New Facility, New Problems

[dptace]

Hello everyone!

I work for a company in central KS that is actually expanding in the middle of this economic climate.

With the expansion is coming a new building, for which I have been tasked to configure the phone system.

A little background:

Our current phone system includes a G450 Media Gateway, a redundant pair of S8700 Servers running Aura System Manager and Communication Manager 6.0, and an Avaya Modula Messaging server. The G450 contains a single MM710B media module is in slot 1, four MM717’s and two MM716’s. Slot 8 in the G450 is empty. We are using Avaya 2420 DCP telephones.

The data network in the new building will have a single CAT5e and CAT6 cable at each workstation. The building switches will be PoE capable. This will be the same data network on which our current Avaya system is residing.

Through the process of investigating how to get phones in the new building, it seems that we basically have 3 options:

1) Run twisted copper pairs from our current punch-down room to the new building.

a. This will be the simplest, though with the fewest options of expandability; once the wires are run, the only way to add more phones is to run more pairs between the buildings. One pair of wires would need to be run for each phone that would be conceivably used. We could continue to use the Avaya 2420 DCP phones. It would, however, limit the number of phones to the number of currently available ports on the MM717 modules.

2) Buy a second Avaya G450 Media Gateway and a number of MM717 DCP Media Modules

a. This would essentially duplicate our current system in the new building with a data communications channel between the two. Expandability would be the same as our current system, in each building. Expensive.

3) Buy a Managed PoE Switch and IP telephones.

a. The PoE Switch would be in the new building, connected to our existing data network, with the IP phones connected through this PoE switch. This looks like the cheapest and most future-proof and expandable option that I have found.

In investigating those three options, it seems that option 3 is the most viable.

Unfortunately, from what I have been able to find and by reading between the lines, it seems that we'll need to either replace the MM710B media module with an MP80 media processor or add an MP80 to the current system -- probably by moving the MM717 from slot 2 to slot 8.

Is this a correct assessment?