Paging limits

[mgurbinap]

Hi,

Does the paging alert continue with a limit of 64 devices maximum?

 

[VoIPTools]

You will need to provide a little more information. However, I will take a guess at your question.

Perhaps you are trying to play an announcement to multiple phones simultaneously? In this case, you would create a paging ring group, and then define the participants in the group (extensions). However, and this is important, you MUST use a multi-cast paging ring group. If you were to attempt to use a regular paging group, it would take a very, very, long time to establish 64 simultaneous calls and yes, it would be limited by the 3CX licensed number of simultaneous calls. But with multi-cast ring group, the simultaneous call count is 2.

Where you have to be careful is when your 3CX server is hosted in the cloud. Typically multi-cast does not work over the internet. You may be able to get around this by implementing a VPN connection between the 3CX server and the office network, but even then you would have to configure your Router/Switches to permit multi-cast broadcasts.

So, tell us more about what you are trying to achieve.

 

[mgurbinap]

Thanks for the information, and yes, you guess my question.
I want to play announcement to many extensions, like 200, but the problem using multicast is that we have unprovisioned Polycom 330.
Possibly I need to use both, paging ring group for polycom and multicast for fanvil.

 

[VoIPTools]

Depending on the hardware running your 3CX, you probably cannot use a normal paging ring group (without multicast) for more than about 16 phones. In my experience, after about 16 phones, the delay establishing all the requested connections (calls) becomes so long that paging becomes unusable.

You can try it, but realize you may also have a simultaneous call challenge. And are you going to page two times, one for regular paging and one for the multicast paging? Maybe you could add the multicast group extension to your regular paging group and only page once?

Unless you have a really fast PBX and a very large 3CX license, it's going to be a challenge to page 200 phones without multicast.

 

[Senox111]

Hello everyone,

@VoIPTools can you confirm from your own experience that for a paging ring call, for example with 100 devices, 100 SC channels of the 3CX license are also used? I just had to make an offer for a hotel and offered a 16 SC, but there are around 100 devices that need to be addressed with paging. According to the Senior Account Manager DACH, it was confirmed to me that paging only occupies one SC, no matter how many endpoints are addressed. But I assume that this information from the 3CX employee was incorrect?

 

[SweetAction]

Hello everyone,

@VoIPTools can you confirm from your own experience that for a paging ring call, for example with 100 devices, 100 SC channels of the 3CX license are also used? I just had to make an offer for a hotel and offered a 16 SC, but there are around 100 devices that need to be addressed with paging. According to the Senior Account Manager DACH, it was confirmed to me that paging only occupies one SC, no matter how many endpoints are addressed. But I assume that this information from the 3CX employee was incorrect?

Regular paging or multicast paging?

 

[VoIPTools]

Whether calls to a ring group (each member of the group) counts against your simultaneous call count has changed over the years. I would test yourself. However, I can promise you, without reservation, that you CANNOT page 100 extensions simultaneously without multicast. It will not work.

 

[VoIPTools]

Multi-cast will only count as 2 simultaneous calls. Calling a standard Ring group is something you can easily test.

 

[Senox111]

Yes, you're right, I had tested this with a few normal desk phones, normal paging calls count as SCs - I was just unsure because something else was confirmed to me - but Mutlicast was probably meant here - the Fanvil Hotel H2U phones support multicast calls according to the data sheet, so far it should work well with multicast.