What Gatekeeper & Gateway? Advice needed!

[Airwave1]

Hi All,

We are seriously looking into purchasing a Gateway and Gatekeeper but are a little unshure which route to take.
Firstly I 'll give you some background to what we have.

Tandberg MCU 16+16
Tandberg Management Software
20 Tandberg units connected to our LAN along with ISDN6
25 Sony 1600's connected to our WAN along with ISDN6
Coming soon:
4 Tandberg IP only units connected to our LAN requiring external ISDN access (This is where the Gateway is needed!)

I have looked into and received list prices for both the Tandberg Gateway (4Mb) and the Gatekeeper and although they seem like best solution they are expensive.
I have also looked into the Cisco 3526 PRI Gateway and the Gatekeeper. Although the Gateway is not up to the same standards as the Tandberg (no H.264, H.239 or XGA Resolution) it would work out considerably cheaper for us as we are in the position to buy a new Router anyway, the Gateway and Gatekeeper are simply software installed on a Router.

Whats everyones thoughts on this?

If you need more info just ask for it and i'll provide it!

Thanks for your time!

[Entropy3XD]

The Tandberg stuff is great if you have the money. The Radvision is also great to work with, both the gateway and gatekeeper, and they work extremely well with the Tadnberg MCU. Cisco OEMs their IPVC stuff from Radvision, so it may be cheaper if you have a Cisco account to go through them. The only thing I don't like about the Cisco boxes are that they are usually a few months behind Radvision on software revs. The Cisco MCM software works very well, but I am personally partial to the GUI interface of the Radvision ECS for gatekeeper functionality.

[Sean Lessman]

I have looked into and received list prices for both the Tandberg Gateway (4Mb) and the Gatekeeper and although they seem like best solution they are expensive.
I have also looked into the Cisco 3526 PRI Gateway and the Gatekeeper. Although the Gateway is not up to the same standards as the Tandberg (no H.264, H.239 or XGA Resolution) it would work out considerably cheaper for us as we are in the position to buy a new Router anyway, the Gateway and Gatekeeper are simply software installed on a Router.

First of all thank you for being a TANDBERG customer!

I am interested to understand why you think the TANDBERG Gateway and Gatekeeper are expensive. This list price on the TANDBERG Gateway is less than both the RADVision and Polycom comparable gateways.

The TANDBERG gatekeeper also comes as a stand alone appliance. When comparing to others, make sure you compare the costs of servers etc and look at future costs of scalability.

I would encourage you to engage your TANDBERG rep to understand how these products will develop in the future. With all of that TANDBERG technology, its worth your while to understand your options.

Sean

[Airwave1]

Hi,

The cost comparison I am making is between the Tandberg Gateway & Gatekeeper set up and the Cisco Gateway & Gatekeeper set up (including the purchase of the Routers required).
Im not going to put an exact cost difference as the costs I have so far are only list and not the final price I would expect to pay but it looks like going for the cisco option would save us a few thousand pounds.

The main reason I say that the Tandberg option is expensive is because of how many system it will bought to serve. In the first instance it would be purchased to serve 4 IP only systems, although it would cover more long term as we slowly move over to IP, if we find it is effective!

I have been in contact with Cisco and they have informed me that there Gateway now supports Duo-Video (H.239) and XGA resolution and they are working on it supporting H.264 just now so it should not be too long.

I would much prefer to have Tandberg kit through out but the money men are looking to spend less than that would cost.

Thanks