So I have done many sites with port forwarding for remote phones... but never a site with more than about 10-15 remote phones. Where do you draw the line between doing port forwarding for remote phones and getting a MBG? I have a customer that is going to have, at least initially, about 30 remote phones, and knowing this customer could go to at 40+ within 18 months, is it recommended to go to an MBG or does it really matter.
The driving force behind this isn't work from home though, it is people constantly moving... Right now they have two sites, each with their own MiVO 250, about 60 IP sets at one site and 20 IP + 20 analog extensions, and all trunking for the IP sets goes through the larger site, and trunks for the analog lines (it's rooms in a residential facility) are separate and connect to the smaller MiVO 250. The problem here is the customer has been moving phones from one site to the other, 6-10 a month sometimes for extended periods and sometimes for just a couple weeks, but they want to take their phones, DID number, voicemail, etc with them.
So now they are looking at another facility, adding another 10-15 users, and the plan is to shuffle people around going forward there as well, so our solution is to make all phones not at the main site Teleworker phones so they can just take the phone offsite, hold down the 7 key and enter the IP address and set the emergency CID themselves rather than calling us to tear down the station and rebuild it several times a month as people move around. I am thinking a MBG would be a better solution than port forwarding as they don't have to change the Native/NAT setting in the MiVO250 if I understand correctly, but am I missing something else?
Bandwidth is not an issue, and the cost of a MBG, Teleworker licenses and paying for new Cat-D licenses for all the users to be consolidated at the main location isn't an issue for the customer, as it would largely pay for itself after several months of not having to have us make service calls to move people constantly.
