Switch for LAN and VoIP questions

[EniGmA1987]

So at my work we are looking to lower our phone bill by moving to VoIP, and we would need a switch that has PoE in order to power the VoIP phones. All of our computers run on the LAN at gigabit speeds and we need to keep them at that speed, the phones only have 100mb ports on them. Unfortunately that means either two different switches, one for computers and one for phones, or a single expensive switch for both. The cheapest gigabit, QoS, & PoE switch I have found that has more than 4 PoE ports is this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833127287

But we would rather get something cheaper if possible. So my question is would it be ok to get these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...pk=DGS-1100-16
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833122146

and have all the computers (computers all have gigabit cards) and our two printers (printers only have 100mb connections) plugged into the DLink switch, and then have the PoE switch plugged into the DLink, with the VoIP phones plugged into the Netgear switch. QoS would be set on the DLink to allow traffic coming from the Netgear switch to have highest priority to maintain voice quality. I know quite a lot about computers, but not really a lot about networking stuff. So I dont even really know if it is even easy to set up the system like that and configure it all or not. Would that even work right?

Does anyone know if those switches are of good quality and would last a while?

[Serra]

How many phone lines do you have that you want to save money on? What are you looking at for VoIP?

I know of a few hosted VoIP solutions that send out phones/switches for a good monthly rate, but there are typically a minimum number of phones you need to have... it might be an option worth looking at if you have 10 or more.

If you're talking about replacing just 4-5 phones with Vonage or something though that's another story and brings us back to the original topic.

So let's have a quick talk about QoS here. Just because you have QoS enabled on your switch does not mean you have QoS to the Internet - your Internet router MUST also respect the QoS markings assigned by your phone, because your Internet connection is the real bottleneck and where QoS is important, not the connection to the router. So make sure you're set on that side, otherwise you can get all the switches with QoS enabled that you want, it won't do anything. If you need a new router as well, we can talk about that, there are options on that side too. Of course, the Internet doesn't respect QoS either which is why you tend to get better performance off a hosted solution that provides you a private line to their service, but that's another story.


Assuming your router does respect QoS...

If $650 to replace the switch is already high for your range it's definitely going to be more cost-effective to purchase a separate10/100 switch for your VoIP phones. In the price class you're looking at there isn't going to be any add-on benefit available to the PC's to really justify moving them to new equipment. In the consumer and personal business-grade arena I personally prefer NetGear. Those cats give great support for their equipment, far and above what D-Link or anyone else in that arena will do. They're also surprisingly feature-rich for their price class. You might look at their website and find something in their "business" class.

[EniGmA1987]

Our router is a bit older, but still supports port based QoS. So I was could have the VoIP switch connected to the router on one port that is set to highest priority and then having the switch for the computers and printers connected to a different port on the router and set to either average or low priority.


We are needing 5 phones, with 3 lines total. Currently we are paying about $280 a month for our phone service which seems really high to me but is one of the cheaper prices where we are from what I got calling around when I set up our phone lines last time. With VoIP I got a quote from one company for hosted service with 5 lines and 5 users (they just have a user and line together in this plan) for $147 a month. Or another company would set us up with a plan for minutes and SIP trunk lines and then build and configure a PBX computer running FreePBX linux. Price on that is half the cost, but then we have to pay for the computer and this company to configure the stuff. Which I could do myself but I havent done that before and have other things to do so it would be easier just having them do it for me. Also the one thing about that is that we would have the PBX and config stuff at our location, so it is a bit more complicated than just a simple hosted service. With the hosted service they want us to get Polycom phones, with the company that has a proposal for having out own PBX we can use Cisco phones with the same features and voice codec for half the price. So initial cost is pretty much the same since the phones on the second idea are much cheaper but then that cost savings is eaten up by the cost of a computer and paying these people to configure it all.

From your experience, which do you think would be better? A straight hosted service or having a computer ta our location and able to mess with the configs ourself if we need to?
And would how I said about the switches connected to the router work ok?

[Serra]

I'm not sure about the router, I've never heard of port-based QoS (packets can be marked with QoS; thus QoS should be based on the packets, not the input interface), but provided it works why not. There's a lot of ways to make fruit salad.

$280/month is a lot for 3 lines, I'd say moving to a different solution is a good idea. With a setup of only 5 phones you're probably looking at a fair deal @ $147/mo, assuming it works as advertised (if you're using a regular internet connection you'll have to watch this). Once you start growing more you may look around a bit though, and I'd probably re-evaluate every few years even if not as there are a few very good players in the market and things are just going to keep heating up.

Personally, as regards phones, I say if you don't have someone who is really going to have the time and interest to learn the system you're probably better off going hosted. You can save a few pennies on the hardware by doing it in-house, but the time you'll spend getting up to speed and fixing issues as they come up just isn't worth it until your company gets noticeably bigger. It's just too much of a specialized position/skill that just doesn't add any value to the company overall.

Another benefit of going hosted - for some companies at least, not all - is that if you get a good provider they typically have other hosted offerings as well that you can bundle with. The company I work with, for example, offers customers connections to their private MPLS cloud and they offer VoIP... but once you've already gotten a circuit for one service you can add on other services too, from Internet service to hosted AD, application servers, even VDI space and SANs (etc). And that's pretty typical of the space, you might see if your VoIP provider offers anything like that.

[EniGmA1987]

Alright thanks for all your help Serra