Behind the Keno is pretty hot hardware

THE IT REQUIREMENTS OF modern clubs reflect how far they have moved on since the days of meat trays and darts nights.

In June last year, Burwood RSL commissioned Centrix to install a WiFi network and VoIP system on its premises and also at a club it
had recently acquired, 600 metres down the road.

The end result – an Aruba wireless set-up with two 54Mbps bridges connects the buildings. The VoIP server, wireless access points, power-over-Ethernet, desk phones and back-up UPS were from Zultys. The Zultys IP PBX consisted of two X250s, one on each site, and are capable of supporting up to 500 users between them. The desk phones were backed up by more than 30 Hitachi WIP5000 cordless phones that operate over the WiFi network.

Each RSL hosts a complex network of gaming machines, loyalty points and mini-lotteries. The player incentive system, which includes payouts and player points, runs live between the club and the RSL, which consolidated their members. Points won at the club can be redeemed at the RSL for food, beverages and prizes.

The minimum required bandwidth to run this network is 128kbps, but Bill Millard, Burwood RSL’s technical manager, estimates the machines would require significantly higher headroom to remain synchronised, perhaps 1Mbps.

The wireless network is also available to members for accessing the Internet. And then there are the RSL’s own systems including email and point of sale, linking six cash registers in real time.

In total, Millard said the RSL’s bandwidth requirements would peak at 30mbps but coast at a lot less. “Realistically I’m only ever getting into half my allowable headroom, which I like. I like that headroom,
it’s fantastic.”

Burwood RSL plans to work its telecommunications gear as hard as its beer taps. The Zultys PBX carries an instant messaging feature which Centrix director Eddie Mahdi said will one day allow poker machines
to page staff on their Hitachi handsets whenever there is a large payout or for service calls.

Mahdi said the technology is not quite ready – at this stage, the project is back in the hands of the poker machine makers. Once finalised, Mahdi hopes to replicate the venture for other members
of the lucrative club industry.

Meanwhile, Millard is tickled pink with the “rock solid” Zultys equipment and the “damn good” support he has received from the vendor and Centrix.
Mahdi said Zultys is popular with resellers because the PBX is such good value, while still delivering robust quality. An all-in-one box, it contains everything – fax, voicemail, auto attendance, call recording, voice applications, instant messaging and a soft phone.

When compared to other vendors that sell a separate server for each function, the Zultys is a clear winner on cost, said Mahdi, who considers the US vendor 18 months ahead of the competition.

Mahdi said SIP compatibility in IP PBXes will change the industry. While Avaya, Alcatel and others support SIP outside the network, they won’t support it internally. Mahdi claims this allows them to sell their own, expensive proprietary handsets, along the same line as the razor blade model.

While vendors are promising to move to full SIP compatibility, Mahdi said Zultys is the only hardware solution that does so today.
The wireless bridge between the buildings took a little configuring; in the end it was decided to divide the two links between voice and data traffic. Millard said he experimented with using the connection as one 108Mbps link but found that load balancing was too difficult, so he decided to run them separately.

“The first format that I plugged in was voice on one and everything else on the other. That turned out to be not such a bad idea.”

VoIP calls do not make many demands on bandwidth. However, when using the Hitachi cordless phones in the club, each encrypted call travels from a wireless access point to the Aruba wireless controller in the RSL and then out over the wider telecommunications network; incoming calls return down the same tunnel.

“I wanted to make sure that I actually had that bandwidth available because everything needs to be doubled up,” said Millard.

The greatest problem with the project has been the Hitachi WIP5000 handsets, which have suffered software lockups and occasional hardware failure when speakers in the earpieces have died. “It’s funny, but they have hit the six-month mark and they are falling all over the place,” said Millard. “We’ve got three of them out being repaired at the moment.”

To be fair, Burwood RSL got hold of the Hitachis before they were even released to the Australian market. After setting some fairly strict requisites in the tender – a WiFi network with SIP-compliant handsets capable of features such as instant messaging – Millard realised he had backed himself into a corner.

When Centrix looked for handsets that fit the bill, Mahdi only found a couple of flaky, consumer handsets and the unproven, first-generation Hitachi. Millard said he knew he was taking a gamble, but saw that the WiFi -SIP arrangement was the most practical.

“The WiFi handsets I’m not too upset about it because it’s a new field, I really do believe that that’s the way most systems will go. At the time… [the Hitachi] was the only one.”

Millard is hanging out for an upgrade to the WIP5000s before the club’s warranty runs out. He hasn’t raised with Centrix the possibility of paying to extend the warranty and admits that the final cost of the project could be higher.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen at the end of that road [with the handsets]. It could be very expensive for us.”
Six months is a long time in IT, and Millard has been trialling a couple of new SIP phones now coming onto the market. One, the F3000 UT Starcom, is roughly $350 a handset compared to $500 for the Hitachi.

Unfortunately, Millard said he hasn’t had much luck with this one either. “The audio quality is atrocious, the reception quality is not too good and [there are] horrible bugs in the thing such as when the phone rings, you flip it open and the phone turns off. You can only answer a call 50 per cent of the time.

That’s just not acceptable by any telecommunications standard. Even Telstra wouldn’t put up with that.”
Another candidate, the Nokia E61 mobile phone, has performed
even better. Nokia’s E series are recent additions to the WiFi line-up; they run SIP software on the Symbian operating system.

While incoming calls work fine, Millard said the Nokia completely locks up and needs to be reset when attempting to make an outgoing call. He is hoping a new firmware upgrade will correct this.

Another problem is getting the Nokia to point at local access points. Currently the E61 will only connect to 3G access points and so only receives instant messages from the service provider.

Once the Nokia is fully compatible with the WiFi network, Millard will probably give one to all the managers, who already have mobile phones on the club account.

“What I want to see is a 3G phone that I can use for a mobile phone for my managers in the club, and when they walk into the club it’s their WiFi SIP phone as well.”
Still, the move to VoIP is a big step up from DECT. If staff want to swap handsets, Millard can reassign the phone using the Zultys’ web browser and changing its extension.

Under the old DECT system, a third-party technician had to be called in and would take an hour to reprogram a handset.
Millard, described by Mahdi as a technological visionary, acknowledges that his fearless pursuit of the latest technology has taken the club to the cutting edge of WiFi networks and SIP VoIP systems.

An exciting place to be for an IT manager, maybe, but not so exciting for everyone. “I’m sure some of my employees would like it if we weren’t sitting on the cutting edge because they seem to feel the sharp end of it all the time.”