SBS2000 and Avaya IP Office

Ok Gang.... this is "big"

Convinced a customer(about 25 desktops) to replace old dilapidated telephone
system with a brand new Avaya IP Office (VOIP telephone switch) and new CAT6
network cabling and new IP telephone desksets.

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2600, dual xenon, 1GB RAM, GB NIC'd server running
SBS2000 with dual NIC ISA.

connectivity is dell powerconnect 2124 switch.

IP Office includes (2) Cajun switches.

The questions are:

1. anybody done this?

2. will VOIP traffic impact network performance?

3. any know "pitfalls"?

4. any ISA implications?

5. should the cajuns work on a different subnet?

6. should SBS2K DNS server assign addressing to telephones?

7. should the desktops be "plugged" into telephone desksets or directly
back to the PC2124 switch.

Thanks in advance....BTW I hope this sparks a lively discussion as I think
we all will be confronting this type of the near future.

Thanks

RickD

Rick
Tue Sep 21 16:11:10 CDT 2004

Correction in #6 meant to say DHCP
"Rick Dilley" <RDilley@tesslerweiss.com> wrote in message
news:#2KXc5BoEHA.2300@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Ok Gang.... this is "big"
>
> Convinced a customer(about 25 desktops) to replace old dilapidated
telephone
> system with a brand new Avaya IP Office (VOIP telephone switch) and new
CAT6
> network cabling and new IP telephone desksets.
>
> I have a Dell PowerEdge 2600, dual xenon, 1GB RAM, GB NIC'd server running
> SBS2000 with dual NIC ISA.
>
> connectivity is dell powerconnect 2124 switch.
>
> IP Office includes (2) Cajun switches.
>
> The questions are:
>
> 1. anybody done this?
>
> 2. will VOIP traffic impact network performance?
>
> 3. any know "pitfalls"?
>
> 4. any ISA implications?
>
> 5. should the cajuns work on a different subnet?
>
> 6. should SBS2K DNS server assign addressing to telephones?
>
> 7. should the desktops be "plugged" into telephone desksets or directly
> back to the PC2124 switch.
>
> Thanks in advance....BTW I hope this sparks a lively discussion as I think
> we all will be confronting this type of the near future.
>
> Thanks
>
> RickD
>
>

Jim
Tue Sep 21 16:25:23 CDT 2004

I have an account using Cisco VOIP. Everything goes through the Cisco
switches. The phones connect to Cisco switches. The computers plug in
to the phones.

SBS does dns for the workstations. I see nothing in my dhcp that
suggests the phones know or care about my dhcp. I think the phone
vendor may have programmed the phones with an ip when they did their
stuff but it is not on my network. SBS and workstations works with bog
standard 192.168.16.x. I have no idea what the phones use for ips.
Don't care and I do not recall it being an issue when it was set up.

SBS has 2 nics. Vendor set up vlan to deal with 2 nics. Server
connects directly to Cisco switches. Once again vlan to seperate out
the public versus private ips.


Vendor set up another port with a real world ip for the auditors. When
the auditors show up I plug in a little router to that port and give
the 4 auditors their internet connection seperate from the SBS
network.

A good vendor should answer all your questions. My phone vendor did
not get what I was doing at first. They like to offer totally phone
and IT support. They want to take over the servers and dictate
everything. They wanted about 3-4 times what we charge for annual
support. You can do a lot with $30-40k that they wanted about our
fees. I just keept repeating what I had to have and they finally gave
me what I asked for.

"Rick Dilley" <RDilley@tesslerweiss.com> wrote:

>Ok Gang.... this is "big"
>
>Convinced a customer(about 25 desktops) to replace old dilapidated telephone
>system with a brand new Avaya IP Office (VOIP telephone switch) and new CAT6
>network cabling and new IP telephone desksets.
>
>I have a Dell PowerEdge 2600, dual xenon, 1GB RAM, GB NIC'd server running
>SBS2000 with dual NIC ISA.
>
>connectivity is dell powerconnect 2124 switch.
>
>IP Office includes (2) Cajun switches.
>
>The questions are:
>
>1. anybody done this?
>
>2. will VOIP traffic impact network performance?
>
>3. any know "pitfalls"?
>
>4. any ISA implications?
>
>5. should the cajuns work on a different subnet?
>
>6. should SBS2K DNS server assign addressing to telephones?
>
>7. should the desktops be "plugged" into telephone desksets or directly
>back to the PC2124 switch.
>
>Thanks in advance....BTW I hope this sparks a lively discussion as I think
>we all will be confronting this type of the near future.
>
>Thanks
>
>RickD
>

Jim B. SBS MVP
remove the mvp to send email

David
Wed Sep 22 07:36:37 CDT 2004

Hi Rick,

Each in turn...

1. We run IP Office and SBS2K here in our office and are also Avaya Silver
Business Partners for the IP Office range.

2. Unlikely. Using standard compression, a voice call is compressed down to
something like 8k per call with perhaps another 12k of header information.
Thereby about 20k or so per call. Not going to tickle a 100Mb network's
performance.

3. Certainly. Using the Cajun switches will help but you should also look to
minimise any broadcast traffic on the network. If you have any misconfigured
kit on a network, you'll probably notice it in terms of reduced VoIP quality
[usually with 'choppy' calls].

4. Not if the IP Office is on the internal side of your network. If you're
intending sticking it on the outside of your SBS box, then you'd need to
open ports for the likes of Voicemail and PhoneManager operation. Be aware
also that you won't get the Busy Lamp functionality on PhoneManager speed
dials if you put the IP Office on the outside of your SBS box [it has to be
on the same physical LAN as the PhoneManager software to work fully]

5. No great need to be...

6. Yes. There are however specific options that you should add to your DHCP
scope in relation to 'pointing' IP phones at the correct TFTP Server and the
like. There is a specific technical document relating to just this in the
Avaya Tech Engineer Toolkit CD.

7. I suppose this will depend more on your physical network limitations :-)

Your IP Office supplier should be able to handle all this however.

Hope that helps,




David
AKD Systems Ltd
Edinburgh, Great Britain

Steve
Wed Sep 22 08:16:45 CDT 2004

Rick Dilley wrote:

> Ok Gang.... this is "big"
>
> Convinced a customer(about 25 desktops) to replace old dilapidated
> telephone system with a brand new Avaya IP Office (VOIP telephone
> switch) and new CAT6 network cabling and new IP telephone desksets.
>
> I have a Dell PowerEdge 2600, dual xenon, 1GB RAM, GB NIC'd server
> running SBS2000 with dual NIC ISA.
>
> connectivity is dell powerconnect 2124 switch.
>
> IP Office includes (2) Cajun switches.
>
> The questions are:
>
> 1. anybody done this?
>
> 2. will VOIP traffic impact network performance?
>
> 3. any know "pitfalls"?
>
> 4. any ISA implications?
>
> 5. should the cajuns work on a different subnet?
>
> 6. should SBS2K DNS server assign addressing to telephones?
>
> 7. should the desktops be "plugged" into telephone desksets or
> directly back to the PC2124 switch.
>
> Thanks in advance....BTW I hope this sparks a lively discussion as I
> think we all will be confronting this type of the near future.
>
> Thanks
>
> RickD

I have a customer running with both SBS2003 and Avaya IP Office. We
treat them as separate, although the Avaya unit is plugged in to the
network switch. The only thing we had to do was turn off DHCP in the
Avaya (and stupid engineer#2 turned it back on a week later, when the
phone lines were actually commissioned).

The phones don't appear to have IP addresses, but the users can run the
Avaya software on their PCs (without admin privileges!) and manage
their phones, so they're happy.

--
Steve Foster [SBS MVP]
---------------------------------------
MVPs do not work for Microsoft. Please reply only to the newsgroups.

David
Wed Sep 22 09:01:02 CDT 2004

Hi Steve,

The customer you refer to is probably using either the Avaya digital
handsets or standard analogue ones in that case.

Like the story about the DHCP! I remember back in the dim and distant past
[from way back when the product was Network Alchemy before it evolved into
IP Office] when certain 'resellers' [I use the term loosely!] would try to
upgrade the firmware remotely... :-) Nice red light on the customer box and
a drive for the reseller to get there and fix it!

:-)

Cheers,



David




"Steve Foster [SBS MVP]" <steve.foster@picamar.co.uk> wrote in message
news:xn0dnkkyd9v48zy00l@msnews.microsoft.com...
> Rick Dilley wrote:
>
>> Ok Gang.... this is "big"
>>
>> Convinced a customer(about 25 desktops) to replace old dilapidated
>> telephone system with a brand new Avaya IP Office (VOIP telephone
>> switch) and new CAT6 network cabling and new IP telephone desksets.
>>
>> I have a Dell PowerEdge 2600, dual xenon, 1GB RAM, GB NIC'd server
>> running SBS2000 with dual NIC ISA.
>>
>> connectivity is dell powerconnect 2124 switch.
>>
>> IP Office includes (2) Cajun switches.
>>
>> The questions are:
>>
>> 1. anybody done this?
>>
>> 2. will VOIP traffic impact network performance?
>>
>> 3. any know "pitfalls"?
>>
>> 4. any ISA implications?
>>
>> 5. should the cajuns work on a different subnet?
>>
>> 6. should SBS2K DNS server assign addressing to telephones?
>>
>> 7. should the desktops be "plugged" into telephone desksets or
>> directly back to the PC2124 switch.
>>
>> Thanks in advance....BTW I hope this sparks a lively discussion as I
>> think we all will be confronting this type of the near future.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> RickD
>
> I have a customer running with both SBS2003 and Avaya IP Office. We
> treat them as separate, although the Avaya unit is plugged in to the
> network switch. The only thing we had to do was turn off DHCP in the
> Avaya (and stupid engineer#2 turned it back on a week later, when the
> phone lines were actually commissioned).
>
> The phones don't appear to have IP addresses, but the users can run the
> Avaya software on their PCs (without admin privileges!) and manage
> their phones, so they're happy.
>
> --
> Steve Foster [SBS MVP]
> ---------------------------------------
> MVPs do not work for Microsoft. Please reply only to the newsgroups.

Steve
Wed Sep 22 12:41:35 CDT 2004

David Elders wrote:

> Hi Steve,
>
> The customer you refer to is probably using either the Avaya digital
> handsets or standard analogue ones in that case.

They're Avaya supplied handsets. AFAIK, they're digital.

>
> Like the story about the DHCP! I remember back in the dim and distant
> past [from way back when the product was Network Alchemy before it
> evolved into IP Office] when certain 'resellers' [I use the term
> loosely!] would try to upgrade the firmware remotely... :-) Nice red
> light on the customer box and a drive for the reseller to get there
> and fix it!
>

Well, the full story is:

Engineer #1 from the supplier comes out with the IP Office and a load
of phones. I'm on-site at the same time, and we discuss the "plan" and
he agrees to do things my way (the client have no IT expertise of their
own & rely on me).

We do all the setup, including disabling DHCP on the Avaya unit,
entering all the extension numbers and names, etc. and plug in some of
the phones. The system is not live, because BT are not going to turn up
for another week or two.

All that is required when BT commission the lines is for them to be
connected to the Avaya. For which engineer #2 is despatched. I'm *not*
on-site on the day he turns up.

The first I know about it is when someone else in the building calls me
to complain that "the internet is down". After a few minutes diagnosis
with the user, I establish that he has some funny IP in completely the
wrong range. Since this is a laptop that does come in and out of the
network, I assume that XP is throwing some little wobbly and has not
picked up the DHCP properly for some reason, so I have the user
disconnect and reconnect to the network. Gets the same wrong IP again.
At this point, little warning bells start to ring in my head - the IP
he was quoting sounded vaguely familiar.

I get the user to transfer me to one of the managers, and ask him if
any work is being done on the network - and of course he tells me the
phone engineer is there, and that he has some questions for me. It
turns out engineer #2 has done a factory reset on the Avaya, and lost
all the settings that engineer #1 and I had already configured. And of
course, this also meant the damn thing was broadcasting DHCP, and the
SBS DHCP had shut down.

I got to talk to engineer #2 on the phone, and chewed him out something
good. He tried to tell me that the Avaya hadn't been reset, but he knew
I knew he was lying. Once things were sorted out, I told the client
that that engineer was never to be allowed on-site again!

--
Steve Foster [SBS MVP]
---------------------------------------
MVPs do not work for Microsoft. Please reply only to the newsgroups.