Voip without handsets

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wanabegeek

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Wannabe Geek

#288425 28-Jun-2021 11:41

Appreciate advice please - our business has fibre and voip. Connectivity for workstations is via server to thin clients and voip is via handsets.

* Is it necessary to have handsets -can we just operate from headsets connected to our thin clients?

* Can we just have two numbers for all users to access?

* Recommended suppliers?

Thanks!

trig42

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#2735702 28-Jun-2021 11:50

Not sure, but I think the thin client issue could be a speedbump.

We are migrating our office to Vodafone's VOIP offering (Vodafone One Business) and they told us that running client/server computers (ie., think clients running in a RDP environment) would no work.

We are running full PCs, so no issue here, we will be going to softphones rather than physical phones.

gehenna

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#2735703 28-Jun-2021 11:53

Softphone is what you want. Or WebRTC.

xpd

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#2735716 28-Jun-2021 12:27

While technically softphones would probably run off a server via RDP, experience will probably be poor. So you'll need full Windows (on desktop or thin client).

XPD / Gavin

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littlehead

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#2735880 28-Jun-2021 14:51

Some Virtual Desktop solutions these days have media stream optimisation that can help improve things but it is only ever going to give you an ok experience going via the virtual desktop. The best solution is to have the voip media stream bypass the virtual desktop and be redirected directly to the thin clients.The virtual desktop acts like a remote/controller only and the audio stream goes straight to the thin client and doesn't get compressed or "optimised". This, however, usually requires a compatible thin client with add-on/driver installed, compatible virtual desktop solution with appropriate add-on/driver installed in desktop and underlying infrastructure, and the voip solution itself to be compatible and support media redirection. If you haven't planned for that from the start it is unlikely you will have things line up in the compatibility matrix.

From using Teams audio/calling/telephony through a VMware DAAS based VM without any media redirection, it can vary from bad to "fine", but never really good/great in my experience.

chevrolux

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#2735884 28-Jun-2021 15:03

We do unified communications, with 3CX being the main product that gets pushed (with Teams being the very close runner up these days).

We try to avoid terminal servers as much as possible. But if we reeeeeeally have to, it works ok for light usage - note "ok". As others have mentioned, audio gets compressed, starts to sound all clipped and horrible etc. No way would I put in place in the likes of a call centre situation, or other heavy use or "high value" application (like a lawyers office for example).

dt

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#2735907 28-Jun-2021 16:58

Have done implementations like this in the past on HP thinclients running thin OS and Citrix using Cisco softphones. Needed to install a linux client on the thinclient and a windows agent on the the virtual desktop, the virtual desktop would offload the traffic to the local client (being the thin client), bit of a PITA to setup but worked flawlessly for both video and audio in the end.

Can require a bit of effort when it comes to keeping up with maintenance due to updates etc, Not to bad if you have a well configured thinclient management tool but yeah, theres a bit of effort involved and was bothersome to setup.

What phone system are you running?

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gehenna

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#2735908 28-Jun-2021 17:07

xpd:

While technically softphones would probably run off a server via RDP, experience will probably be poor. So you'll need full Windows (on desktop or thin client).

Nah, I run the infrastructure for a 1500+ seat contact centre based all around NZ on Windows Virtual Desktop. Works a treat.

nztim

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#2735910 28-Jun-2021 17:18

we had a client try use a softphone through Citrix Client and it ended in tears, run the softphone on the PC

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

gehenna

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#2735923 28-Jun-2021 17:55

It's perfectly feasible to run it on a remote desktop with local handoff to the headset. I've even had ours running on a thin client vdi then into my AVD desktop, so virtual in virtual. Worked perfectly, though I was surprised, and it was not something I'll do again in a hurry for the sake of simplicity and supportability.

I don't doubt people have had problems with this in the past but if you can ensure you're dealing with the latest version of things in your end-to-end architecture then it'll be fine.