Intel 500 Series Network Adapters vs. Lumen Next-Generation SIP Voice Services

Network upgrades - this is a solid, tested, well-supported NIC that does the job. If you need connectivity in a Cat5e or Cat6 building, this is your go-to. We have used it in self-built storage and servers for some time, added it to increase capacity in vendor-built storage and servers, and have upgraded higher-end PCs with this NIC in order to gain redundancy and increased performance.

Incentivized

CenturyLink SIP is an acceptable solution if you have an on-prem PBX (ShoreTel, Mitel, etc) that accepts SIP. I have found a better solution is to run two different carriers through SD-WAN (such as Bigleaf or Velocloud MSR) and use a provider like BCMOne (formerly NexVortex) to manage the SIP.

Incentivized

• Uses RJ45 ports, allowing you to use existing Cat6/7 infrastructure.
• Widely supported by OSs, as to be expected with Intel adapters.
• Relatively low cost upgrade for a massive speed boost.

Incentivized

• Reliable service
• Supports wide range of key features
• They do have high levels of support where you can receive real answers

Incentivized

• Could be cheaper
• Gets extremely hot

Incentivized

• Lumen-Centurylink has suffered from many noticeable outages in the last few years - this is a blow to their reputation that they still have to recover from.
• Lumen-CenturyLink does not peer well enough with OTHER carriers - they depend on their own network to give you SIP, which means less true redundancy.
• Lumen-CenturyLink needs a better customer portal/interface to handle failover, see the real-time status, etc.

Incentivized

SIP service support is definitely improving. A few years ago I would have rated them a 2. Now a 7. But, Lumen still needs a better portal experience to report and see a real-time status. Also to manage SIP failover functions in a WYSIWIG/GUI interface. When Lumen's network breaks in a larger outage, there are long hold times and support is not good.

Incentivized

I've also supported Broadcom network adapters, as well as cheaper solutions from StarTech. Broadcom typically costs more and doesn't have any advantages for our applications. The StarTech ones are cheaper with fewer support options. Intel is the way to go for CAT6 10GbE adapters. The balance of reliability, driver support, ease of use, and compatibility is excellent.

Incentivized

CenturyLink [Enterprise Voice SIP] was the incumbent, so switching providers, particularly for our HQ was an overwhelming task for our small team. We did migrate from the legacy CenturyLink voice product EIPT to the new Voice Complete solution as well as upgrade our US and UK circuits along with a hardware upgrade of the managed PE routers in each location. We also decided to implement RingCentral in one of our very small international branches but the lack of features is problematic. We still have T1 service in our other international branches but are looking to go full cloud SaaS PBX there, likely through Microsoft Teams, which we already use for messaging. There are some complexities, as we can't port our numbers directly yet and need to set up an additional CUBE router for SIP. Eventually we hope to get to fully SaaS via Teams.

Incentivized

• It has enabled us to affordably moved to 10gig for those who need it
• it will enable us to affordably move the HQ network to 10gig in the near future
• It has simplified and helped us standardize on a NIC across all device types except laptops

Incentivized

• Faster learning
• Increased numbers of calls
• Organization of calls

Incentivized