Burned by Eschewing Best Practices
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@Carnival-Boy said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@scottalanmiller said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Violated the "First Rule of VoIP"... he went to his ISP for his SIP trunk. Big time burned
I've never heard of this rule. I've had the same ISP and SIP trunk provider for the last few years (BT). Can you expand, please?
I'd really call these Scott Allan Miller rules - though there is credibility there.
Scott is of the opinion that you should use as few as possible services on a single vendor. This allows you to break from a given vendor more easily if they start acting in bad faith.
i.e. You get your internet connection from your ISP, you host a website locally (which you shouldn't do - but that's another thread). You should NOT use your ISP's DNS service to hot your public DNS services because you have artificial lock-in with the ISP now. Even worse, you should not purchase your Domain name from your ISP if they happen to resell them.
Another example,
You purchase hosting services for a WordPress site from a vendor. You should Not buy your Domain Name through them, nor should you use them to host your DNS. All of these services should be on separate services. -
@Dashrender said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
I'd really call these Scott Allan Miller rules - though there is credibility there.
That could explain why I haven't heard it before
I've found and read the thread, but don't really get it. But phone systems aren't my area. I don't even know exactly what he means by "phone system". We have contract with BT for a leased line, and we have another contract with BT for SIP trunks, and we have another contract with BT for phonecalls (if that's the right term). The first two contracts are not related, and as far as I'm aware, there is nothing to stop us from dropping one contract but keeping the other. The phonecalls are related to the SIP trunks, as all our calls are free based on us renting the SIP trunks.
Obviously telecoms various work differently in different countries, so maybe there isn't a standard rule?
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@Carnival-Boy said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@Dashrender said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
I'd really call these Scott Allan Miller rules - though there is credibility there.
That could explain why I haven't heard it before
I've found and read the thread, but don't really get it. But phone systems aren't my area. I don't even know exactly what he means by "phone system". We have contract with BT for a leased line, and we have another contract with BT for SIP trunks, and we have another contract with BT for phonecalls (if that's the right term). The first two contracts are not related, and as far as I'm aware, there is nothing to stop us from dropping one contract but keeping the other. The phonecalls are related to the SIP trunks, as all our calls are free based on us renting the SIP trunks.
Obviously telecoms various work differently in different countries, so maybe there isn't a standard rule?
I wonder what the difference between your SIP contract and your Phonecalls contract is? For most people it's one in the same.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@Dashrender said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
I'd really call these Scott Allan Miller rules - though there is credibility there.
That could explain why I haven't heard it before
I've found and read the thread, but don't really get it. But phone systems aren't my area. I don't even know exactly what he means by "phone system". We have contract with BT for a leased line, and we have another contract with BT for SIP trunks, and we have another contract with BT for phonecalls (if that's the right term). The first two contracts are not related, and as far as I'm aware, there is nothing to stop us from dropping one contract but keeping the other. The phonecalls are related to the SIP trunks, as all our calls are free based on us renting the SIP trunks.
Obviously telecoms various work differently in different countries, so maybe there isn't a standard rule?
Is BT also your internet provider?
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Here is my setup, which is fairly unique.
cable modem connection to the internet 100/20 - no contract, pay month to month
SIP trunks, these are delivered over an onsite fiber connection between me and that same ISP. The ISP has a SIP Gateway device onsite that they connect to, then there is an ethernet connection on gateway device that connects to my PBX. I pay a flat fee for unlimited local calling, and a per/min fee for long distance. - no contract, pay month to month
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A more normal SIP delivery solution is as follows:
You purchase Internet connection from and ISP.
You purchase SIP trunks from a SIP provider different from your ISP.
The SIP trunks are delivered over your ISP connection via the internet.
If your Internet connection goes down, you can use a different internet connection to bring the SIP trunks into your location, for example, your cell phone, and your calls could resume working.
This is a very simplistic explanation.
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@Dashrender said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
I wonder what the difference between your SIP contract and your Phonecalls contract is? For most people it's one in the same.
It may well be.
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@dafyre said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Is BT also your internet provider?
Yes. Leased line provider / internet provider is the same thing, right?
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@Dashrender said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
I'd really call these Scott Allan Miller rules - though there is credibility there.
Jared says it, too.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
I've found and read the thread, but don't really get it. But phone systems aren't my area. ?
It's really just normal business rules, broken down as to how they apply to phones. There isn't actually anything specific to phones themselves in the rules. Just technical phone bits applied with standard business logic. Which is why it's not always immediately obvious that it's a standard rule.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@dafyre said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Is BT also your internet provider?
Yes. Leased line provider / internet provider is the same thing, right?
Often, but not necessarily. Especially with phones there is a relatively standard procedure to get non-Internet phone lines for JUST phones. That is NOT part of the "First Rule". It's rarely recommended, but rarely recommended is very different than "warned against." Leased lines for phones carry many of the problems of the ISP problem, but not all.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
@dafyre said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Is BT also your internet provider?
Yes. Leased line provider / internet provider is the same thing, right?
So now, if you start having billing problems, or consistent internet problems or something else that would drive you to change away from BT, you now have a harder time of that since all of your phone numbers and your internet and everything are all tied into that one provider.
As I understand what @scottalanmiller and others are saying, is the general consensus is to have your ISP, and your Phone Company / SIP provider be different businesses so that if something happens and you need to leave one, it doesn't affect the other.
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Why would it affect the other? They're separate services, that just happened to be with the same provider.
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@dafyre said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
As I understand what @scottalanmiller and others are saying, is the general consensus is to have your ISP, and your Phone Company / SIP provider be different businesses so that if something happens and you need to leave one, it doesn't affect the other.
That's the biggest component. They "own" you if they are tied together. The cost is normally the highest possible, generally we find people doing this on a completely different scale of cost.
But it is a lot more than that. It's the safety and features assumed with VoIP don't happen. It takes modern telephony and relegates it to the pre-VoIP world, just using VoIP technology. Much like having email but just scanning paper, emailing it and printing it out to replicate faxing.
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I can see why you woudn't want to bundle different services together into one contract. But that's not the same thing as having the same provider for different, independent services.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
I can see why you woudn't want to bundle different services together into one contract. But that's not the same thing as having the same provider for different, independent services.
It's true, they are not one and the same thing. One is a bundle, one is not. Separate contracts are far better, but generally it is the assumed value of bundling that causes the situation, rather than the other way around.
That's a unique situation that I've literally never heard of happening. Still caries the risks, though, just not quite as badly. How do you failover to another site if your ISP fails? How do you failover to another site if your site fails or PBX? How do you move your PBX to another location or go to hosted? If you have separate contracts, how do you receive your VoIP if your ISP is gone?
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If you have separate contracts, do you have the same vendor blaming other parts of the same vendor for issues? Like your ISP goes down, so the SIP contract side says that it isn't their problem because your ISP failed, even though it is the same company?
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I would imagine so, yes.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
Obviously telecoms various work differently in different countries, so maybe there isn't a standard rule?
Some countries, like Oman, ban non-monopoly telephony services. This would apply to any free market country.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:
I would imagine so, yes.
So one company can cut service and even with only one throat to choke, you get the blame game and no one to hold responsible. That's scary. They can use that as a way to not deliver on SLA.
