This notification email is intended to inform everyone in our company involved in the selection or ordering of networking gear for VoIP solutions.
As we know, our company has deployed many VoIP solutions. As time and the number of deployments has increased, our internal VoIP knowledgebase has incremented accordingly. Although the phone system brand per deployment may differ, the underlying networking equipment is often from the same manufacturer and in many cases, the same manufacturer model. Although in some respects debatable, several of the most problematic VoIP deployments include Kentrox networking equipment installed as part of the solution.
A common denominator in both point-to-point and VPN flavored VoIP installs that have been the most troublesome are Kentrox models Q2300 and Q2200. Although both units price very competitively, the gains achieved with the low upfront cost have been negated due to technical overhead applied in efforts solve poor voice-over-ip quality issues. More intangible but not to be ignored, is the cost to the company's reputation of delivering solid VoIP solutions. Although it's not a guaranty that another vendors equipment would have not resulted in similar issues, the uncertainty and doubt in future VoIP deployments arising from the Kentrox units having been involved in past problem deployments is certain.
It's recommended that Kentrox models Q2200 and Q2300 are no longer included in proposals for neither point-to-point or VPN VoIP solutions. They can still play a role as an inexpensive T1 CSU/DSU router/firewall for single ISP internet access but even for those solutions another vendors equipment, such as product offerings from Adtran or Cisco, may price equally as well and should be considered.
3 comments:
Kentrox makes some great gear. Their new q series is a great access router. I've installed them many times for customers and they are always satisfied with the results. Their QoS capabilities are very good also. They're certainly not intuitive though. The tech whose installing the router has to have some working knowledge of QoS on networks before getting successful results.
The Kentrox graphing features have been improved greatly and are a good tool for troubleshooting or beelining a network's performance.
I installed two of these in the past for a VoIP solution. The customer had two PBX phone system and of course computers on both ends of a VPN connect.
The Kentrox QSeries were able to both establish the VPN between the two offices (one in Florida and the other in New York) and with the QoS features, I was able to help the voice over IP voice quality to such a level that the users where unable to tell the difference between a regular PSTN voice call and the VoIP call.
The computers of course and their applications were not aware of the QoS changes that put the voice data first the data they were sending second. The applications and users remained unaffected by the minor delay increase they were experiencing.
I had some experience with this model router from Kentrox. They are useful enough and a decently priced for their feature set. The one thing I found that needs some improvement is their warranty and tech support on the product needs to be uplifted a little. Adtran makes a competitive product that has good quality support included. If I'm remembering right, it's their Netvanta series routers.
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