The routers will have to be manually set with different IP addresses since they will all come set at 192.168.15.1, and you can't have duplicates on your LAN. Also they may have to get firmware upgraded as well.

Wiring these devices is going to be the real challenge, once you have your super new Internet service in place, now you have to get the lines connected to your phones. If you are going to be using the wiring in your office with multiple phones like this, you had best hire the services of a professional.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 4

i will not be using the internal wiring of the building. it's too old and decrepit to even consider. rather, i'll probably just run the lines out of whatever equipment they give me, up and into the drop ceiling, and down to each of the eight phones. would this be considered reasonable? it more than likely wouldn't exceed the line segment length as my office isn't that large, even with all of the detours each line would be taking.

Posts: 423 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Oct 03, 2005 Posts: 423

That sounds pretty good, you can run I think up to 50 feet of phone wire before it starts to degrade the signal. Good call on avoiding the ancient wiring, it's only going to introduce noise/complications. So, knowing that I'd say get a good internet connection (and I don't mean a 'shared T1') and you should be all set.

Posts: 28 · Vonage Representative Joined: Nov 09, 2005 Posts: 28

ColdGin wrote:

That sounds pretty good, you can run I think up to 50 feet of phone wire before it starts to degrade the signal. Good call on avoiding the ancient wiring, it's only going to introduce noise/complications. So, knowing that I'd say get a good internet connection (and I don't mean a 'shared T1') and you should be all set.

Posts: 2257

Whitey wrote:

so what i'm wondering is this: of the nine lines coming into this office, only one of them is used for my dsl. this dsl is fed into the netgear wgr614 router. this router only has four ports on it. will vonage supply me with some sort of device to go to all eight seperate lines? will i need to buy a switch of some sort?

Vonage will likely supply you with either four or eight (depending on whether they configure them to use one or both ports each.

So, if your current router has four ports, you'll need to go out (most likely) and get yourself an inexpensive switch. Get a nice 6 or 8 port switch and you'll have plenty of room for all your Vonage gear plus a few ports for computers.

And I'll reiterate what a few others have said. YOU DO NOT have enough bandwidth to support that many lines, unless you want to switch them down to 30k each, then the voice quality isn't going to be all that great. At a minimum, you want a guaranteed rate of 720k each way, and you can't realistically use the connection for anything else, at all, with 720k and eight Vonage lines.