Talking VoIP Today Transcript
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All right folks with the download button technology geek podcast. This is our 61st
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podcast. I’m your host Brandon and as always you can find all of our shows at
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thetechnologygeek.org our podcast at the podcast.thetechnologygeek.org but we
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have a very special treat for you today. We have a guest I am not doing the show
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solo today. We have a friend of mine very good friend of mine VoIP expert
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security guy like myself security plus his list just goes on and on and on. Is
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anybody better in this technology world than me? It’s him. We have Howard on the
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show Howard. Thank you very much for coming on the program today. Thank you for
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having me. So we had one of the reasons why I had Howard on his ease that expert
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in VoIP he works for a company that that’s what they handle phones cloud all
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that kind of stuff and now one of the things he had today for us is he has
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talked about our VoIP diagram which I’m going to include in the show notes but
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Howard if you could tell us a little bit about that diagram for the people that
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have pulled it up if you can tell us what’s going on there we’d appreciate it.
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Absolutely Brandon so as everybody knows voiceover IP is the latest greatest
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craze. The lines are getting blurred between your PBX system and your network
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and it’s all sort of meshed together and that’s kind of a presenter problem
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especially as we’re moving into the whole Internet of Things and everybody’s
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got everything on the internet. That way they’re finding his voice quality
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starting to suffer as a result. You’ve got a pipe coming from your ISP whatever
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it is and you’ve got all these devices connected to it whether it be computers
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camera systems phones now we’re going to hear about Wi-Fi doorbells and soon
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Wi-Fi coffee makers and your friends you can fuck with all these things are
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taking a bad one and there seems to be no segmentation no nothing and everything
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is fighting with everything else for control everything wants to use your
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entire pipe. So one of the most common things my company does and it’s
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something I recommend it’s something we recommend for security subdividing your
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network into something called the virtual LAN or VLAN. What we would do is
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carve up your network allocating certain we’ll say segments for certain devices
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so on my diagram I broke it up into three VLANs VLAN one for voice or I’m sorry
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VLAN one for data VLAN two for voice and VLAN three for camera system. Camera
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systems could be replaced by anything in the world of the Internet of Things that
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could be your Wi-Fi doorbells that could be your guest Wi-Fi that could be your
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coffee maker that connects to Wi-Fi your fridge what have you. Another three show
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me you’re subdividing your network so the idea that with segmentation it will
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secure your network and it’s also allowing for better traffic so let’s
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say somebody on VLAN one is streaming Netflix they’re not going to stop all
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over the voice connection you’ll still be able to dial out and your voice
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quality won’t suffer as well as your Netflix won’t suffer from somebody with
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you in the camera system so the idea of keeping things separated will not only
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help you build it’s also a good idea for security to keep them on different
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networks separated by a firewall one of the firewalls that I would recommend to
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customers is usually a sonical I find it easiest to subdivide up into VLANs each
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VLAN is firewall they’re separated so if a hacker were to break into your network
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they wouldn’t get it everything so assuming they broke through the final
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one building the camera system okay great they compromise your cameras they
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can see what you’re doing but they can’t get access to your servers they won’t be
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able to hack your PBX and vice versa that’s basically what I’ve got going on
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my diagram one of the other things is something called QoS or quality of
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service that’s recommended that gives voice traffic a little bit of a priority
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on a network for better quality communication and one of the mistakes
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we’ve commonly see is people don’t realize that everything should be separated
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I have seen the voice existing on the same data as a network and then the voice
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quality suffers so that’s basically my diagram is this is just the most basic
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level of how you would set up a network obviously your mileage may vary depending
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on how your network set up how you’re wiring is set up sometimes you’re not
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care can be capable of having separate switches for everything based on your
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budget in which case we would have to look into seeing if your switches can do
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multiple VLANs on different ports it gets more complicated as time progresses
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this is just your basic run-of-the-mill here’s the easiest way to create a
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network now let me ask you a question because I know we’re gonna get
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questions about it say you have a fax machine or something like that is that
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possible to go through VoIP or you’re still using POTS lines for stuff like
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that nowadays you’re better off using the POTS lines you’ll have better
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reliability of the fax machine this going over the commodity internet may not
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always be the best thing now they have what’s called fax servers these days
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which is a central location some computer somewhere connected to a modem it’s
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replacing the fax machines and then you can access your fax over your network
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still need some sort of dial tone service so now I know we’ve talked about it a
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few times that you were talking about how Skype now is going to be or possibly
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could be replacing PBX over time could you go into that how does it work stuff
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like that well so Microsoft has now decided to move into the telco world
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and they want to connect to the public switch telephone network and to do so
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they’re using what’s called Skype for Business which is slightly different than
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the Skype you all have at home it doesn’t have a lot of lock-up issues it’s just
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a more robust system it’s based off of an older system called LINK some of your
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member connects back to exchange and it can be used as its own PBX system
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eventually replacing your PBX right now it’s still in the early stages it just
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got rolled out I want to say in December officially there’s a handful of
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providers Polycom, Mitel, and Cisco support it and it’s basically it’s a
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soft phone it’s what it comes down to being no more big PBX’s the only
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downside to using Skype for business as your PBX is it’s going to go over the
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internet and you’re still subject to bandwidth restriction if you’re they do
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make Skype endpoints again Mitel, Polycom, Cisco make Skype endpoints you can
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plug those into a different VLAN plus probably the POE switch point them out
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on the network and you’d probably be okay now the other the other thing a
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question I have and I know we’ve I’ve done some research into this you’re
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getting a lot of customers that are saying to me what’s the difference between
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going with a PBX or like an UMA system or a Magic Jack can you explain what the
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differences between going with those you see maybe on television advertising
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or something like what you’re talking about well what you see on television is
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designed really for the home user it’s not really designed for commercial
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entities it’s not going to handle multiple extensions it’s not going to
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handle massive amount of calling what it’s designed for is to replace your
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Verizon connection your MCI ATT whoever your local telco may be where the
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PBX comes in as you can take whatever’s coming in from say your P from your
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provider your about your Verizon or whoever it’ll take the line a little
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carpet up for you so you can say you know 5551234 comes into my business now
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I want this number to when people dial this number I want a three extension
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one two and five and all of those phones over a
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I handle to the PBX the PBX can also nowadays interface with email where you
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can now get an email should you be away from your desk indicating you have a
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voicemail and you would have the voice transcription of that email of that
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voice message stored as a WAV file so basically you check your email oh yeah
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some of us may voicemail message who called me you can hear the whole phone
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call without having to be at your desk sort of like like what Google does would
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say they’re their Android system where it’ll transcribe the message for you it
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will transcribe you’re getting an actual wave I would imagine that you could get
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a transcription I don’t know how well it would work I have seen Vonage try to
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transcribe things it doesn’t look pretty you’re better off listening to the actual
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voice message as it comes to a WAV file or MP3 file or whatever the phone system
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may give you the other nice thing about having a PBX is music on hold so that
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when you put a customer on hold they don’t hear dead air they can hear an
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advertisement they can hear a radio station whatever something other than
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dead air wears with these magic jacks and your Vonage’s you’re not getting any
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of that you’re just giving the customer dead air so it’s better for business if
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you had a PBX now the other question I have is to I noticed that you see a lot
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of companies say if you load the app on your phone you don’t necessarily have to
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be at your desk it’ll actually ring the actual like if you have an iPhone you
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can load the app and then you’re not at your desk what’s it called that’s
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correct twinning 20 you explain a little bit about that twinning like having a
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twin basically it’s mirroring your phone so you know how we can set up a raid
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where two hard drives mirror each other to the same thing correct the app is
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act the app is doing the same thing it’s acting as if it was your phone so when
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your phone rings it rings so where that’s good is if you’re a sales guy and
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you’re on the road 300 days a year and you only go into the office every
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some often just to fill out paperwork you don’t miss anything you’re out let’s
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say driving around on the turnpike you know you’re going to meet a client well
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now client calls in says okay I got a problem I need to change things you
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don’t miss that call now you don’t have to wait for oh I got an email who’s this
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no your phone rings okay I look at the app oh my phone’s ringing it’s Bob I’m
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supposed to be Bob in two hours yes Bob what’s going on hey you know I got a
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reschedule this meeting I’m stuck in Jeff okay so take my time getting to you
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thank you for letting me know I’m getting a little bit easier I’m getting
