Best posts made by bigbear

@francesco-provino said in RDSH for a Medical Office:

12 clients? In this case, a VDI doesn't make any sense. For less than 10k$ you can setup a hell of office workstations, with far better performance (especially for latency) and reliability.

VDI is what is being pushed by the current vendor (effortlessoffice dot com) but I am a big RDSH fan as of late. Havent had latency issues with Vultr yet.

For RDSH I dont see how the cost is prohibitive at all. And when using session host its actually easier to manage IMO. You deploy software once. Remote control is built it. Data is local from block storage.

Its almost like RDSH is now one of those best kept secrets for small businesses.

Monthly Costs...
$96/month includes Server 2016 on Vultr Instance w/16gb RAM.
$180/month for 12 Office 365 accounts for Email and Office 2016

$348 Cost Per "Thin Client"
$179/Minix PC w Windows 10
$149/IPS 27" Monitor
$20 Logical Wireless Keyboard/Mouse

@jaredbusch said in Replacing FreePBX with FusionPBX:

I will certainly look into this, but It has to be stupid simple if it is going to be something I recommend.

It sounds great for you because you want to run something MT and have the skill to back it up.

That is not how the majority of people buy into phone systems though. Also, I have zero desire to be a phone provider.

I recommend, assist, and implement. I do not run it, there is no market there for new companies IMO.

I mean new "VoIP Providers" come out every day it seems like.

I think you will be surprised, I have been so far. As a single-tenant solution its still faster than FreePBX, and I find the GUI faster as well.

I believe a lot of your MSP/Reseller types who have a dozen customers or so would see it as a no brainer over FreePBX because of the Domain/MT functionality and the ability to rebrand. Also there are no agressive ads pulling you in to competing services.

But all that aside, my primary goal is still to find and document a FOSS alternative to FreePBX the the average small business can spin up and use.

@aaronstuder said in Replacing FreePBX with FusionPBX:

@bigbear said in Replacing FreePBX with FusionPBX:

I am going with a $20 Vultr instance next as I plan to run 11 tenants and hundreds of phones off this install.

What happens when Vulrt goes down? Do you have 11 company's all calling you for support at the same time?

Same thing that happens now with my 11 FreePBX installs.

@stuartjordan said in Replacing FreePBX with FusionPBX:

Is there many people using Fusion PBX in production? is that much of a comparison compared to Freepbx? GUI looks slightly nicer than Freepbx.

There are a lot of people using it. In telecom people don't share and recommend much because everyone, even your small no-name itsp guy, all perceive themselves to be in competition.

And again, my focus is on getting more options for single tenant every day phone system installs.

@scottalanmiller said in Replacing FreePBX with FusionPBX:

@bigbear said in Replacing FreePBX with FusionPBX:

@stuartjordan said in Replacing FreePBX with FusionPBX:

Is there many people using Fusion PBX in production? is that much of a comparison compared to Freepbx? GUI looks slightly nicer than Freepbx.

There are a lot of people using it. In telecom people don't share and recommend much because everyone, even your small no-name itsp guy, all perceive themselves to be in competition.

And again, my focus is on getting more options for single tenant every day phone system installs.

It's true. It's rare for PBX / VoIP people to talk to each other. ML is rare in that we have several "competitors" talking openly with each other.

Along that thinking I've been wandering if I could negotiate to get my calling rates available for ML members without them coming through my sub account.

I have 2 million minutes of usage per month but if all ML usage was pooled with a Telnyx I bet it could be twice that. Thereby giving everyone a .005 to .007 rate.

Sam model as my wholesale hardware pricing.

Then think about the fact that we could recommend a true FOSS pbx against FreePBX, a wholesale rate vs SIPStation and discounted Yealink phones.

Something along the spirit of Lets Encrypt.

But from that point still continue to encourage other companies to release their pbx as FOSS.

@tracy_burton said in Vendors...Who are you using?:

@bigbear
It can't...it will fail miserably lol

The great thing about Big Bears VoIP is that it's too big to fail.

@bnrstnr said in Vendors...Who are you using?:

@bigbear said in Vendors...Who are you using?:

Yealink phones? Fishing lures?

And some Samurai swords if you go with sipdojo/ninja

That's some serious diversification

Hold on I'm writing this all down, this is good stuff....

@jaredbusch said in Replacing FreePBX with FusionPBX:

@markjcrane said in Replacing FreePBX with FusionPBX:

Make changes int FreePBX and when you hit apply watch the CPU with HTOP or top.
Its been some years since I've been on FreePBX but last time I did that it had very high CPU usage enough to interrupt the call for a minute or two. The system only had 10 extensions.

I would be curious about someone trying this test on current FreePBX systems. To see if this is still happening.

Try the same test on FusionPBX and you are not going to see a large CPU spike. Even if you had 5000 extensions or more.

The single vCPU spikes up and down as I would expect. I have never had a call interrupted.

But the point here is to talk about systems without bias. Please do not turn this into a bashing conversation.

If you dig through threads around here, you will see that while I highly recommend FreePBX, I am far from a fanboy.

I wouldn't mind seeing both sides list their perceived pros and cons and then putting them to the test. This kind of thing wasn't even possible before as the only option anyone considered was FreePBX. I thought maybe with a lot of support we could get someone to open source their PBX product, and FusionPBX was just waiting to be reconsidered.

I am sure there are issues and caveats on both sides. The fact that we can at least now compare 2 options is a big improvement IMO.

@jaredbusch said in My Grizzly Login...:

@bigbear said in My Grizzly Login...:

How do you like my Fusion login screen?

Has turned out to be very much a developer/freeswitch project. Just messing around with it has given me so many ideas...

That (FusionPBX/Freeswitch) is next on my list of things to do this week, after firmware updates to Ubiquiti gear.

You know, if nothing else you could use it to provision and configure your phones to your FreePBX instances. The provisioned is great.

Just be a little bit of code change...

Was just getting ready to do this tonight as I bought a second USG today I am about to install today in my house. The other one is at a business.

Can you just spin Deb9 up on Vultr from the default machines? I am assuming a $5 VM?

For the multi-tenancy are there special steps or do you just setup separate "networks"

In SSH, I went back and did a set-inform again (as the first time it gave this feedback below) then in about 10 seconds it started provisioning...

So maybe that is the best way to hard set it?

Adoption request sent to 'http://x.x.x.x:8080/inform'.

1. please adopt it on the controller
2. issue the set-inform command again
3. <inform_url> will be saved after device is successfully managed

Also have you tested your ping to to NJ/NY data center for VULTR? Might surprise you.

I was surprised and ended up moving some things from Chicago to NJ/NY despite it being twice the distance from me as Chicago VULTR instances were (500 miles to Chicago, 1200 miles to NJ/NY). Latency went from 80/90ms to 30ms or less on average when I moved to NJ/NY Vultr instance.

.

@marcinozga said in Ubiquiti UNMS - First impressions:

It doesn't support Toughswitches yet, no support for NVR or cameras, no support for Mfi devices. I wish it would replace Unifi controller too. At the moment it only picked up 2 nano stations, so just too limited for me. Perhaps in the future they add additional devices, firmware upgrades alone across the board would be huge.

Isnt mFi pretty much dead? Really sucks too but I think on ubnt forums the pressed and got leadership to admit they abandoned it in the vine...

Another caveat with the Small Biz MSP...

Small businesses under 100 employees, however successful the company appears, are general not able to make sound decisions regarding IT. You end up giving more for less because they dont understand your value, or you spend 80% of your effort getting business instead of providing service and making money.

Consulting puts you in a more earnest position once you actually have a customer, and a more long term position.

However, small businesses are not seeking our IT consulting. Its a hard marketing proposition. They are googling for cloud services they can control themselves to replace the much hated IT guy they are dealing with.

It can be done. I think I remember reading even on NTG that they started during the IT boom and had the advantage of taking on an incumbent customer base.

@scottalanmiller said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:

@bigbear said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:

It can be done. I think I remember reading even on NTG that they started during the IT boom and had the advantage of taking on an incumbent customer base.

No, we started as a software shop and moved into IT gradually.

I think it is supportive of the idea that everything outside of IT service is 10 times easier to sell than IT service (or consulting) and then you can expand your relationship to take over IT.

A small "MSP" has the chances a rock band has of both sustainability let alone large scale success.

Its got me thinking, and maybe a good topic for another thread, what is the "hot business" now that is accessible for a small startup. Something where customers are actually seeking out solutions the way small offices needed a server, email and netowrk help in the late 90's and early 2000's?

Co-channel interference, latency for hand off between 802.11 AP's as well as packet overhead
and latency from security that was designed for data make it a poor solution for a roaming voice handset.

For fixed handsets I have had good luck with Yealink T5 series phones so far, which have built in wifi and a bigger internal antenna compared to the USB sticks you add to previous versions.

DECT is lower frequency, designed for voice and offers real time hand off between radios. So that is why you still see DECT 6 handsets with VOIP built in to the base, so you can register it to your PBX over the LAN.

@scottalanmiller said in EdgeRouter routing:

@bigbear said in EdgeRouter routing:

Gotcha, still something more easily done with a Microtik than Ubiquiti. Would be great Ubiquiti would start making their switches this way. Basically a switch can be a router, multiple routers, etc.

That's an L3 switch.

While you are correct, RouterOS and RouterBoard do some things that are unique and will work with there $150 24 port switches. Back when we were bigger uses of them the only alternative was a Cisco Metro Ethernet switch that started at $2500.

Still currently a bigger fan of UBNT though.

Have a friend with a ship that remanufactures starters, sells hundreds of parts in their retail store side and also does service/starter installations.

I'm not looking to get into this business but while I was installing a phone system he asked me the typical "what software can I get to better manage my business, ditch quickbooks"

As ML is big on open source I assume some of you might have some good recommendations?

@glasswireken said in Anyone start an MVNO?:

@bigbear

So if I understand correctly, the biggest expense was paying the phone service provider or what was the biggest expense for you (if you can say)? Can you say if you had to pre-pay, or do you know if they will let you buy the service you need as you grow?

Thanks for your help.

To become an actual MVNO you have to register and certify yourself with the FCC. Its a six figure, time consuming process. There are something like 3,000 MVNO's in the US and you have probably only heard of less than 10, to give you an idea of how many people have wasted time and money.

If you are looking to brand and sell residential service and dont intend to build infrastructure you should google MVNE. Everyone will try to get $5k to $10k to turn you up, and usually there is a $1000 or more commitment per month. If you have a clear idea of how to get to a decent monthly revenue you should be able to get them to forgo the charges.

We had a wireless ISP customer base, VOIP business customers and a tight geographical area we could service. So we had market, but the pricing in bulk that we got still fell far short of what a customer could get direct by the time we had ourselves up and running. We were paying $10 per GB on failover (same as google). Consider now Verizon and AT&T offer 6GB and unlimited talk and text for $40 prepaid per month.

What were you thinking of doing, or just investigating in general?