What are y'all using for school phone connection?

[Rebecca Ronald]

I'm interested in hearing what phone systems other schools are using nowadays - who uses Call Plus phone over fibre, and whether you have a dedicated second fibre line for this. At the moment we are using Spark over ISDN lines, and wondering whether there are cheaper or better (or both!) solutions we should be looking at.

Ta

Rebecca (Marist College)

[Alistair Baird]

Still using conventional 4 lines analogue lines into PABX.

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Alistair Baird

IT Manager

St Peters College 

p 06 354 4198

m 021 990 259

e bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz

[Yvette Ireton]

We are the same - still using Analogue lines into PABX..

Network Manager
Golden Bay High School
12 Waitapu Road, Takaka 7110
Ph:  03 525 9914
http://www.gbh.school.nz

[Mike Etheridge]

3 ISDN Basic Rates giving us 6 voice lines plus 3 relatively useless data channels. Spark. Just finished process of scoping and tending for VOIP, which we will be switching to over the summer break. We will not be using N4L to carry the VOIP. Various concerns. Fortunately have a number of fibre pairs coming in to school from local provider, so they will be doing the VOIP for us and carrying the data. Cost looks to be about the same at current system, but there is not really an option to retain it as the PABX gear is obsolete, no parts, has become unreliable. I have to contact security and fire to find out what their requirements are. Picking that at least one will want a copper connection.

Will let you know how it goes.

Mike

[Pete Mundy]

Heya Mike et al

In my experience, fire monitoring (handled nationwide by ADT I think?) generally runs over cellular as the primary path and PoTS only as a fail-over. You may find you don't have to do anything for that one :) Look for an ADT box with a rubber-ducky antenna.

Security on the other hand, tends historically to use PoTS as the primary path, although other solutions are certainly available. Eg using cellular, dual-cellular or IP (or a combination of those).

Also FWIW, I know of a good handful of N4L schools (more than a dozen) that carry 100% of their telephone traffic across their single N4L link (as SIP data), with no issues whatsoever. These are all schools that access N4L via Chorus or Network Tasman. Anywhere from 3 to 20+ classrooms (phones in every room).

I totally accept it may not be suitable for your school's environment though Mike!

Each situation is unique. So it's just my 2c about what I've seen :)

Pete Mundy

[Mike Etheridge]

Cellular sounds the simplest from a setup point of view. I’ll get hold of the security company when I have got an hour or spare to spend on hold…


Mike

[Nick Steenson]

Hi Mike,

We may be considering a VOIP switch in the near future, out of curiosity (and without wanting to open too big a can of worms!), what are the various concerns about VOIP over an N4L connection you have?

Nick

[Patrick Dunford]

We have VOIP over N4L at a couple of sites. No issues I am personally aware of.

[Mike Etheridge]

We get dropped packets and delays on the N4L connection that we did not get with the local provider. I had never seen the red bars on pfsense RRD graphs until we changed to N4L. Same physical fibre. Seems to me N4L a bit choked compared to what we had before. I hasten to add that the subjective web browsing experience is fine, before the trolls get going...

Mike

[Bevan McNaughton]

We have a 2Talk 5-line plan here with 1 ISDN circuit still in place as well as an analog line for Fax/Alarms.

Around $35 for 5 SIP lines compared to $50 for one analog or $150ish for an ISDN circuit means some serious savings over time. Our dialling rules utilise calling rates on (Vodafone's) ISDN lines and 2Talks so there is balancing and cost savings for different types of calls. The 2Talk failover is to the ISDN incoming line also.

I've suggested that other schools keep at least one copper/analog line as when Fibre goes down it's a good backup.

I have managed to run some older PABX's over ATA's to go to SIP but results can vary a lot and is usually discouraged since signalling from an analog PABX may not hang up a line, etc.

In regards to N4L there has been some concerns from local PBX contractors with several issues faced. On one it was dropped packets, another was some seriously long winded firewall issues that never got resolved until another Spark engineer looked at the problem from their end - that resulted in such a delay that the school paid for a separate Fibre connection just for SIP in the end. 2 schools I've set up however seem to be fine but rulesets were messy initially...

Regards,

Bevan

Bevan McNaughton

Intranet Manager

MCP, MTCNA, CAP, Google Ed.

Southland Girls' High School

328 Tweed Street

Invercargill 9812

Phone: +64 3 211 6030

Fax:     +64 3 216 9010

Mobile: 027 223 2144

[Tracy Briscoe]

Hi Rebecca

 

For over 2 years we’ve been using SIP trunks from Call Plus over fibre as our primary connection.

We also have a ISDN basic rate (ie 2 lines) for two reasons:

* backup/redundancy, so that if the SIP goes down we can switch back to ISDN.  We know that the fibre goes down the opposite side of the road from the copper cable.  The copper has been cut a couple of times in the last decade.

* for sending faxes.   Incoming calls over SIP use the G711 codec, which handles faxes ok, however outgoing calls are forced to G722, which doesn’t handle faxes, hence we’ve configured our fax extensions to go out via ISDN.

 

Our RBI fibre connection from CallPlus, is provisioned as one circuit, with two separate VLANS, data and sip. The SIP VLAN has QoS to ensure that it gets priority.

 

We’ve had one outage with SIP where outgoing calls stopped working.  If I recall correctly it also affected the CallPlus call centre so was fixed fairly quickly.

 

A peculiarity with using CallPlus smart codes (ie enter a PIN to make a toll call) with SIP is that if the number being called is engaged the call  appears to be cut off after entering your PIN.  This is because the smart code system is sending an ‘Temporary Unavailable’ SIP message back to the PABX when the line is engaged, rather than playing an engaged tone.  I think that we were the first ones to want smart codes on SIP, and that Call Plus bolted the system what was designed for ISDN onto SIP.

 

One tip when you or your PABX provider make major changes to the PABX, check that 111 calls still work.  During implementation where was a time when users were being asked to enter their smart code to dial 111!

 

 

Regards,

 

Mr Tracy Briscoe

Network Engineer

 

St Peter's School, Cambridge

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[Clayton Hubbard]

Hi Mike

Sorry to hear you having problems. Happy to look into this issue for you and will get the helpdesk to log a fault as well. Interested in the graphs on the pfsense if you could please forward these to me. I thought that since they fixed the core switch with the software upgrade the physical errors went away on your pfsense?

I will contact you offlist.

Thanks,

Clayton Hubbard 
Senior Engineer, The Network for Learning Ltd

D: 09 972 2906 | M: 022 043 0155 | W: http://www.n4l.co.nz
A: Suite 306, Geyser Building, 100 Parnell Road, Parnell, Auckland 1052
P: PO Box 37118, Parnell, Auckland 1151

[Mike Etheridge]

Putting this post on the list in reply, but I guess we will continue this off-list

The errors on the interface of the router stopped, but I was still getting the odd spell of dropped packets on the WAN when the load was up. Now that over half the students are on leave, the load is way down do there have been no incidents for a week. I still notice erratic packet delays, whereas on the local (open peered) provider, the delay was rock steady down the bottom of the range.

Here’s the WAN delay today

and this term, note red (loss)

Mike

[Regan Scarfe]

Hi

We've have SIP trunks from 2talk over N4L since May 2014. Everything has world flawlessly since we changed over. Except for the N4L outage which took out a large proportion of the North Island school connections last year. 2talk does allow calls to automatically be rerouted to another number if your PABX isn't available in situations like this though. We still have an analogue line for faxing and for the security system. The SIP trunks are a huge saving over analogue lines we used to have.

[Simon - OBHS]

We moved to a new full IP phone system a year ago retaining our existing ISDN lines until the line/tolls contract ended earlier this year. We are now running SIP trunks over N4L and retaining a POTS line for fax/alarm monitoring and backup incase the net dies. It's been very reliable and when we have a had 1 or 2 minor outages, the world doesn't come to an end.

We also got rid of our hostels separate system and just added some more IP phones which run over our airfiber link without issue.

[Patrick Dunford]

I had to work with one of our staff just the other day with a Ministry of Education webinar for some module they were getting training on.

They requested we supply a headset so the first thing I offered them was my USB headset that I use for N4L webinars. The reply was no - we can't use that - it has to be a phone line.

Their phone was proprietary so I offered them a generic VOIP phone and the reply came back - No - the Ministry has insisted it must be a dedicated phone line.

Due to the cost and time delays of getting a special headset for their special phone they only had the option left of using a mobile phone and apparently the Ministry will agree to pay an hour's work of mobile termination charges on their 0800 number. As we all know the voice quality on a mobile conversation is not always the best and quite why it would be classed better than VOIP is hard to understand.

If the school was running a VOIP solution there would not be an option and it is really absurd that the training outfit that runs these webinars is demanding that they use a dedicated POTS phone line - apart from taxpayers money being wasted on all that audioconferencing hardware and phone lines into the training centre.

On 27/11/2015 15:04, Simon - OBHS wrote:

We moved to a new full IP phone system a year ago retaining our existing ISDN lines until the line/tolls contract ended earlier this year. We are now running SIP trunks over N4L and retaining a POTS line for fax/alarm monitoring and backup incase the net dies. It's been very reliable and when we have a had 1 or 2 minor outages, the world doesn't come to an end.

We also got rid of our hostels separate system and just added some more IP phones which run over our airfiber link without issue.

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[Mike Etheridge]

Has Hotmail blacklisted n4l relay (again)? Mail from SMS or manually sent is not getting through, 550 mailbox unavailable

Mike

[Masaki Takeda]

Hi there Mike,

As far as we are aware mail to Hotmail should be working fine, and our IP is no longer on any blacklists. 550 could mean that particular mailbox is inactive so please verify the address for us and if it is still an issue send us a copy of the bounce-back to sup...@n4l.co.nz so we can investigate.

Thanks!

Kind Regards,

Masaki Takeda

The Network for Learning Ltd

On 2/02/2017, at 3:14 PM, Mike Etheridge <mi...@etheridge.co.nz> wrote:

Has Hotmail blacklisted n4l relay (again)? Mail from SMS or manually sent is not getting through, 550 mailbox unavailable

Mike

[Sam McNeill]

Mike,

I helped escalate an issue within MS for a large NZ secondary school that had been black listed with 550 responses earlier this week.

The reason was:

:...@hotmail.com bounced by destination server. Reason: 5.1.0 - Unknown address error (\'550\', ["SC-002 (COL004-MC5F20) Unfortunately, messages from 103.23.71.150 weren\'t sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list."

 This suggested they were doing "Namespace Mining" - i.e. looking for valid email addresses sequentially. In reality, of course, the school was doing nothing of the sort and it was simply that they had a lot of old/expired accounts in their database. Given the volume of email being sent (to alumni / parents etc) at the start of the year, outlook/hotmail blocked them for that reason.

Could be something similar happening if you are getting 550 errors (although there are quite a few different variations of this).

Cheers

Sam

[Landyn Frisby]

James Hargest College:

We use 2TalkVOIP Trunks over N4L linked into our existing PABX with a mix of analog and digital lines. This also feeds our Junior campus over direct site to site fiber connection. 

We feed two satellite schools that are on N4L using GRE tunnels that hang off our VOIP setup using IP Phones. We can then dial them directly using extensions and vice versa. 

Also we do have the 2talk connection on its own separate dedicated public IP using 1:1NAT which is delivered over the same physical fibre. 

We have managed to ditch all old analog lines that were feeding Fire Alarm, Security monitoring by using their own cellular connection. 

[Bevan McNaughton]

2Talk here with an ISDN failover. Still have an analog Fax line for extra redundancy.

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Bevan McNaughton

Intranet Manager

MCP, MTCNA, CAP, UEWA, Google Ed.

Southland Girls' High School

328 Tweed Street

Invercargill 9812

Phone: +64 3 211 6030

Fax:     +64 3 216 9010

Mobile: 027 223 2144

[Pete Mundy]

> On 7/02/2017, at 2:05 pm, Bevan McNaughton <bevan.mc...@southlandgirls.school.nz> wrote:
>
> 2Talk here with an ISDN failover. Still have an analog Fax line for extra redundancy.

Out of personal interest, how often do you find yourself using those ISDN failover channels Bevan? Is it semi-regularly (eg once every month or two), or do they sit there largely unused thanks to the stability of IP connections these days? (eg fibre connections being vastly more reliable than any flavour of DSL ever was)

Pete

[Bevan McNaughton]

We have had the odd hiccup with our PBX with SIP but apart from that not very often at all. I think maybe 2-3 times last year with intermittent N4L outages but that's it. They also act as overload lines if our 5-line 2talk plan goes over capacity and over ISDN we get cheaper deals for most mobile calls as well.

Cheers.

On 7 February 2017 at 14:44, Pete Mundy <pe...@fiberphone.co.nz> wrote:

> On 7/02/2017, at 2:05 pm, Bevan McNaughton <bevan.mcnaughton@southlandgirls.school.nz> wrote:
>
> 2Talk here with an ISDN failover. Still have an analog Fax line for extra redundancy.


Out of personal interest, how often do you find yourself using those ISDN failover channels Bevan? Is it semi-regularly (eg once every month or two), or do they sit there largely unused thanks to the stability of IP connections these days? (eg fibre connections being vastly more reliable than any flavour of DSL ever was)

Pete

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[Julian Davison]

I've clearly be in areas with exceptional DSL as failures were fairly rare. Certainly my personal (and professional) experience wouldn't put fibre as more reliable by any useful margin.

J,

On 7/02/2017 2:44 pm, "Pete Mundy" <pe...@fiberphone.co.nz> wrote:

> On 7/02/2017, at 2:05 pm, Bevan McNaughton <bevan.mcnaughton@southlandgirls.school.nz> wrote:
>
> 2Talk here with an ISDN failover. Still have an analog Fax line for extra redundancy.


Out of personal interest, how often do you find yourself using those ISDN failover channels Bevan? Is it semi-regularly (eg once every month or two), or do they sit there largely unused thanks to the stability of IP connections these days? (eg fibre connections being vastly more reliable than any flavour of DSL ever was)

Pete

[Pete Mundy]

> On 7/02/2017, at 8:03 pm, Julian Davison <jul...@davison.org.nz> wrote:
>
> I've clearly be in areas with exceptional DSL as failures were fairly rare. Certainly my personal (and professional) experience wouldn't put fibre as more reliable by any useful margin.

There's certainly plenty of places where it can work very well and be quite stable (eg next door to the DSLAM ;), but when you deal with enough sites across enough diverse locations I find you can't help but eventually come across the bad ones too. Boy can they be a PITA to sort out sometimes!

My personal professional experience is that fibre based access technologies are vastly less prone to problems.

But we each have our own experiences and as always YMMV :)

Pete

[Craig Knights]

I'd venture that over 15 years at the same school.. our internet reliability is at a guess about the same..  but it's moved from being the connection itself being odd.. isdn, adsl, sdsl, fibre...  to being more the stuff on the line being odd. The n4l filter, linewize, etc

@ home... our fibre is much more reliable and cheaper..  and of course faster... even though we're only on 30mbps as thats all we need.

Craig.

[Blake Richardson]

We use Primary rate provided via Vodafone which goes into an Avaya VOIP PBX. Works very well.