hotelwifi

I'm trying to see how this VoIP works. I do the WiFi for hotels, but haven't gotten into VoIP yet.

1. Do I need a special access point to do VoIP or will a regular 802.11B work? Can VoIP coexist with regular WiFi users as long as there is enough broadband for them all?

2. If I want to call someone across the country or world, and we both have a broadband internet connection, and both have VoIP equipment, I assume we don't even need Vonage to do this. I can call him directly over the Internet using VoIP.

3. But if I have VoIP equipment and a broadband connection and want to all someone across the country, but that person does not even have a computer or even any Internet connection, but only has a regular land line telephone, I'm tryint to figure hot the call routing goes to call him? Since he does not have VoIP equipment or a Internet connection.

I assume this is where Vonage comes in? Might Vonage be the one to have all the long distance trunks that will interface my VoIP calls to other users who only have regular wired telephone service?

4. Can I cost effectively set up my own equipment to act like Vonage does. I might want to sell VoIP to my networking customers that we do networking for. Can I myself route my customers VoIP calls to the land line where by I could bypass companies like Vonage?

Maybe this may not be too cost effective since I might have to purchase long distance trunks to do so? So do most networking companies, like I work for, who are considering selling VoIP to our clients, utilize Vonage (and similiar companies) to interface VoIP calls of their customers into regular wired telephone system?

I think you all very much for your help

Madhadder

VOIP is a huge can o'worms I suggest you head over to Amazon anf get
some (If not all) of the Cisco VOIP books you can, cause your gonna need'em.

#1 - No special AP's are needed. 11B is OK but 11G would be better
especially if you put both voice & data on the same network. You
will need to seperacte the Traffic with VLANS.

#2 - If it's setup like a interoffice connection, then no vonage is not
required. However both ends must use some $$$ Cisco Call manager
Boxes and Gateways.

#3 - For this you will need vonage or some other VOIP provider, unless
you want to setup multiple POPs around the world and install/control
& manage your own network. Your VOIP call will go via the internet
to vonage's VOIP gateway, closest to the persone you are calling.
The VOIP call will then be "Offnetted" by a Voice/PSTN Gateway
which send the call request out the the normal Phone lines and rings
his phone. For hime to call you it's the same, but in reverse.

#4 - Sure you can, but you better have some serioues $$$ cause it ain't
gonna be cheap. You will need to setup a POP "Point of presence"
in a Colo somewhere to serve that area/areacode. But having 1 POP
limits you to where you can "Offnet" and recieve Calls. The way around
this is to keep the VOIP traffic on the Network as far as possible. Thus
you will need to setup multiple POPS around the US. Say 1 in each state.
Now your long distance calls can be treated as local, or at least closer
to their final dest. than they were before.

In a basic VOIP POP setup you will need to colo atleast 2-3 routers
and voice gateways and atleast 1 callmanager PC. Get your self the
the fastest Internet Conx. you can afford (Depending on # of Cust)
for your rack. On the PSTN side you can start off with a T1 line which
I believe will allow for 20-30 active calls (In & Outbound). If you want
more then get 2 T1's or a T3. Then once you have all that grab yourself
a block of phone numbers for the areas you will server. Usually this can
be an entire Prefix in an area code (954-726-0000 thru 954-726-9999)
for Examp.

Hope this works for you.

__________________
Legends may sleep, but they never die!!!!

hotelwifi

Thank you so much Madhatter:

You obviously know this stuff.

I'm looking at offering some of this VoIP along with regular WiFi. I didn't know about having to seperate the data and VoIP with VLAN.

Fortunately we have some networking people at our company that do VLANs a lot.

Thank you for your insight. I see from this that it is better for me to go with some VoIP company that can do the switching into and out of the wired network. Plus I guess they would manage a national database of assigned phone numbers, so no one else could have my phone number.

For your number 2 answer, (assuming I did it this way) I wonder what phone number I would give the equipment, since I wouldn't need a company like Vonage to go through?

Thank you,

Bob