I would like to present an alternative view of the Grandstream phones. 1. The plastic they have used to build the cases is very flimsy. If one were going to deploy a commercial solution with Grandstream- expect a lot of returns/exchanges.
2. We have experienced a very dangerous problem with some of the Grandstreams- that nobody has been able to solve. It seems that the Grandstream phones sometimes grab the MAC address of the nearest router and use that MAC address of their own- the result is that network clients start to get confused and start routing everything to the Grandstream. I have personally seen this happen with three different phones (and under 4 different versions of the GS software.) 3. I have deployed 8 Grandstreams, along with another 12 phones to a group of pilot users at a Dutch university. They have complained that the phones crash at random times, the touch-tone buttons are much too sensitive, and that the plastic case looks 'cheesy'. On a positive side, they all really like the blue flashing backlight for voicemail notification. 4. One of the pilot users has been able to bypass the security of the Grandstream web interface, and get full access to the phone configuration without using a password (this problem was discovered using a security scanner.) Now I understand that Grandstream is constantly improving the quality of their project; however, some of these problems cannot be solved with software updates alone... I was excited about the Grandstream when I first got mine; in fact, I have already predetermined in my mind that we would probably choose the Grandstream. After 5 weeks of commercial trials, I am now beginning to change my mind. In the long-term, I think a Grandstream platform may be expensive to maintain- more importantly, they do not currently give a very good end-user experience. Since their birth, most people in the Western world have become used to the fact that whenever they pick-up the phone they are provided with easy-to-use 'dialtone' services. People have become VERY demanding about the quality of their telephone service- not many are willing to comprimise. Unless Grandstream can improve the quality of their 'user interface' (many others have already accomplished this goal,) I can see very few situations where the $10-20 cost saving will make the quality sacrifice worthwhile. Once again, I have seen very many improvements from Grandstream over the past couple of months. It will make me happy if they prove me wrong and come-through with improvements to these problems. -GSR ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stefano Finetti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:49 PM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] grandstream sip phone > I'm working greatly with 40+ Grandstream phones. Audio quality is good > enough for production environment, the cost is really low and the > configuration is *Really* easy. > > But a little answer to Wipeout is: > > > The only issue that I still have is that the phone does not seem to be > able to pickup the time >correctly from an NTP server that is not on the > local network so the display always shows 1900->XX-XX for the date.. This > issue I am sure will be solved in the near future.. > > > > Have you tried to mantain the default ntp server on your phone? (the *.gov > one) > > I normally use internal ntp servers but in a particular context i've used > that ntp server and it worked perfectly. > > Could be a Firewall issue, maybe? > > It works on every firmware since .58, for me. > > -- > Stefano > > _______________________________________________ > Asterisk-Users mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
