Small Business Phone Systems????

Posts: 16 · Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 9:57 am Post subject:

jmcanedo wrote:

any phone system will work with your Vonage lines. like a previous poster said, the pbx or ksu does not care where the line comes from as long as it has a dial tone..

our norstar meridien is using 4 Vonage and 3 pots with no problem..

Any phone system will work?... what if you don't really have a "phone system" ?? For example, I have 4 pots lines running into 2 "GE Pro Series Four Line Business phone" (Actually it's a THomson Consumer Electronics, INC. Model No. 2-9451A HAC) .... I don't have a pbx... .. each phone can picks up any of the 4 pots lines coming into it, and dial outbound from any line also.

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 26, 2004 Posts: 20

At home I have a Siemens Gigaset 2 line phone which is not part of a pbx.

it works flawlessly using Vonage so any other phone system (2,3,4,... lines) should work similarly.

Posts: 16 · Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:18 am Post subject:

okay, so.... can you explain how... if I have 4 Vonage #'s, do I run 4 "lines or cables" from the MTA to the phone itself when there are only 2 ports? (and from what I read, the port #2 on the MTA is 'for future use') ??Does Vonage have some other MTA that has more ports?

as in:
port 1 = xxx-xxx-0001
port 2 = xxx-xxx-0002
port 3 = xxx-xxx-0003
port 4 = xxx-xxx-0004

??????
How could I accomplish this?

(I am asking here.. because I sent a couple of emails to vonage.com support, and they have yet to respond... plus.. I could probably get a better more sensable answer on here anyway)

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 26, 2004 Posts: 20

each Vonage box can hold 2 lines.. so if you want 4 lines, you need 2 Vonage boxes...

at the office, we have 2 Vonage boxes feeding our pbx and they work great..

Posts: 16 · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 6:52 am Post subject:

AH... okay... so... 2 MTA's, I assume plugged into a Router, and then each of them having 2 ports, for a total of 4 that I how you get 4 lines. Are the individual ports staticly assigned a Vonage phone number?

as in
box 1 port 1 is xxx-xxx-0001 and
box 2 port 2 is xxx-xxx-0002 ... etc.... ???

This info is helping me out alot... this is really starting to look like it might work for me....

Can you get the lines to roll to each other when they are busy?

Posts: 17 · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 8:05 pm Post subject: Multiple Vonage lines

I currently use two Vonage MTAs with 3 Vonage lines. The phone system I have is a vtech 40-2421, which is cordless and expandable to up to 12 handsets.

I am using a Kentrox Q2300 router to handle the QoS (you MUST have a router that is capable of giving your voice traffic higher priority if you use more than 1 MTA). With a single MTA, the MTA can provide QoS, with mutliple MTAs, I found that it works much better with a router that is capable of providing QoS.

You will need an IP address for each MTA, so you will probably need to have a static IP package with multiple IP addresses from your ISP.

Posts: 16 · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:56 pm Post subject:

So you have to have an actual IP for each MTA? You couldn't put them both behind a RTR and use NAT? OK.. I can deal with that if I have to, Comcast doesn't charge "that" much more for a static IP package. At least when you compare it to what i am paying right now for phone service. OKay, 2 MTA's, each with their own IP, each with 2 ports, giving the capability of 4 physical Vonage lines. A RTR that will do QoS for voice traffic. Sounds like it might be possible, now I really need to put together a spreadsheet to compare costs between the two solutions.

Posts: 132 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 132

titozao wrote:

Hi Mark,

thanks for the information. I thought it would require a lot of work instead of just plugging it in.

if I may ask, how many lines are you using? Are you able to transfer calls to other extensions, etc...?

thanks,
wilson

Wilson, a Vonage line works with the 816 phone system in exactly the same way as a traditional phone line.

We have three tradtional lines and three Vonage lines.

The Vonage lines work just like traditional lines, so we can transfer calls in exactly the same way. That is not a function of the phone line, it is a function of the phone system.

Posts: 79 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Dec 28, 2004 Posts: 79

We tested a really good solution for the SOHO/SMB market with IIT in Chicago. It used a Epygi IPBX and Vonage business class service. It really worked well, and we have it in all of our offices.... Here is the link which has the info.

http://www.itm.iit.edu/voip/overview.htm

(see the Vonage test beds, and project number 2)

Posts: 132 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 132

I don't see the Epygi Quadro IV IP PBXes in either diagram. What do they do?