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[AskAR]

How can we setup a very simple VOIP network between two offices?

We have 2 office as below:
Head Office in: United Arab Emirates
Development Office in: Kuwait

Bothe office have a high speed broadband connection and we want to handle all incoming calls to our development office.
And from our development office we can make calls any client in United Arab Emirates.

In simple words, our clients calls to our head office as locally and it will be answered by our development.

We don’t want to use any third party gateway etc and want to use internet connection between our head office and branch office.


Can any one tell me the solution which cover our requirements - software, hardware and how it will works?

Thanks,
Raza

[zendzipr]

The easiest method would probably be to use asterisk servers in each location. Mark one location as the primary and the other location will connect to the primary. You can have asterisk route calls based on that method and both offices are then connected. For more details, check out this hardware link

http://www.asterisk.org/support/hardware

Using asterisk is open source but there are paid solutions based off asterisk that can make management easier. I have been using Polycom phones for some time and am quite happy with them.

[AS-Richard]

Do you have a VPN or WAN setup between the sites? If so, install an Asterisk server at one site and connect the phones at both sites to connect to your Asterisk server on your local network.

[ddwebguru]

I think voip-info.org will answer all your queries.

[expo09]

Best to do some research online. Agree that voip-info.org would be a good starting point. Shouldn't be too complicated I wouldn't have thought.

[eacollin]

Check out http://www.3cx.com/ a great solution and works very well.
Also if your on a Windows platform and don't want to mess with a Linux/Unix box this is a good option.

Some features.
No need for separate phone wiring – phones use computer network
Easier to install & manage via web-based configuration interface
A software-based IP PBX is far less expensive than a hardware-based PBX / PABX
Employees can move offices without requiring any changes in the wiring or IP PBX configuration
Choose from the many SIP based hardware phones instead of getting locked in with one vendor
Receive & Make calls via the standard PSTN using VOIP Gateways
Save on call costs with 'out of the box' configurations for popular SIP / VOIP providers.

[PBXTechs]

That's easy actually. How many calls are you expecting to receive simultaneously and how much bandwidth is available in your head office?

[techiways1]

Do you have a budget ?

Skype is the best low cost soltuion for this scenario. Buy a skypein number (i don knw if its available for your country), forward it using its pbx application to your dev center.

If skypein number is not available, you can still forward those as sip calls through skype using the virtual box.

Similarly, you can use skype virtual boxes to channels your outgoing calls as local calls through skype network from your pstn network.

All this will work out at extremely low setup cost.

This saves you from a lot of head ache as well as money.

[Bashar]

unfortunately VOIP is banned by the government in Kuwait, so if you get caught you'll be in real trouble...

[AClarkTXTS]

What about Mumble, Teamspeak, or Ventrilo any of these would work to link the two offices. Technically it is still VOIP. However, they do not connect to the normal phone networks. Maybe the Kuwait government would allow this type of VOIP?

[Bashar]

any type of VOIP is banned , man even skype.com is blocked by all ISPs in the country

they say it makes ministry of communication loses money because people won't use landlines for international calls...

[andy345]

Hi Bashar,

I have also heard that Kuwaiti don`t allow voips because they thing nobody will use their landline services. Very narrow minded thinking.

Regards
Andy

[railto]

that sucks, i was going to second 3CX as we use it and it is a very stable product.

One possibility is that you have a 3CX server in your office in UAE, and for dev calls you can route it to an external PSTN number, then if a person in dev team wants to call a client but make it look like they are calling from UAE what they can do is,

dial main number to access 3CX VoIP Server
dial number for voicemail (999) by default
enter login details
at prompt press 9 for options
at prompt press 3 to dial a number.

That will then let them make a call out as if they are calling from the UAE office, this is a feature that i use myself, when im out and about and want to call a client or vendor but dont want them to get my mobile number (i dont like it showing as private number). I agree that its a bit cumbersome and takes some remembering, but it works well and will get around the problem of Kuwait not allowing you to use VoIP as essentially you are making a normal landline call.

[christophe15]

Originally Posted by AskAR

How can we setup a very simple VOIP network between two offices?

We have 2 office as below:
Head Office in: United Arab Emirates
Development Office in: Kuwait

Bothe office have a high speed broadband connection and we want to handle all incoming calls to our development office.
And from our development office we can make calls any client in United Arab Emirates.

In simple words, our clients calls to our head office as locally and it will be answered by our development.

We don’t want to use any third party gateway etc and want to use internet connection between our head office and branch office.


Can any one tell me the solution which cover our requirements - software, hardware and how it will works?

Thanks,
Raza

Have you considered using MPLS instead?

[team-vps]

Simple setup:
- A Clarkconnect or Smoothwall router at both offices to setup the VPN (OpenSSH).
- An Asterisk server at both offices connected over the VPN using IAX.

Your ISP will not be able to see what is running over the VPN connection.