Recommend a switch for VoIP for small business

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nevamore

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 13, 2004
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I am in the process of preparing to upgrade from 10/100 to gigabit. We are planning a move to VoIP soon after. I want to make sure we purchase switches that will work seamlessly for both voice and data. We have about 65 PCs and about that many phones. Most of the phones sit right beside the PCs and will share the same connection.

Recommend a switch that would work fine for a single subnet, single domain. It does need to be inexpensive (but not necessarily low-end cheap) as you know how IT budgets are these days. Thanks for your time!
 
Voice and Data traffic on the same subnet/vlan? Bad idea. Unless you truely need gigabit ethernet and have systems that can support it then more power to you. Otherwise 10/100 w/ gigabit uplinks is more than sufficient.
 
Make sure you get Power over Ethernet on the switches also, some VoIP phones require it.
 
use two switches. a PoE one for your phones, and a gigabit one for your lan.
 
nevamore said:
Most of the phones sit right beside the PCs and will share the same connection.
Click to expand...

Do you mean you are getting VOIP phones with a built in switch?
 
moetop said:
Do you mean you are getting VOIP phones with a built in switch?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily, some Cisco phones work in line with the computer. The check all IP packets coming in (the sit between the wall and the computer) and there are special headers that the phone can look for, if it has those headers the phone knows that the packet is destined for the phone, if not then it passes it to the PC. Kind of a weird setup, and 2 separate networks is preferred, but still it will work like that.

-Nebruin
 
nebruin said:
Not necessarily, some Cisco phones work in line with the computer. The check all IP packets coming in (the sit between the wall and the computer) and there are special headers that the phone can look for, if it has those headers the phone knows that the packet is destined for the phone, if not then it passes it to the PC. Kind of a weird setup, and 2 separate networks is preferred, but still it will work like that.

-Nebruin
Click to expand...

Actually, Cisco phones have a switch built into the back of the phone. Every model is setup like this. There are no special headers that designate packets for the phone versuses the PC, other than VLAN information.

Regarding the proposed setup, you want to split your voice and data traffic into two different VLANs. This is the best way to do it. A flat network is not the best choice for VoIP. Also, if your network is going to grow, be sure to switches have the capability to prioritize traffic based on the dscp value contained in the packet headers.
 
Now I'm going to sound silly, but about vlans, are they simply a different subnet? How do I set them up?
 
I've been contemplating the move to VoIP at my business and have been looking into building a monowall to help me. The reason why is it will do bandwith shaping. That way no matter what is happening on the network, I can set VoIP traffic to a very high priority to be sure people's calls get through.
 
Asgorath said:
I've been contemplating the move to VoIP at my business and have been looking into building a monowall to help me. The reason why is it will do bandwith shaping. That way no matter what is happening on the network, I can set VoIP traffic to a very high priority to be sure people's calls get through.
Click to expand...

Let me know if you get traffic shaping working properly on monowall. I have been struggling to get that setup properly.
 
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