Hosted VoIP???
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@travisdh1 said in Hosted VoIP???:
@JasGot said in Hosted VoIP???:
@scottalanmiller said in Hosted VoIP???:
While it has a place, it's extremely rare that it makes sense.
Yes.
Like when you need a managed Point-to-Point with a one hour SLA to keep your $20m/year business operational from two geographically disparate locations, and both are within the carrier's physical footprint. It allows the CEOs to sleep well at night.A signed SLA makes me nervous, that 60 minute SLA is probably only "We'll respond within x amount of time" and not actually fix anything until we feel like it. SLAs are generally meant to protect the seller, not the consumer.
Exactly. An SLA means the vendor need not worry about best effort. SLAs protect vendors, not customers.
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@JasGot said in Hosted VoIP???:
@scottalanmiller said in Hosted VoIP???:
While it has a place, it's extremely rare that it makes sense.
Yes.
Like when you need a managed Point-to-Point with a one hour SLA to keep your $20m/year business operational from two geographically disparate locations, and both are within the carrier's physical footprint. It allows the CEOs to sleep well at night.Not a smart CEO. SLA does nothing to keep the network up. It simply stated how much rebate you can get. I'd want to fire any CEO who didn't get heartburn thinking about how he used a contract to get uptime instead of a properly designed system.
That's why cars, airplanes, nuclear power station, doctors and other things that truly matter are always best effort. Because an SLA has no ability to protect you.
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@travisdh1 said in Hosted VoIP???:
that 60 minute SLA is probably only "We'll respond within x amount of time"
In this case, it really is 60 back up and running. I've see it in action. I would never do this because of the costs and handcuffs to one vender, but if the CEO is happy, that's all that really matters.
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@JasGot said in Hosted VoIP???:
@travisdh1 said in Hosted VoIP???:
that 60 minute SLA is probably only "We'll respond within x amount of time"
In this case, it really is 60 back up and running. I've see it in action. I would never do this because of the costs and handcuffs to one vender, but if the CEO is happy, that's all that really matters.
The past is never a showing of future endeavors. And a happy CEO? that seems like the wrong approach.
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Thanks everyone for contributing to the the thread. Yes, they are paying a significant amount for the MPLS connection. I'm not against suggesting an alternative to them.
I'm no comms guru, I understand how a VPN for a single user works, but how do we connect office A to office B via VPN/ I'm sure this is an elementary question to those who know, but I'd be grateful if someone can throw some plain english explanations at me so I can get started.
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@siringo said in Hosted VoIP???:
Thanks everyone for contributing to the the thread. Yes, they are paying a significant amount for the MPLS connection. I'm not against suggesting an alternative to them.
I'm no comms guru, I understand how a VPN for a single user works, but how do we connect office A to office B via VPN/ I'm sure this is an elementary question to those who know, but I'd be grateful if someone can throw some plain english explanations at me so I can get started.
It's the same sort of thing, but going site-to-site. We use Sonicwall at work, and they refer to what your using as SSL-VPN and site-to-site as VPN (it makes no sense like so much else they do, stay away if you have a choice.)
I'm stealing @Pete-S picture from another thread for a visual for you here.
Edit: It came out a bit s***, but you should get the idea.
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@Dashrender said in Hosted VoIP???:
The past is never a showing of future endeavors. And a happy CEO? that seems like the wrong approach.
Often, it is a requirement to stay employed.
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@travisdh1 Thanks travisdh1. I sat down and remembered I'd actually set them up with a site to site VPN many years ago before they got larger. It's Monday morning here, that should explain it.
I've been reading up on SD-WAN this morning. Some sites say "replace your MPLS network with SD-WAN and save money" other sites say that "you must keep your current MPLS network to use SD-WAN".
I wonder which one it is? Could be dependant upon the amount of traffic between sites???
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@siringo said in Hosted VoIP???:
Could be dependant upon the amount of traffic between sites???
No. SDWAN is the new MPLS, with lower costs.
You get a device for each site and plug it in to your various internet connections. Can be more than one at each site.
It aggregates everything over a set of virtual IP addresses.
So you never "go down" assuming you chose the multiple ISP connections well.
Also your IP never changes. No matter what ISP the traffic is routing on. So things like VoIP don't drop calls when services switch.
But you pay for your bandwith through the aggregator.
It will always be more expensive than setting up your own site to site VPN, but gains you minor benefits. Minor for most businesses. There are absolutely some businesses that are a great fit for SDWAN.
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But the thing to remember is that SD-WAN is just running on your existing network connections. so if you only have shit available, the SD-WAN will still be shit.
Also, if you only have expensive lines available, your SD-WAN will be stupid expensive.
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Thanks @JaredBusch for the info.
With the MPLS setup, all sites appear as one large site. They can 'net use', browse shares via Windows Explorer and so on. Can you do that with an SD WAN implementation?
And what do you guys think of using a provider that is not located in the same country? Our daytime is pretty much the night time for the rest of the world, could be tricky regarding support?
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@JasGot said in Hosted VoIP???:
@travisdh1 said in Hosted VoIP???:
that 60 minute SLA is probably only "We'll respond within x amount of time"
In this case, it really is 60 back up and running. I've see it in action. I would never do this because of the costs and handcuffs to one vender, but if the CEO is happy, that's all that really matters.
Right, but 60 backup instead of 10. You are seeing longer than necessary outages, higher than necessary cost and a CEO that clearly doesn't know what he's doing.
A happy CEO doesn't matter at all, happy owners are. If I was an owner and knew my CEO had done this, we'd be having a conversation that would leave the CEO quite unhappy. That the CEO made a mistake this basic (it's a business, not tech failure) AND is happy that my money was being thrown away like it is some kind of joke to him?
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@siringo said in Hosted VoIP???:
I'm no comms guru, I understand how a VPN for a single user works, but how do we connect office A to office B via VPN/ I'm sure this is an elementary question to those who know, but I'd be grateful if someone can throw some plain english explanations at me so I can get started.
A VPN is a tunnel from one place to another. Compare it to ethernet. If you connect a PC to a switch via ethernet, that's like a Client VPN connection. If you connect two switches via ethernet, that's like a site to site VPN. VPN is just a tunnel between two places. Those can be PCs, routers, whatever.
Think of it like the MPLS. The MPLS can connect sites or a PC to a site. From a "how do we connect" perspective, VPN does everything an MPLS does, just cheaper, faster and secure.
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@JasGot said in Hosted VoIP???:
@Dashrender said in Hosted VoIP???:
The past is never a showing of future endeavors. And a happy CEO? that seems like the wrong approach.
Often, it is a requirement to stay employed.
Right, if the goal of the business is politics, not profits. So only when the CEO isn't acting as a CEO. Which is a LOT of the time, that's why system admins earn, on average, more than CEOs in America. The average system admin knows more about business than the average CEO.
This is one of those sad states of IT.... which people do we placate instead of doing a good job in order to stay hired. Our boss? Their boss? The owner? All depends who finds out what is wrong and who finds out who didn't tell someone else.
In this case, we know the CEO isn't doing a good job for a business. If the CEO is the owner, that makes this a hobby business and we don't care. If the CEO is being instructed not to do a good job but owner, that also makes it a hobby business. If there are public investors, that makes this a violation of the CEO's ethical and legal responsibilities to them. But it's impossible to catch and prove as the CEO can simply claim incompetence and that's perfectly legal and impossible to prove.
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@siringo said in Hosted VoIP???:
I've been reading up on SD-WAN this morning. Some sites say "replace your MPLS network with SD-WAN and save money" other sites say that "you must keep your current MPLS network to use SD-WAN".
I wonder which one it is? Could be dependant upon the amount of traffic between sites???It's ALL marketing. SD-WAN is the new product made to fleece people now that MPLS has been exposed as such a scam for so long. But if you are looking at SD-WAN, that implies you are following the same process that exposed you to MPLS is the first place - going to the wrong vendors who are out to sell you something.
You should be looking for an IT solution here, not looking for vendors to sell you something.
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@JaredBusch said in Hosted VoIP???:
@siringo said in Hosted VoIP???:
Could be dependant upon the amount of traffic between sites???
No. SDWAN is the new MPLS, with lower costs.
You get a device for each site and plug it in to your various internet connections. Can be more than one at each site.
It aggregates everything over a set of virtual IP addresses.
So you never "go down" assuming you chose the multiple ISP connections well.
Also your IP never changes. No matter what ISP the traffic is routing on. So things like VoIP don't drop calls when services switch.
But you pay for your bandwith through the aggregator.
It will always be more expensive than setting up your own site to site VPN, but gains you minor benefits. Minor for most businesses. There are absolutely some businesses that are a great fit for SDWAN.
The problem here is that none of this is guaranteed with an SD-WAN. SD-WAN is a marketing term and all mesh VPN solutions are also SD-WAN solutions. So it's 1990s' technology with a flashy new name. There is some cool new tech available out there, but just because a vendor offers SD-WAN branding doesn't imply that they actually do any of that stuff.
SD-WAN can be at any cost, use any tech, have any redundancy that you and the vendor work out.
And you can build your own SD-WAN, in any fashion that you want.
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@siringo said in Hosted VoIP???:
With the MPLS setup, all sites appear as one large site. They can 'net use', browse shares via Windows Explorer and so on. Can you do that with an SD WAN implementation?
You can do that with anything, including SD-WAN, VPN, etc. It's exactly the thing we are saying that you shouldn't want to do (and we doubt that you actually do), but every technology we've mentioned all along does that automatically. This is a standard pattern that we've been literally doing since before MPLS existed. Remember ALL of this is MPLS copying VPN setups, not the other way around.
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@siringo said in Hosted VoIP???:
And what do you guys think of using a provider that is not located in the same country? Our daytime is pretty much the night time for the rest of the world, could be tricky regarding support?
For what, phones? That's a factor of the provider's support agreement with you and nothing else. Someone in your country could easily have worse hours than someone outside. Where they are located doesn't mean you can guess what their support hours are. It will give you a hint as to which ones are more likely, but nothing else. You should base your decision on their support hours, not their location.
In fact, you shouldn't even consider location in anything IT. Only the resulting services. If the resulting service is best, it is best. Where it comes from is irrelevant.
If you mean for MPLS/SDWAN/VPN then we are back to "under no circumstances should you have anything called a provider" in your process.
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thanks @scottalanmiller plenty to think about there.
