voice broadcast calls per min

[jhdoan]

Hello I'm looking to build a server but am new and confused on how the voip sip trunking works. I want to do a press-1 campaign and call at least 100 calls per min. What kind of equipment as far as sip cards and service from the voip company would i need. also what kind of internet connection would be needed to do this. I have about 5 agents on hand to take the calls as well. Thanks in Advance!!

[mflorell]

What kind of bandwidth do you have?

[jhdoan]

i have cable internet at home but if neccessary will host at a place that has T1 or above connection. I'm just wondering about the channels or lines required to do predictive dialing at that ratio. is there a wholesale place that can offer that many lines for cheap. Thanks in advance.

[mflorell]

Your cable connection won't be able to handle 100 calls/minute, unless your calls are less than 20 seconds in length. Something like this you really should do over a better internet connection than cable.

[jhdoan]

would a T1 line be efficient. if cable wont work. what will. also will I only need to purchase 1 sip trunk to handle all the calls simultaneously or will i need more. thanks

[mflorell]

You might be able to do 100 concurrent calls with a Data T1 using G729, but how long is the message that you will be playing in this broadcast campaign?

[jhdoan]

Thanks for your response. Florell. The message that will be playing is only about 20-30 seconds long. I dont need to be recording calls so hopefully that will help on CPU usage. Can someone describe how VOIP services charge for minutes while using multiple lines. do u need to purchase extra lines?

[williamconley]

VOIP charges per minute and many (most?) will "cap" your number of available "channels" (each channel would be One Phone Call). Some limit you to 10, some to 20. Most will allow you to negotiate (translates to how much money you intend to spend every month) for more channels.

Voice T1s are excellent for this, as they will lease you as many channels as you like, but there are only 23 per T1 (which can get expensive VERY quickly). Also, most people who lease a Voice T1 find themselves paying twice as much per month (or more) as they thought they would because they do not read their contract, they just go with whatever the salesman said. So the expectation is $1200/month, and you get an invoice for $2300 (every month for 24 months!). So read the dotted I's and crossed T's carefully and understand what you are signing.

Some cable companies now have bandwidth starting as low as 5Meg (up to 1Gig!) for around $800-$1000 per month in metro areas. And I'm talking about fiber (so it IS 5Meg, not "we hope to get you 5 Meg" which is what cable companies are famous for). Once again they want a contract, but it is a solid price and includes no VOIP or anything other than Bandwidth.

After acquiring the necessary bandwidth (single T1 is 1.5M, which could be sufficient if you use it for NO OTHER PURPOSE than g729 channels to hold close to 100), you need to get a CPU capable of transcoding 100 channels simultaneously.

If this is your "first venture" into VOIP, much less asterisk/vicidial ... you may want to either hire a professional to oversee your system or get a smaller system online first (20 channels) to test your intended expenditures and technology. The cost involved is negligible compared to what it could be for "down time" later if your plan doesn't pan out.

Good luck. There are lots of pro's (such as matt, who MADE this program).

[jhdoan]

what im getting from the last post is that it would be more economical to get my server hosted colocation place that offers a high level of bandwidth say 100mbps. but how much data is usually transmitted. some places allow up to 500gb per month. is this enough or should i invest in something that is uncapped/unlimited. thanks

[williamconley]

good question. you will find that a lot of posters are leary of Hosted boxes unless you pay serious attention to what is going on. obviously the bandwidth used is important, but before you get to that point you need to make sure you have a dedicated box with enough power to do the job (running out of CPU in a "virtual" box is pretty easy, so don't even go there for more than a couple lines).

there are also several posters who will offer to host it for you, in which case your next question has to be ALL the charges (do they want you to use Their Minutes) and of course capacity and reliability.

Take into account what happens if it "goes down", how do you access it if it's offline for some reason (Network card fails?). If you are familiar with co-located servers, this is not too difficult, but if you are not, be careful not to be caught by surprise when it could cost you a lot of money. Support from the Co-Lo facility is often very quick (but often only during certain hours ...).

Also, 100 calls/minute ... for How Many Minutes Per Day? How long (on average, not max or minumum) will each call be connected? What codec will you be using (g729 will use much less bandwidth than ulaw, but will hit your processor harder ...). This will be necessary to begin to estimate your bandwidth requirements.