Long Distance $avings In A Box

By KEITH SCHULTZ

It should come as no surprise that MultiTech Systems is a player in the voice-over-IP (VoIP) business. Long known for its communications equipment, MultiTech is now offering a great low-cost VoIP gateway for small remote offices that can help save you money on long distance toll charges.

The MultiVOIP 200 is a dual-channel VoIP gateway that plugs into your existing Ethernet network and telephone system without requiring any additional hardware. The unit can handle two simultaneous voice or fax calls, and also can be managed remotely. It delivers good voice clarity, but you can tell you are not making a traditional voice phone call when using it.

The $1,749 MultiTech MultiVOIP 200 packs a lot of bells and whistles into its modem-sized chassis--at one of the lowest prices available for this type of device. Targeted towards companies with small remote offices, the MultiVOIP 200 can help ease high long distance bills by placing up to two voice calls at a time over the Internet.

Not only can you place a voice call, you can also fax through the MultiVOIP, at speeds up to 14.4 Kbps. This feature alone can save companies a lot of money if they frequently send faxes to the corporate office over traditional long distance carriers.

Similar to other products of this type, one requirement to use this technology is that you must have a homogeneous vendor solution. In other words, you will need to have a MultiTech on the receiving end as well.

While many vendors support similar voice compression techniques, so far, interoperability is still a ways off. Much like VPN vendors, getting a product to market is often more important than making sure you can connect to another vendor's product. Compatibility will come with time.

MultiTech chooses to implement only G.723, G.726 and G.727 voice compression and decompression technology from AudioCodes Ltd. in its Multi-VOIP 200. Unlike the much higher-priced Oki Network Technologies BS-1200 Internet Voice Gateway, MultiTech Systems' MultiVOIP 200 doesn't come with G.729 compression. As a result, its overall sound quality suffers slightly.

The voice quality in the MultiVOIP 200 is clear, with only a slight sense of being clipped--although we did detect a small echo at the beginning of each call during our testing.

The Echo Cancellation feature of the MultiVOIP cleared the echo out of the line after only a few seconds of conversation. We never detected any problems while sending a fax through the system.

We really like the Off 'Net Dialing feature found in the MultiVOIP 200. Off 'Net Dialing lets you dial into your company's VoIP network to reach a long distance destination. For example, you place a voice call to your office from home and then dial an extension that puts you on the VoIP network. At this new dial tone, you then dial a phone number that rings a phone on another MultiVOIP unit some geographic distance away. This could then ring an extension in that office building, completing the call.

You can even have the second MultiVOIP dial a phone number local to it. In essence, you can place a person-to-person long distance call over the Internet using your VoIP network.

While you can do this with a number of software packages and microphone/sound-card combinations, these others all require that both parties be online and using the same software. Off 'Net Dialing does not require any special software.

Securing and logging this type of call was not available until just recently. You can now collect real-time call statistics right from the MultiVOIP--statistics such as source extension, number dialed and duration of call.

And, though we didn't try the following during testing, you are now able to define user names and passwords to allow access to the VoIP network. This will keep unauthorized users from abusing this long distance freedom. This feature was not available in the last release.

One of the best features of the MultiVOIP is its phone book synchronization. Each MultiVOIP has to have an IP address and a phone number associated with each channel. Keeping this list of phone numbers can become tedious if you have more than a couple of devices in place.

A master MultiVOIP keeps all of the phone book entries. The other units, set as its slaves, periodically download a copy of the phone book. This eliminates having to reenter the phone entries in each MultiTech gateway.

We like the fact that you can remotely manage the MultiVOIP 200 using Telnet, SNMP and your Web browser. You can also edit your settings using MultiTech's Windows-based utility and a serial cable.

One feature not usually found in lower-cost voice gateways but found in the MultiVOIP 200, is support for FXS (standard analog), FXO (PBX) and E&M (trunk line) in the same unit. This simplifies installation by working in most situations and not requiring any additional telephone closet hardware. A single 10BaseT Ethernet port provides network connectivity.

All in all, the MultiVOIP was very easy to set up and install. In fact, we had our test system up and running in less than 20 minutes.

The old saying, "You get what you pay for" does not quite apply when it comes to MultiTech Systems' MultiVOIP 200. For its price, you get much more than you pay for--including great remote administration, Off 'Net Dialing and flexible installation.

The voice quality is nearly as good as that found in voice gateways that cost twice as much, and call usage logging is helpful when tracking long distance spending.