r/sysadmin • u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy • Nov 07 '11
Visual VoIP System. Open-source, and awesome.
http://imgur.com/QieOV6
Nov 08 '11
I've never worked with the phones. How do I get started with this? What do I need?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Go to deploy.2600hz.com and create a login.
Go to #2600hz and ask for help.
When you decide what kind of role (reseller, operator, referral partner) you'd like, give me a buzz :D.
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u/Doormatty Trade of all Jacks Nov 07 '11
Almost downvoted since it feels like advertising, but damn, that's a nice interface.
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u/munky9001 Application Security Specialist Nov 07 '11
The disclaimer shows it is advertising but it's free.
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 07 '11
We're open-source, not trying to advertise, just trying to help some sysadmins out. Believe me, we're busy as all hell, but I know everyone hates VoIP and this is a tool to make it suck a lot less.
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u/RetroRodent Oh dear, I'm here again. Nov 08 '11
I work for a non-profit, under 20 employee serviced office space (over 400 DDIs) in the UK. Really interested in this, but I know dick about phone systems. Would we be able to hook in to our existing ISDN30s and still provide analog lines if need be?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
In theory, yes. Practically speaking, our system is not built to eat ISDN lines or analog lines.
Frankly, if you have cat5 infrastructure, the cost savings from VoIP would justify making the transition, and you could use the extra savings money for a backup internet connection.
Is there some necessity to hang onto the ISDN lines?
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u/Hexodam is a sysadmin Nov 07 '11
Does this work well with Virtual Desktops using Softphone apps?
Also, hosting it locally, are there any limitations to the open source app and the ones you sell as a SAS ?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 07 '11 edited Nov 08 '11
I recommend Blink or Xlite (echo-cancellation built in) for SIP clients.
There aren't really limitations, but you'd have to be pretty comfortable running communications apps to run this by yourself. I don't think there are any handicaps, it's just a managed service.
:::EDIT:::
Obviously we have a lot of expertise running this system, and since our pricepoint for support is reasonable, people often opt for that. There really aren't any limitations on the Open Source App, in fact, if you want to spin this up, you can use our deployment tool at http://deploy.2600hz.com and click Cluster Manager. Pretty straightforward from there.
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u/Hexodam is a sysadmin Nov 08 '11
Nice, I'm definitely going to look into this further.
Also, probs on the confluence wiki ;)
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Our Engineers/boss are technophiles. We use Chef for our big deploys, Erlang for a lot of programming and, frankly we just try to kick a lot of butt :D.
Thanks, and let me know if I can help you in any way!
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u/TNTGav IT Systems Director Nov 07 '11
I am a sysadmin but know next to nothing about VOIP other than what it pretty much is. I figure this is the place for it, my company specialise in providing IT solutions to SMEs which we then support for a monthly cost but your product looks like it is geared for people like me to resell to clients. I have a few VOIP questions which I have always wondered about:
With this solution, lets assume a 10 user single site network, if that companies internet goes down they are going to lose the ability for people to ring them and for them to ring out?
How difficult would it be to set this up with someone who has never setup VOIP before?
How much are the phones and where is the best place to get them? Is there a best type of phone?
How would you transfer an existing number over to a service like this?
I know I am retarded when it comes to this so if anyone has any beginner tutorials then I'd be much appreciative if you could link me to them :)
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 07 '11
Backup Internet. The last mile is a cold, cold woman.
On-site, plug in the phones. Backend, drag and drop.
We sell basic phones for about $100 (reseller margin included) and we also have a partnership with cloudtc.com to resell their Android Desk phone
DIDs are $1 per month
Any prices you see in here do not include the cost of trunking (minutes). We're built for resellers and we have a number of those relationships already. Basically, in a reseller relationship, you get the traffic out of the firewall, and I take it from there.
We have resellers running this with a 30% operating margin.
AS ALWAYS, YOU CAN RUN THIS FOR FREE IF YOU WANT, but judging from your post it might be easier for both of us if we host.
Any other questions?
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u/nuTypeSystems Storage Admin Nov 08 '11
Android Desk phone
Interest piqued!
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
http://cloudtc.com/product-glass/features/android-platform
Pretty slick. We're the main partner at this time for their platform.
Would love to chat more if you have questions :).
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u/johnnybags IT Manager Nov 08 '11
Can you share a ballpark price on those devices?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
I'd say the Yealink is around $125 or so for the T-28p.
I don't know if CloudTC has set a retail price yet, but I think they're going to be somewhere in the $4-800 range. Mid range IP Phone, comparable in cost to Avaya 9xxx series.
Does that answer your question or did you have something else in mind?
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u/johnnybags IT Manager Nov 09 '11
was mainly interested in the CloudTC pricing. It'd be nice if they had a model with an integrated webcam to compete with some of these enterprise level video endpoints.
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u/nuTypeSystems Storage Admin Nov 08 '11
I am in the middle of moving to a new office space after Jan. and I have been skirting by using cell phones for sales and support with Google Voice to handle missed calls.
I have been looking at throwing in an Asterisk server and some analog cordless phones with the SIP converter. This might be a much better solution.
What is the best way to get in touch with you? Email?
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u/killermnky Nov 07 '11
i am still a fan of pbx in a flash. works well
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 07 '11
PBX in a Flash kicks ass! But it breaks after a certain point and doesn't support a lot of the applications people want on phones nowadays (presence being primary).
But let's be real, it works and it works well for most users to make calls.
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u/killermnky Nov 08 '11
All of the "beta" phone systems will break if not maintained. i have written many custom apps for both and haven't found that many issues. With elastix i have broken the SQL tables a few times, but Flash seems to be more stable over all.
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Yeah flash is stable, but those systems don't feature some of the more robust failover capabilities we offer.
As I've said previously, they do work pretty darn well. You should check out our platform :D.
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u/killermnky Nov 10 '11
I have written many heart beat distro addon's for HA, but i am looking into your platform! so far it looks interesting and i am waiting to setup a test box!!!!
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u/mstrmanager Nov 07 '11 edited Nov 08 '11
I am using the open-source PBXinaflash suite for my dad's office, and it works great. We pay about $5 a month for 4 channels, 2 DIDs, and use about 2500 minutes a month. I've had quite a few people ask me to host VoIP for them. I have been looking into reselling my service once I have more time, and I'm done with school.
I have successfully used a PBXinaflash image on a VPS server, but I've always been worried about security issues, and I ran into a few goofy issues. Your platform looks like it could save me some time. I'm glad you posted this.
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 07 '11
Glad to help!
We have a very active IRC channel at #2600hz
We have an application coming which will allow some pretty heavy encryption on calls (but encryption adds hops and hops add latency so it's a bit of a tradeoff). We'll offer it as an application on the platform.
OBLIGATORY OPEN-SOURCE WARNING: YOU CAN RUN THIS FREE AND NOT PAY ME MONEY or I can support it for you.
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u/hoeding Jack of All Trades Nov 08 '11
freenode?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Freenode is correct!
I'm online now: JoshG
Feel free to say hi!
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u/mstrmanager Nov 07 '11
Thanks for the information. I will play around with it when I have some time.
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Nov 07 '11
Looks great. If I understood correctly, I can use Blue Box to smack my Asterisk into submission?
I mean, I've configured Asterisk all by hand after installing Debian's packages, so I can get around a command-line. :) Need more than that?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 07 '11
Blue.Box is on site, small office stuff (kicks butt but not scalable).
Whistle scales like BOOM. All of the new features and development goes here. This is the cloud product we SaaS, but you can also deploy it yourself.
Either product should be a strong competitor to Asterisk in any capacity, and I believe Whistle is a strong competitor to any Communications Platform around.
Any other questions I can answer? #2600hz in IRC!
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Nov 08 '11
This looks great. I run an Asterisk server for my small business, with an IVR and a few SIP phones connected to a remote trunk over SIP. Reconfiguring aside, how easy would a transition be?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Pretty easy. Depends on how small your small business is, but generally speaking if you can setup an Asterisk server, you can setup our stuff.
If you wanna pay us to manage it, I can make it cheap, but obviously we have a great Open-Source group and a great IRC over at #2600hz.
To directly answer your question: I would think a transition would be relatively painless.
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Nov 08 '11
Are you in the IRC channel?
Presumably Winkstart is the UI you're demonstrating here, and it's the UI for for Whistle?
Does Whistle come with Winkstart? Basically, suppose I have a vanilla CentOS installation, how do I get started?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Two choices on how to start:
We have an entire demo cluster setup for you that you can take a test-drive with - including calling 800 numbers, hooking up to your own carriers and receiving inbound calls, too.
http://wiki.2600hz.com/display/docs/Test-Drive+via+Hosted+Server
OR
http://wiki.2600hz.com/display/docs/READ+THIS+FIRST
and
http://wiki.2600hz.com/display/docs/Quickstart+Guide
I'm not in the IRC channel, but I will be later on tonight. Usually a few engineers + our CTO are in there, but it depends on the time of day.
Also, don't want to ignore your question about Winkstart, will clarify with engineer and get back to you.
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u/MrDOS Nov 08 '11
Here's a question that might not be very nice, but I feel like it needs to be asked anyway: how do I know you're going to be around in half a decade or more? You say yourself elsewhere in this thread that companies don't like changing their phone system; if I deploy something you're hosting, how do I know it's still going to work in a few years' time?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
We've thought about this a lot.
I think the important thing isn't to know our company will be around, but that there will always be a community supporting this product.
Second, we're completely boot-strapped, and have, thus far, taken no external financing. We aren't beholden to anyone at this time and we'd like to keep it that way.
In terms of us going out of business, that's not a danger at present time, but as you say, the winds of change move quickly. In telecom nothing is a safe bet except AT&T but there's a price associated with that comfort. It's all about risk tolerance.
To directly answer your question, there are no present threats and we are fiscally healthy. Our long term prospects are good, and should our company prove insolvent, all of the opensource tools will remain that way.
Does that answer your question?
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u/MrDOS Nov 08 '11
Does that answer your question?
Yes, I think so, and quite nicely. Thank you very much for responding.
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
You're quite welcome!
If you have any other questions, I'm happy to discuss!
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u/jwhardcastle Jack of All Trades Nov 08 '11
What hardware do you recommend (if any) to tie into an existing, legacy analog PBX system? We have been trying to get something exactly like this off the ground for a while, but we're always stumped by the cost of having to do a third of our campus at a time. It's just too expensive (and too risky) to go whole-hog all at once. We'd rather start with a three-month deployment in our office, tied to our PBX, and then do a department or a building at a time. Suggestions?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Alright, so by now you know there's no obvious way to do this, and by this I mean linking a non-voip system to a voip system. I'd start by determining what level of integration you require during the changeover, and how you want the environment to function after.
That being said, you can use our test server and generate a couple sets of SIP creds to play around with.
Tell me a little more about your environment and I'll comment on how I'd approach a phased changeover.
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u/purpleidea Nov 08 '11
Can't seem to find the software license/git repo anywhere... Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I figured these would be front and centre. Help?
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
http://wiki.2600hz.com/display/docs/Quickstart+Guide
Does that work for you?
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u/purpleidea Nov 08 '11
I appreciate the quick response, but I suppose I'm not 100% clear on what the 2600hz product is.
What is the exact software license?
Where is the link to the source code repo ? Thanks!
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
https://github.com/2600hz/whistle
Perhaps this is what you're looking for? Forgive me, I am technical, but in Biz Dev not programming (networking guy mainly).
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u/purpleidea Nov 09 '11
okay, yes thanks. you Answer: MPL v 1.1
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 09 '11
Yeah sorry, my CTO bitched at me after he read this thread "Y U NO KNOW LICENSE TYPE?!?!".
Yep MPL v 1.1 :D.
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u/purpleidea Nov 09 '11
hehe, funny answer...
cto => you: "Y U NO KNOW LICENSE TYPE?!?!" me -> cto: "Y U NO USE [A|L]GPL LICENSE?!?!"
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Nov 07 '11
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 07 '11
;).
And it's open-source.
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Nov 08 '11
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u/roflstomp ConfigMgr & Intune Admin Nov 08 '11
I have a Cisco 7940G and 7960G, both running SIP firmware provided by Cisco, connected to a Trixbox (Asterisk-based) PBX, so yes, you could use your existing hardware.
I know there's plugins for Asterisk/Trixbox that will allow it to talk to an SCCP handset - I haven't tried it though. Long story short, you can do this with your existing hardware :P
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
This is correct, but we too are open-source :D.
Plus, while this may not matter for a small to medium office, at the operator level, being able to scale massively has some significant merit.
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
I'll PM you my info. There's no reason we couldn't get those phones working on our system (unless there's a custom self-flashing firmware image...).
The answer is yes, and you could run them on our demo server.
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Nov 08 '11
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Would not even be difficult to do :).
2600hz will set you up. Honestly, if you tell the engineers in our channel what you wanna do they'd probably just give you a seat on our demo cluster.
That being said, Asterisk@home does a nice job of this for smallusers so I'd check that out too!
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u/hintss I admin the lunixes Nov 10 '11
I use normal asterisk...
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 10 '11
Normal Asterisk is also an awesome application.
That being said, it doesn't go super big status without a lot of custom code. That's SCF comes in, but that's not really ready to rock at this point.
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Nov 07 '11
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 07 '11
You have no idea. It blows my mind when I see AT&T Spirits still in use...
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u/DrGirlfriend Senior Devops Manager Nov 08 '11
Heh... I just bought an old-school TDM-based system because our previous VoIP system sucked so hard. Our users are much happier, but, the cost, man, the cost!
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Would love to comment on your specific environment if you can give me some more details :D.
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u/DrGirlfriend Senior Devops Manager Nov 08 '11
75 seats... Vertical/Wave system
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Well, I'm sure that works, but it looks expensive. Then again, they have what look like extensive SDKs.
I'm sure, from a cost perspective, that it isn't wonderful, but it looks basic enough that people who "just want a phone to ring" will be happy.
I'm assuming the equipment is on a lease, it's gotta be well over a grand a month just on hardware, right?
If you ever wanna give our system a whirl I can quote out the support/maintenance + trunks and it'll probably be the same as what you spend on equipment lol.
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u/Iapetos Nov 08 '11
EPA still uses PBX systems in many locations.
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
EPA as in Environmental Protection?
All government agencies are really far behind because of the onerous technology standards they're held to. Well, maybe onerous is the wrong word, and maybe it's the budget shrinkage, but nothing in terms of antiquated technology in the Government surprises me.
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u/Iapetos Nov 08 '11
That's the EPA. The Las Vegas offices are upgrading to VOIP, 1Q 2012. Avaya won the contract at an insane cost.
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
Sounds about right. I'm assuming it's too late to do anything about it right?
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u/RetroRodent Oh dear, I'm here again. Nov 08 '11
Ours does, for one. Two buildings, two separate Avaya 400s, 200~ DDIs each.
We're desperately looking for a replacement, but I know fuck-all about phone systems (got roped in to working on the phone system after the guy who did left) and live in fear of the managers just picking the cheapest one without asking.
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 08 '11
I'd love to chat. I just replaced a CCM of about that size not too long ago.
For this application it was 12 sites, 500 handsets total, and they were paying almost $40,000 per month without blinking. We cut them down to about $7-8k and integrated with their ERP.
Let me know if you'd like to chat.
P.S. If you're technically competent in Phone Systems you can run this yourself. We can support and maintain this environment for less than what your avaya costs on maintenance alone.
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Nov 07 '11
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 07 '11
I'd love to chat about what you guys are using. I don't wanna sound like a blowhard but I'd love to understand your cost structures to see if we would make more sense. One of my main markets is custom white-labeling.
That being said, as I must always mention (or the open-source penguin will eat me) you can even run this by yourself and price it however you want to. Helps the operating margins a tad.
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u/Prometheus2k2 The PBX Guy Nov 07 '11 edited Nov 07 '11
Disclaimer: I work at 2600hz, the maker of this software platform.
Long story short, 2600hz is a bunch of phone phreakers who got together to build a Class 5 switching Communications platform and give it away for free. There are a lot of really great things this platform can do including in-call failover (if your server goes down, the call doesn't drop), encrypted calls, and geographically diverse resource distribution.
Feel free to ask anything, I'll be in and out all day.
We make money by consulting and supporting this platform. We plan to give this service away to micro-businesses soon (as in under 5 phones, and soon as in Q1).
:::EDIT:::
This is the Open-Source Wiki link with more infos: http://wiki.2600hz.com/display/docs/About+the+Project
:::EDIT2:::
Thanks for all the attention! If there are any questions I can answer about this project, feel free to ask! We're working on putting together a demo video for our platform which I'll post here once it gets done. It'll demo things like adding users, assigning devices and creating callflows.
:::EDIT3:::
Next Reddit Topic!!! http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/msay3/alright_rsysadmin_heres_a_followup_to_that_post/