

Ask HN - What Virtual PBX Do I Use - strooltz

I'm looking to ditch Vonage VOIP in our small office (less than 10 employees).  I'd like to migrate to a VOIP/Virtual PBX system.  Grasshopper looks nice but we need to be able to send/rcv faxes from a "real" fax machine as well as have "real" phones ring (as opposed to cell phones, etc).  Any recommendations?
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nixme
I asked a similar question sometime back and there were good responses:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=865297>

I ended up rolling FreeSwitch on a dedicated server on-site. I found it to be
_very_ extensible and reliable and I would almost always recommend it over
Asterisk. Also deployed a couple Linksys SPA-3102 analog-to-IP gateway devices
for existing lines - this is your best bet with faxes which transmit poorly
over the public internet (unless you deal with T.38 and all that). I also use
Flowroute (<http://www.flowroute.com/>) for all outgoing calls and for an
extra incoming phone line (what's known as a DID). Their rates are reasonable
and support is good, no problems so far. All extensions are using Polycom
Soundpoint phones which sound great, have the best speakerphones I've heard,
and are extremely customizable to boot. Although their XML config format was
created by a madman :) Email me if you want more info about our setup.

Alternatively, check out Phonebooth, which I believe just launched the other
day. They allow you to use Polycom phones too: <http://www.phonebooth.com/>
and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1194615>

~~~
oomkiller
Flowroute now supports inbound t.38, not sure about outbound support. Makes
faxes work over ip!

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viraptor
Disclaimer: I work for a hosted PBX provider, but not in US, so won't
recommend anyone anyways.

If you value your mental health and don't want to hire an onsite, on-call VoIP
specialist do _not_ try to setup your own PBX. Sure - sometimes it works and
you can do a lot of crazy stuff with a software PBX; in reality you want it to
be up 24/7 and ensuring the quality of pstn termination, local network and
configuration of such setup is at least one additional full-time job for the
first couple of months. In reality if you have a problem with some "prepared"
solution like freepbx / trixbox / whatever and have no support contract,
you're left on your own with a system you don't understand and with no
telephony - not a good option. Unless you need some very special
functionality, just pay for the service. Do not be fooled by "simplicity" of
solutions like trixbox - if something doesn't work, you still have to learn
the whole stack to know how to fix it.

Solutions like grasshopper are cool and that's the kind of service I'd
recommend. What you should look for is: how do they handle faxes (only T.38 is
reliable), can you setup a divert number (like a mobile) for situations when
your network is down, how much will it cost to get additional internal and
external numbers. Bonus point - do they support wideband codecs? It might seem
stupid, but the quality difference is amazing (only for internal calls).

If you're an MS-based shop, you might want to look at hosted OCS offers.
Phones supporting it are a bit more expensive, but the ability to integrate
with your emails, calendar, voicemail, etc. over the phone is really cool if
you travel a lot. If you have a high volume of calls, you might also look for
solutions that provide reception with a virtual switchboard apps - they're a
bit more comfortable for a lot of call transfers than looking up numbers.

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kochbeck
I've been curious what the real benefit is of an operation that needs an
onsite (versus multisite) phone system for fewer than, eh... the size of a
single 16-24 station line card to use VoIP in the first place? If you've got
under 10 people, you might be able to get away with a used 3x8 Norstar which
has the approximate maintenance overhead of a desk lamp. And in some areas,
you could probably be even better off than getting a key system with good old
Centrex.

Again, this is largely curiosity. But when you start getting into maintenance
and UI and latency and encoding support and QoS from your ISP and whatever
else you have to care about to make simple dialtone work, I wonder if maybe
the problem is getting nerded to death for no good reason?

~~~
nixme
You're right, the complexity of these VOIP-based systems is much higher. But
sometimes it's worth it for both cost and flexibility. I think each business
needs to evaluate what's right for them.

For example, in the setup I described in my other comment, the business wanted
to move away from a Lucent/Avaya Partner system they had been using for over a
decade. They had 3 lines and about 15 extensions and were somewhat happy with
it. The system for many years had, as you say, the "maintenance overhead of a
desk lamp" but it was starting to drop voicemails randomly, the phones sucked,
adding more lines meant buying one of those extension modules, etc. Plus the
building was being renovated and running just CAT6 everywhere instead of
separate ethernet and phone lines was very appealing.

Buying an inexpensive Dell rack server, Polycom phones, and a couple Linksys
analog gateways was much cheaper than the initial investment they spent a
decade ago. Since they kept the analog lines, which are useful for fax
machines and security systems, there was no need to really worry about QoS
initially since internal network bandwidth was plentiful. This alone fixed the
problems of the aging system and they got voicemails and faxes delivered via
email, shared directories browsable directly from phones, proper call parking,
and a ton of other small features.

The cost benefit came when we added an external VOIP provider later. Now they
could have unlimited simultaneous inbound and outbound calls for a single
DID/caller ID and just pay a flat-rate per minute. At their usage, this came
out much cheaper (4x) than the deals negotiated with Verizon locally. And the
concept of individual lines that could be busy just melted away. The system is
still configured to fallback on the couple analog lines if the internet goes
out, but the rate plans have been reduced to the bare minimum so that incoming
calls stay free.

EDIT: Almost forgot, another key benefit of a software switch is the easy
integration it allows with your backend apps. For our internal rails-based
order processing app, I implemented dial-on-click (ala Google Voice) and call
history logs for all our vendors and customers (see librevox and mod_xml_cdr
for FreeSwitch if you want to do something similar) in a day.

But viraptor is right, ensuring all the fallbacks work correctly and are
tested takes time, and it might not be the wisest way to spend time if you
don't understand what you're getting into.

------
jeebusroxors
I would recommend asterisk (<http://www.asterisk.org/>). Beware: it may be a
bit overkill, and configuration is a bit in depth but it will have all the
features want now, and could ever need (check out AGI scripting in your
research).

You may also want to look into trixbox, which is an asterisk server with a
bunch of addons, including full web based configuration already configured.

I do not have much experience with faxing but I'm pretty sure if you want to
fax from a real machine over VOIP you may run into problems, but I believe
there are options for email to fax.

As for real phones ringing you'll need ATAs, which can be picked up pretty
cheap, or you can go with SIP phones (a bit more pricey but more functions) so
the whole idea may be a bit more than you're looking to get into.

------
spamizbad
I currently have a small office that depends on faxing. I'd ditch fax if I
could, but my clients are funny in their ways.

Anyway, I'm using Asterisk 1.6.2 with FreePBX 2.0 and Broadvox is my SIP
provider. My system is set up to receive faxes on the Asterisk PBX and email
them to a mailing list of employees (this is configured through FreePBX). I
also have a Grandstream GXW-4004 to provide FXS ports for the fax machine and
analog phones that aren't important enough to replace with expensive VOIP
handsets.

Note: I never got the analog fax machine to send _and_ receive. Depending on
how I set the fax detect on the Grandstream, I could do either-or, but not
both. So my PBX receives faxes and my machine sends them. This is likely a
PEBKAC matter, but I can't really be bothered to put forth the time to work
this final gremlin out of my system.

My advice to anyone doing faxing over VoIP is the following:

1) If possible, don't.

2) Make sure your SIP provider supports VOIP faxing. Some don't with good
reason: it's a bitch to support.

3) Make sure your SIP provider support G.711 with T.38.

4) Make sure your ISP does not strip QoS headers (In this case DiffServ
EF)from IP packets. Your ISP will ignore them, obvious, but you definitely
don't want them stripped or overwritten.

5) Make sure your VOIP packets have a DiffServ EF value in their headers.

6) Make sure any router(s) and switch(es) are configured properly to give top
priority to your VOIP traffic. Failure to do so will likely result in jitter
on your calls and you'll be unable to successfully send/receive faxes.

7a) If possible, don't run your _primary_ PBX in a virtualized enivornment.
Competition for system resources may create unwanted latency on your Asterisk
VM resulting in jitter and failed faxes.

7b)With that said, I would definitely keep a cold or hot "spare" PBX running
in a VM to spin up in the event of an outage.

Good luck!

------
MichaelGG
Unless you don't value your time much, I wouldn't bother dealing with any
software setup yourself. (I've hacked a bit on the FreeSWITCH project, and I
still would just buy a hosted solution from someone for my own PBX rather than
deal with it myself.)

There's plenty of hosted PBX systems out there, but I've heard a lot of great
things about RingCentral. (And no, I don't work for them. If anything, they're
somewhat of a competitor.)

------
blubb
I'm not in the US so I can't recommend any particular provider.
<http://www.voip-info.org/> has a lot of information about both providers and
equipment.

\- For hosting the PBX yourself without learning Asterisk or FreeSWITCH, I can
recommend Askozia PBX, which is based on m0n0wall: <http://www.askozia.com/>

I've also used FreePBX-based systems like TrixBox CE, which are more full-
featured and more customizable, but might take more effort to upgrade.

\- For reliable faxing, make sure your VoIP provider supports the T.38
protocol and get an ATA (analogue adapter) that supports it. You can then set
up T.38 passthrough in your PBX.

\- For equipment, I'd recommend going with one of the "known" brands. I've
used Linksys SPA9xx and Snom phones, but read forums to see what people
recommend for the PBX you choose. Keep in mind that a lot of the buttons and
features on the phone might not work "out of the box", depending on the PBX
you choose. I'd stay away from no-name brands unless you have tried them
yourself or have very good recommendations.

------
evgen
This is a hard space to get real reviews that are not either PR puff pieces or
providers stuffing in shill reviews. Are you working with phones that support
a real SIP stack or will this be taking existing analog/POTS phones and
attaching adapters? Are you willing/interested in dealing with the setup and
maintenance costs of running your own PBX via Asterix? Two that I have had
relatively good experiences with are Nextiva and Vocalocity and I have heard
reasonably good things about Packet8 (those subtle qualifiers you see there
are because there is always _something_ you can complain about for any
particular VOIP provider -- no one has reached the level of being "great"
yet.) Nextiva has decent virtual fax services and can support a real fax
machine with an adapter, but my adapter just shipped yesterday so I can't yet
say whether or not it works as advertised or how well it integrates into the
rest of their vFax system.

------
cpr
We have been using phonebooth.net for our 4 geographically distributed work-
at-home offices (Pittsburgh, Dallas, Austin and Denver), and it's worked
pretty well so far. They worked (and are working) hard with us to get out the
little glitches, and we got to deal with their actual developers, since it was
(still is?) a beta test situation.

They don't handle faxes, though.

Pretty good deal, though: $20/month/line, 5 line minimum. Cheaper than POTS,
and much more flexible.

(I just dragged my Polycom IP phone out to our farm and plugged it in for the
first time, and I'm up and running with my phone line with no obvious issues.)

------
babar
We just set up virtualpbx.com. The web ui is kind of clunky, and the automated
text-to-voice for the message is terrible, but it had the options we needed:
setting up out toll-free number to be routed to sales and support and send out
emails if the call went to voicemail. We didn't care about setting up actual
office phones at this point - everyone just uses their cells. We mostly wanted
a way to avoid people having to give out their personal numbers or a single
office number as a point of contact. This gives us the flexibility we need as
we hire more people, reassign people, or have people leave.

------
tbgvi
I'm in a similar boat right now. I haven't pulled the trigger on anything but
I'm taking a good look at Fonality
(<http://pbxtra.fonality.com/products/standard>).

Anyone else hear anything about it?

Edit: Now looking at FreePBX.org / Asterisk as well - thanks for the
suggestions

~~~
viraptor
If you want anything more than just call forwarding, have a look at solutions
not based on Asterisk. FreeSwitch and Yate are quite good. In my experience
Ast. is like Windows - people complain about it, but continue to use it
because most other people use it... and it's not that good compared to others.
If you do want only forwarding, have a look at sip proxies instead (like
Opensips) - that's more reliable and can save you one hop on the media path.

------
John123
Hi This is John Smith I suggest you to signup and go through the features.

<http://www.pbxplus.com> \- offers speech recognition, faxing, extensions,
voicemail transcription, trees - visual drag and drop designer. Free US number
with 50 mins. Can't get better.

------
iuguy
Get a scanner, Efax (<http://www.efax.com/>) and VoIP provider (we use
<http://www.gradwell.com/> but are in the UK) and you're all set.

~~~
justinchen
Better than efax is RingCentral. You can get an 800 number with multiple voice
mail boxes plus the number doubles as a fax number. It can also be used to
receive or make calls, but that costs extra and I haven't used it yet.

~~~
danielmason
I'm going to add a cautionary note about RingCentral. I hesitate to make my
first post a negative one, but they've inspired me to feel strongly enough to
break the lurker barrier. My experience with RingCentral has been almost
unilaterally bad, and I'm now actively looking to switch away as quickly as
possible.

We have had persistent bugs and inconsistencies. By itself, this wouldn't be a
huge issue, but their level one support is untrained, powerless, and seemingly
reluctant to help. In all my support calls to them, they have yet to put me on
the phone with someone who understands my problem and has the power to fix it.

~~~
justinchen
That's interesting to hear. What kinds of issues were you having? We primarily
use it to receive voicemails (then call back using Google voice or Skype) and
for sending/receiving faxes.

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s3graham
Wow, reading through all these comments, it seems like pretty much a no-
brainer what the Google Voice team is up to. :) I didn't realize this space
was such a disaster.

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simonk
We use fuguphone.com but its Canada only. Its basically just hosted asterisk.
I'd look for a local one that can transfer you numbers.

------
gibsonf1
I've been using PhonePower for a few years now and they are very impressive
with very good customer service and great features.

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strooltz
thanks for all the great responses... phonebooth.com seems pretty close to
perfect to what we need... next question - any recommendations on IP Phones?

~~~
viraptor
Snom / Linksys / Polycom / Yealink (which model depends on what you need from
your phone). Cheaper products tend to crash, have bad audio quality, etc.
Definitely try to stay away from Grandstreams...

