VOIP - other than Linux

[Jack Coats]

Dave.

There are commercial PBX providers that don't use Linux.  If what you
mean is you want
a Windows solution, another list might be more appropriate.

Asterisk is the major player in the VOIP/PBX market place that has and
supports OSS
software.  And it doesn't have to use Linux, but Asterisk is easiest.
You can check with
Digium who sells phone interface hardware.

If you are planning to using it over a private network and you have
very many phones,
you can get routers that work well.  If you are planning on
provisioning over the open
internet, ... lots of luck, ... and it does work, just not well,
largely due to many IP providers
dropping priority information on your packets.  Some people have found
by grossly over
provisioning the bandwidth requirements, and reducing latency as much
as possible it
works reasonably well, but expect issues if you are going to do VOIP
over the open internet.

If by not wanting Linux, you mean in soft phones, there are various
soft phones that work
on other systems as well.  Hard phones (personally I like Polycom, but
they are pricey)
are the more common way to go.

If you want to go with a good but high end provider, contact your
Cisco sales droid, who
will be willing to take a PO to do it soup to nuts or any part
inbetween, including having
their consultants built it for you.  All it takes is $$

I worked for a small white box type asterisk vendor that went out of
business because
the market just isn't there (folks that wanted buy systems 'for free'
because the software
is free, thus they assume your time is free too... grumble whine
grumble).  To get phone
network access we normally had a T1 brought in for the 'outside world'
lines, and if
the customer didn't need it all for analog voice, we took the data
slices and used them for
the voice channels in/out and sometimes internet data depending on the
vendor on the
other end and how we had it provisioned.

Asterisk is not an easy install if you are wanting all the bells and
whistles to work the first
time, but it does work.  And once it works it is VERY reliable, IMHO.
Daily maintenance is
not bad but it isn't something to be left to a part time clerk. (That
is adding/change/delete
phones and extension numbers, putting in and configuring automated
attendant, call
groups, etc, etc, etc.)  And when I was dealing with this a couple of
yearen ago, the GUI
maintenance was in its infancy.  Also depending on how many extensions
you have, plan
on adding an additional asterisk server per building or office and
every time you get
100 or so extensions served by one server, it helps reliability and
responsiveness to set
up another server.  Asterisk servers don't have to be 'killer
machines' but they need to
be reliable, and make sure you over configure the UPSes you put them
and the network
equipment that serves your phone system equipment on ... if the power
goes out and your
equipment goes down, you have no phones.  I always liked to make sure
that there was
at least one POTS analog line that was served directly from the
outside for security
system, fax, etc.  ...

Oh yes, if you are putting in a PBX make sure your local emergency
services and phone company sets you up with the procedure to update
911 databases.
I worked for a bank, and a office called in with a robbery in
progress.  We reported it to
the police, so they surrounded our office building but not the office
where the robery was
taking place 20 miles away. ... after that we figured out how to
update 911 with proper location...
and yes, our people that reported it did tell them the correct
address, but the emergency
services reported only the 'automated' address to the police. ...
Since you are running
the phone systems it IS YOUR PROBLEM and duty to make sure it is right.

Sorry for preaching, but it was very embaricing for our bosses (I
didn't work on phone sytems
then, but some of my fiends did).

Sorry this is so long, but I hope it helps.