voip lab for educational purposes

Guys I want to learn more about voip in general as of right now I just use an Obi 110. However I would like to learn more about actually setting up a PBX and adding phones to that PBX learn how to configure sip trunks so those phones can talk outside of my network etc. So what would you guys suggest for a lab environment what equipment will I need in regards to a PBX, ATA. or phones?

it doesn't take much, but for a learning lab....

a smart poe switch so you can set up a voice vlan and power phones... any 'ol server, can be atom powered doesn't have to be much....

a freepbx distro .iso and somehow to get it on that PC...

as far as phones, any sip compatible... you can use softphones on a computer.... there are any number of different things you can hook up, speakers for intercoms, network gateways to interface with old phones or POTS or digital lines.... do you want to just play, or start learning as a career?

I did this for my home so I could learn as well (we were going to be starting it soon for work too). I use FreePBX running in a VM on my home server, AxVoice as my SIP Provider (doing the $9/month BYOD account), softphone on my laptop and PolyCom IP650 phone in the bedroom. Works very well. I tried the RasPBX on my Raspberry Pi for a while but wasn't impressed so I tried another distro and didn't have good results. When I moved to the VM setup, the full distro has OSS Endpoint Manager. Run that and download the proper firmware for your hard phones (it has a huge list) and it basically auto-configured my phone once I told the phone where to connect.

Overall not too bad to learn, but I haven't done any of the Asterisk CLI work like some people. I've been able to do all my testing on the WebUI. I had the most trouble with Trunks, but I got it figured out by searching online and my system has been stable for several months now.

I do VLANs and firewall work all day long, so I didn't need to brush up on that. If you're not comfortable with it though, do learn it like @goodcooper says (PoE Switch, Voice VLAN, etc).

If you're looking to actually purchase hardware, we're using and selling Yealink to people. They're great phones at a low price. I've also read a lot about Grandstream being good as well. I'm using a Polycom because I managed to keep one during a site decommission.

Start with the network basics as VOIP stability quality heavily depends on the quality of the network design. From there, the common choice is Asterisk in whatever flavor you desire, FreePBX, PIAF, Elastix, etc. Another up and coming choice is 3CX that runs on a Windows platform. They have a free version as well that's limited in functionality after 30 days. I've been selling a bunch of that as it's typically easier for clients to grasp and self-manage than FreePBX. For Phones, like Firedrow said, Yealink is cheap and solid. I've run into random weirdness with some of the Grandstream devices, but your get what you pay for. Along with the [H], almost every system has a buzzing community, don't be afraid to look around as search them for answers as well. VOIP isn't bad, just learn the basic and the rest is just assembling the pieces.

Goodcooper the lab is kind of dual purpose I want to learn also I would like to eventaully be able to apply these concepts in a business environment. I

don't have a POE switch looks like basic poe switches have dropped in price I was looking at a few on Amazon. I am up in the air on what PBX to start

with I'm seeing FreeSwitch, FreePBX, PBX In A Flash and, Asterisk. I have read that PBX in a flash is a great starter pbx. Whatever PBX I use it will

be installed in a vm as far as switches I own a Dell Power Connect 2816 and a HP 1800G ProCurve. I also have a few old smart phones laying around that

I would like to get a sip clint on and connected to a PBX so I'm open to suggestions on sip clints for the IOS an Android. I'm going to be using this

as my TA http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Spa112-...ie=UTF8&qid=1388838713&sr=8-1&keywords=spa112. Also I will look at Yealink for some cheap phones. I did not think they made Windows PBX software I will check it out but most likely I will stick to the Linux PBX systems because I'm sure you will see more of those than Windows.


Possible Poe switches


http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-SG...TF8&qid=1388845753&sr=8-9&keywords=poe+switch

http://www.amazon.com/8-Port-Gigabi...TF8&qid=1388845753&sr=8-8&keywords=poe+switch

http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-SF...TF8&qid=1388845753&sr=8-2&keywords=poe+switch

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...witch&sprefix=poe+s,aps&rh=i:aps,k:poe switch

You may want to check out the IncrediblePBX on Raspberry Pi.

Full featured Asterisk FreePBX on Pi. REALLY cheap setup that actually works well with 5-10 phones in real world use.

freepbx distro is the official distro of freepbx, which is the GUI that runs on top of asterisk on PBX in a flash and incrediblepbx... it's really the de-facto standard of linux based phone systems and is really the best one to start out on....

Most likely I will use FreePBX however I don't see any hardware requirements. So I would like to ask what type of hardware configurations do you guys use for lab and production systems?

my production systems are generally supermicro 1U server based systems w/ atoms generally with 2 or 4GB ram and 64GB ssd

my big main box uses a supermicro 1U server board with a low end pentium cpu and 4 gigs ram and a hard disk drive and a sangoma PRI card...

it really don't take much at all, you can look at some of the retailers that build and sell freepbx systems like http://www.schmoozecom.com/pbxact.php pretty sure they use atom based desktop boards and 1GB ram, 80GB hdd in their pbxact classics

As GC said, it doesn't take much, especially if you're not transcoding to/from g729. I've run 30+ extension PBXs using PIAF on Atom boxes perfectly. Any many run as VMs great as well.

For your small test lab, use 1GB of less of memory. I've got my FreePBX running on a 512MB RAM VM from my server. It only connects to 1 SIP tunnel and 2 phones, and the memory usage is under 20% even during calls. The requirements are very minimal.

I use SIPdroid on my Nexus7, MicroSIP on Windows.

I know some other companies use 3CX for Windows Server PBX.

i currently have a setup with 118 users with a 32 channel SIP trunk running on a stock Lenovo RD530 (flavour of the day Xeon + 8gb ram and RAID1 500gb HD). Normal call flow is aroud 22 outgoing calls with 5 internal, total of 6-7000 calls during 5000mins total in a day, all using G711u, call recording, MOH. It all uses around 2% cpu and 15% memory at peak.. Reloading a config takes about 12secs.. Seems overkill be we're buying so much of these servers that at the end, price is almost the same as a "regular" server.

For the phones, we all go with Cisco SPA500 series, SPA525G2, SPA504G and if we need to share the cable for the voice+pc we use SPS514G because it's 1GB/s.

For analogue stations, SPA112 (2x FXS) and larger site is SPA8000 (8x FXS comes also with a RJ21 jack)

I'm not a big fan of analogue FXO lines, but, when we don't have any other options, i'm using Sangoma hardware with echo cancellation. Don't be afraid to pay the price for it, otherwise your whole system is going to be hated because of the voice quality during outgoing call using theses lines.

At the shop, the lab and dev's servers are running on old IBM P4 3ghz 6gb ram and 250gb no raid, quick boot, very low % of utilization. Around 10 phones and still reloads the config under 5 secs and over 25 is 18secs. Not critical in a lab, but a pain in production.