Good evening. I just wanted to take a minute and review my experiences with some of the SIP devices out there on the market. I hope this post will help newbies or someone considering a certain device. I would appreciate any other input on either the devices I am "reviewing" or other devices that I didn't!
These devices are deployed in our primary line and small PBX replacement service provider offering. Hard Phone: Grandstream 101 Good: Call quality, Feature support, Ease of setup, Price, Firewall support Bad: Buttons are crap, cheap looking, speakerphone Price: About $60-70 US I use this phone to do all my testing and as my personal SIP device. My biggest gripe of all is that if you attempt to "speed-dial", you will never succeed. The buttons require a firm and definite press to register. I fail 1 out of 10 calls on this device simply because one of the digits was ignored. On the plus side the call quality is very good and loud if you are on the handset. The price is right, and the phone is easy to setup. It also supports STUN, and plays nicely with NAT/firewalls, and has good codec support. The mic is too close to the speaker on speakerphone, and there is noticeable echo if speakerphone is used. The speakerphone is also too quiet, even at maximum volume. Customers call it the "walmart phone" -- it is the cheapest looking SIP device out there. Hard Phone: Cisco 7960 Good: Great looks, speakerphone Bad: Price, Cisco stupidity Price: About $250-300 US I still use my personal 7960 phone in Skinny mode because it refuses to load the SIP load that I had to PAY for from Cisco. Cisco's directions to load the SIP load do not work and are outdated. After tinkering with a friend for half a night I finally got it to load the SIP image from the TFTP server... which it then promptly rejected with a "checksum failure". I can handle buggy upgrades if I can access different firmwares for free, but to pay for a firmware that won't even load? No thanks. The speakerphone is by far the best speakerphone I have ever had on any phone, ever. I use this phone when I do training conferences and meetings that are broadcast via teleconference, and it performs like a champion. The phone has good looks and is definitely an eye catcher. I have a couple of them set up in our administrative offices as "eye-candy". The later SIP versions work well. ATA: Sipura SPA-2000 Good: Configuration, Functionality, Stability Bad: Unimpressive Codec Support, Doesn't handle firewalls well Price: About $85-95 US Of all the SIP devices we have in the field, we have the most in Sipura SPA-2000s. The configuration is clean and straightforward. The Sipura definitely has the functionality that we need, and all features and functions seem to work well, and properly. The units are stable and do not need constant rebooting or maintenance. Built in echo cancelation works well. Unfortuantely, the lack of any decent low bit-rate codec is making me look hard at the Handytone 286/486 units [they support iLBC]. The code in my Sipura's does not support GSM or iLBC. They also do not handle firewalls well at all. NAT support seems to work okay with Register's set frequently, but with no Stun support [they may have added Stun support in later firmware releases], "real" firewalls can interfere with the device receiving incoming calls. Soft Phone: SJ Phone by SJ Labs Good: Interface Bad: Configuration, No Echo Cancelation Price: Free to Try I've installed and quickly uninstalled many soft phones, but the SJ Phone stays on my test machine. The interface is clean and works well. Unfortuantely, the SJ phone is not very straightforward to configure the service provider information with its nested profile setup. There is also no echo cancelation code. I can't blame the SJ Phone for the echo, it's caused by a cheap sound card interface in my laptop, but it would sure be nice to find a soft phone that would help me attempt to cancel it out. The sound controls on the SJ phone are also poor, which exacerbates the echo problem. Interface Card: Digium TE-405P Good: Price, Intel-based, Features Bad: ??? Price: $1500 Not really a SIP device, but I am very pleased with the TE-405P's that we have been buying from Digium. We interface them with our PRI and CT1 circuits and they are working without any problems. The price is right, they work with Linux, and they support every form of T1/E1 out there. What more could one ask for? Coming soon: Review of Cisco ATA-186 [if I can ever get it to work correctly] and the Grandstream Handytone 486 [have some on the way]. _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users