Satellite offices

[edwarneke]

Good afternoon,
 Quick question about pbx design when it comes to remote offices. Currently we have our main site with a 3300/Nupoint/PFyre setup. I have a satellite office connected over vpn and a single phone setup there. That is working fine, however we are adding another(possibly more) sites and this solution seems like it has it's own issues, namely phones are down if the vpn/internet fails, e911 doesn't work with the correct address. So what I'm looking for is a suggestion on how best to setup satellite offices to take these into account.

Currently we have 2 PRI circuits at the main office. I'd be ok with copper lines into a small phone system that would allow local e911 correctly, and would allow calls out if the vpn went down. I'd like it to connect to the main office if possible over a vpn for call transfers, but this isn't required.

Any thoughts? I've seen a lot of mention of just using teleworker, but I haven't used this so don't know if it works with e911, or if the internet/vpn is down. Is this even the right way to go about it?

Thanks for your help in advance.

Ed

[johnp]

If you are talking about small number of phones, maybe adding a LIM Line Interface Module to the remote phones. You can have them dial out the local line for e911 and if internet or vpn down, they can press abutton and dial out. This also would apply to Teleworker phones.

When you start increasing the number of phones at a remote location, clustering and enterprise software come into effect.

[Mattmayn]

If you do not have a controller at the remote sites it won't matter that you have copper trunks locally for any calls. The phones will be down already.

There are services available for e911 that allow you to essentially manage your own entries to the 911 database and you connect to them via SIP trunks. The problem is, how much money do you want to spend for 100% uptime for one or two phones? And for MBG, if you already have a VPN connecting the remote site use that. If you do not, then MBG will work for you.

Are your offices in an area where connectivity isn't reliable?

[ralph]

If the VPN is an issue you may be able to use a MBG as a failover.

Ralph

[lundah]

The LIM is the right way to do 911 from a remote office. There's an application guideline somewhere in the documentation (I think it's in the online help, maybe in the Engineering Guidelines as well) on this very thing, they call it the "SIP Satellite Office Solution" and the documentation lays out how to set it up properly.

[edwarneke]

The VPN is not an issue per se, just looking for options in case it goes down. It does look like the LIM is the way to go, I'll take a look at that writeup on setup and config. If the controller is unavailable if the vpn does go down, will the phone know what to do/be functional with the LIM or does that still require a controller to function?
Thanks so much, helps point me in the right direction.

Ed

[johnp]

If you look at the system help file under system applications/general business solutions/emergency services/emergency services and the line interface module, you should see the answers to your questions