Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Cory Andrews wrote: Has anyone tried the Linksys SRW224P? 24 Port managed switch, 10/100, 2 Gig Uplink Ports, PoE: a.. Delivers reliable power over 10/100 Ethernet ports using IEEE 802.3af standard b.. Secure management via SSH/SSL and secure user control via 802.1x MAC filtering c.. IGMP snooping, L2/L3 COS, queuing scheduling makes solution ideal for Voice/Video d.. Intelligent traffic management with Rate Limiting, Policing ACLs, and Storm control All that for around $450we have not put one of these through any heavy duty production stress tests, but I was amazed at the features on this thing for the price. Cory J Andrews VOIPSupply.com 454 Sonwil Drive Buffalo, NY 14225 ++ voice - 716.630.1555 X22 email - [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM - B2CORY Cory, I have one in testing at a remote site and one still in the box. The unit at the remote site did not play very well with Grandstream GXP-2000 PoE. I'm betting that is a Grandstream problem (most problems are)... As usual, my Polycom IP600 didn't have any problems with it! I have yet to really test the other switch but I will let everyone know once I do. -- Kristian Kielhofner ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Inline... Interesting, So are there any sort of specifications to look for? What your talking about does not sound like a managed vs unmanaged issue. More like cheap crap vs half decent. I would never want any switch to drop packets VoIP or not. Does not sound like QoS could help resolve that or jitter if the conflicting packets both have SIP priority. The managed vs unmanaged part of that is that you have no way to determine what is going on within a switch if its unmanaged. For example, every time a cat5 cable is interrupted (regardless of whether its a reboot of the device or someone mucking with a cable) the switch port (and the device) attempt to renegotiate the half vs full duplex. The final choice is incorrect a very large percentage of the time and the end result is significantly reduced throughput. Without being able to see what the switch is using you have no idea what's going on other then sometimes throughput is okay and the next its not. (Part of that problem relates to both the device and the switch negotiating duplex at the exact same time guessing at how the other end is configured, which it is attempting to guess as well.) Same basic issue with congestion... if one (or more device(s) on a switch attempts to save large excel spreadsheets at the same time one or more sip phones are communicating, you'll end up with port congestion and no way to see it. As for I would never want any switch to drop packets, that's a nice objective but layer-2 switches don't have any way to truly apply back-pressure to the source devices to tell them to slow down. That's sort of what QoS attempts to address. There are three _basic_ ways that QoS is implemented in switches: A) designate a QoS priority on a switch per port level (which implies you can't use the dual-ethernet port on many sip phones(, or, B) designate traffic at the udp/tcp port number level, or, C) designate traffic by TOS bits in the IP header. The more expensive managed switches allow the engineer to chose from the above, AND, chose the queuing mechanism to be used for managing the quality (and the choice of queuing mechanism _does_ have a major impact when multiple priorities exist within a company's network. The less expensive switches with QoS typically implement choice A only. Using some of the Cisco switches as an example, there are some workgroup switches that only support _three_ priority levels within the QoS mechanism, while higher end products allow seven levels. So, you can take the typical Sys Admin approach and blame quality problems on all kinds of other things that the poor customer doesn't understand, but that you've created due to lack of knowledge and the inability to see what's happening that is impacting the network infrastructure. (Sometimes you _can_ luck out and come up with an unmanaged config that is acceptable, but you'll never know why.) Our company loves that kind of approach and it contributes heavily towards our net performance assessment income. :) Of coarse, if you're selling asterisk into small environments and _never_ sell into large networks, you might get by with your approach. Managed switches used to imply higher quality but I think we are starting to see cheap and crappy managed switches coming onto the market. I would still choose a $500 unmanaged switch over a $100 managed switch. If the switch is doing it's job you should never have to view what is going on in there anyways. There are pletty of managed switches on the market today that do a very good job for the $500 and under price tag. Separating the marketing/sales fluff from the tehcnical specifications tends to take a few minutes of reading and understanding specs though. If asterisk had some useful mechanism to report dropped/missed packets on an end-to-end basis (which others have recently posted about), it would go a long ways towards managing the infrastructure and somewhat reducing the need for switch management. However, once asterisk reported a problem you still don't know what the source of the problem is in a multi-switch environment nor how to fix it. (That's where products like NetIQ's voip assessment product (for about $25k) and switch management helps a bunch.) -Original Message- Aha, micro seconds in networking terms is normally written usecs or us (actually it's the greek letter mu as in ulaw) rather than ms which are milliseconds seconds - what had me puzzled was that it was stated that this could harm the voice path! The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! There is then only 8 usecs between the two switches, how on earth would this make any difference to the voice path at all? Let
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Has anyone tried the Linksys SRW224P? 24 Port managed switch, 10/100, 2 Gig Uplink Ports, PoE: a.. Delivers reliable power over 10/100 Ethernet ports using IEEE 802.3af standard b.. Secure management via SSH/SSL and secure user control via 802.1x MAC filtering c.. IGMP snooping, L2/L3 COS, queuing scheduling makes solution ideal for Voice/Video d.. Intelligent traffic management with Rate Limiting, Policing ACLs, and Storm control All that for around $450we have not put one of these through any heavy duty production stress tests, but I was amazed at the features on this thing for the price. The specs look very impressive assuming the box actually implements those specs without bugs and caveats. ;) Since their website shows firmware v2.0.1.4 as being available, it would appear the box has been around for awhile, however the readme for that version also contradicts the marketing/sales fluff. Since the words use chip limitation, one has to assume the marketing folks got carried away with specs before anyone had any truthful understanding of what they were trying to sell. Very high probability the switch was built in the Asian region and Linksys is simply remarketed the box under their name (as with a lot of their products). The readme for this version says: 1. Chip limitation The monitoring port can do traffic monitoring only. It does not allow packets switching and monitoring function worked simultaneously. 2. Chip limitation RMON drop event counts when RX packet rate rate limit or broadcast threshold. 3. Chip limitation Strict Priority can only be applied to Queue#3. Weighted Round Robin is applied to Queue#0~#2. 4. Chip limitation When port security was enabled for a particular port, if the source MAC address of the packet from the secured port was already learned by the chip??s ARL table, the switch will continue to forward the specific packet at the secured port. The packets will not be dropped by the chip.. 5. Chip limitation The broadcast control threshold configuration is per-system based. It is not per-port based configuration. 6. Chip limitation COS mapping is global in the system. 7. MAC address aging time is about +/- 1/8 of the setting value. 8. Rate Limit = Granularity * Level For FastEthernet Port Granularity: 8Kbs, 64Kbps, 512Kbps, 1Mbps, 2Mbps, 3.3Mbps (Default setting is 512Kbps) Level: 1 - 255. (Default setting is 255) For Giga Port Granularity: 32 Kbps, 64Kbps, 512Kbps, 1Mbps, 2Mbps, 3.3Mbps, 10Mbps, 33.3Mbps (Default setting is 33.3Mbps) Level: 1 - 30. (Default setting is 30) Level setting is per port based. The Granularity is global setting, it effects on all of the ports. 9. The firmware does not support SNTP broadcast mode 10. The maximum size of the supported configuration file is 100 KB. 11. Chip limitation From giga port flood jumbo frame to both giga and fastethernet ports will result giga port receive fastethernet's rate. 12. MAC ACL: Configure MAC ACL with the ??deny any source MAC and Destination MAC address for a particular VLAN?? then any unknown unicast packets will not be flooded within this VLAN. 13. MAC ACL: When Configure MAC ACL with the ??deny any source MAC and Destination MAC address for a particular VLAN?? then the dynamic learned MAC address within this VLAN will be deleted. 14. In the following MAC ACL configuration: 1) Configure MAC ACL with the ??permit host-A any VLAN1?? 2) Configure MAC ACL with the ??permit host-B any VLAN1?? 3) Configure MAC ACL with the ??deny any any VLAN1?? Only source MAC = host-A or source MAC = host-B frames are allowed. Therefore, host-A to host-B or host-B to host-A traffic will be blocked. 15. MAC ACL: It is not recommended that user configured static MAC addresses and MAC ACL are both applied on the same port/VLAN. Conflicts may happen when both are in place. 16. DiffServ: Diffserv class map set acl type must be ??standard IP?? or ??extended IP??. 17. LAG interfaces are not included in Create Vlan screen. In order to assign a Vlan to a LAG interface, need to go to Edit Vlan screen. 18. In order to have a good display effect, it is suggested that screen resolution should be set 1024*768 or higher. 19. Saving configure or auto save configure by Web GUI, if device is rebooted or powered off before configure saving finished, the current configure might be lost or configure file destroyed. (Note: it takes about 6~60 seconds to finish save configure file to flash, dependent on the size of different configure file.) ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
I have one question, How does a large file transfer like your excel spreadsheet example, affect communication between an Asterisk server and SIP phone? The only possible configuration I can think of that would cause a problem is if the client PC is sharing the same eternet cable and therefore the same physical port on the switch as the SIP phone. Other than that or if your asterisk server is also a file server (which should never be done), I don't see a problem or am I missing something. -Original Message- From: Rich Adamson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2006 3:52 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Inline... Interesting, So are there any sort of specifications to look for? What your talking about does not sound like a managed vs unmanaged issue. More like cheap crap vs half decent. I would never want any switch to drop packets VoIP or not. Does not sound like QoS could help resolve that or jitter if the conflicting packets both have SIP priority. The managed vs unmanaged part of that is that you have no way to determine what is going on within a switch if its unmanaged. For example, every time a cat5 cable is interrupted (regardless of whether its a reboot of the device or someone mucking with a cable) the switch port (and the device) attempt to renegotiate the half vs full duplex. The final choice is incorrect a very large percentage of the time and the end result is significantly reduced throughput. Without being able to see what the switch is using you have no idea what's going on other then sometimes throughput is okay and the next its not. (Part of that problem relates to both the device and the switch negotiating duplex at the exact same time guessing at how the other end is configured, which it is attempting to guess as well.) Same basic issue with congestion... if one (or more device(s) on a switch attempts to save large excel spreadsheets at the same time one or more sip phones are communicating, you'll end up with port congestion and no way to see it. As for I would never want any switch to drop packets, that's a nice objective but layer-2 switches don't have any way to truly apply back-pressure to the source devices to tell them to slow down. That's sort of what QoS attempts to address. There are three _basic_ ways that QoS is implemented in switches: A) designate a QoS priority on a switch per port level (which implies you can't use the dual-ethernet port on many sip phones(, or, B) designate traffic at the udp/tcp port number level, or, C) designate traffic by TOS bits in the IP header. The more expensive managed switches allow the engineer to chose from the above, AND, chose the queuing mechanism to be used for managing the quality (and the choice of queuing mechanism _does_ have a major impact when multiple priorities exist within a company's network. The less expensive switches with QoS typically implement choice A only. Using some of the Cisco switches as an example, there are some workgroup switches that only support _three_ priority levels within the QoS mechanism, while higher end products allow seven levels. So, you can take the typical Sys Admin approach and blame quality problems on all kinds of other things that the poor customer doesn't understand, but that you've created due to lack of knowledge and the inability to see what's happening that is impacting the network infrastructure. (Sometimes you _can_ luck out and come up with an unmanaged config that is acceptable, but you'll never know why.) Our company loves that kind of approach and it contributes heavily towards our net performance assessment income. :) Of coarse, if you're selling asterisk into small environments and _never_ sell into large networks, you might get by with your approach. Managed switches used to imply higher quality but I think we are starting to see cheap and crappy managed switches coming onto the market. I would still choose a $500 unmanaged switch over a $100 managed switch. If the switch is doing it's job you should never have to view what is going on in there anyways. There are pletty of managed switches on the market today that do a very good job for the $500 and under price tag. Separating the marketing/sales fluff from the tehcnical specifications tends to take a few minutes of reading and understanding specs though. If asterisk had some useful mechanism to report dropped/missed packets on an end-to-end basis (which others have recently posted about), it would go a long ways towards managing the infrastructure and somewhat reducing the need for switch management. However, once asterisk reported a problem you still don't know what the source of the problem is in a multi-switch
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
How does a large file transfer like your excel spreadsheet example, affect communication between an Asterisk server and SIP phone? The only possible configuration I can think of that would cause a problem is if the client PC is sharing the same eternet cable and therefore the same physical port on the switch as the SIP phone. Other than that or if your asterisk server is also a file server (which should never be done), I don't see a problem or am I missing something. Theoretically if you had 2 switches, with your servers on 1 and clients + phones on the other, and only a single link between them, you could saturate the link between the two switches. Regards, Chris -- C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited This email is made from 100% recycled electrons ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
mustardman29 wrote: I have one question, How does a large file transfer like your excel spreadsheet example, affect communication between an Asterisk server and SIP phone? The only possible configuration I can think of that would cause a problem is if the client PC is sharing the same eternet cable and therefore the same physical port on the switch as the SIP phone. Other than that or if your asterisk server is also a file server (which should never be done), I don't see a problem or am I missing something. What you seem to be missing is the fact that so many people say You must have QoS on your LAN to make voice work well. In my experience that is not the case and creates needless complication on your LAN. My general policy is Plan for QoS on the LAN (only buy switches that can do it), but only actually set it up if it's needed. Of course, QoS on a WAN is totally different. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
...or if your asterisk server is also a file server (which should never be done) I know I'm attracting flames for disagreeing, but sometimes when you're dealing with small business customers there simply isn't the budget to have separate machines for doing x, y and z, and often one finds the asterisk server is the only *nix box on-site. That makes it an ideal box to use for light file serving duties: 1) linux RAID1 support is pretty good, so you've got reasonable data integrity without having to fork out for separate RAID controllers 2) samba works fairly well as a domain controller 3) you aren't buying another windows licence Of course, in an ideal world you'd have a separate box as a file server, but even in that instance, the asterisk box makes a good choice for storing backups to (especially if they're scheduled late at night from workstations) when the phones are unlikely to be in use. It's a fascinating thread, this. Don't just rule out certain hardware or design choices because it isn't what's normally considered a professional or correct way of doing things. If you work with small businesses you'll often encounter scenarios where you have to work within a very tight budget. That means you'll often be making compromises that in an ideal world you wouldn't want to make - cheap switches, reusing old hardware as routers, etc.. To give you an example: ever run a network over old 2-pair telephone wire? I have, and in a fair number of cases it works. It's not something one would do in an ideal world, it's sure as hell nowhere near cat5-compliant, but if you're dealing with a listed building where trunking isn't permitted without an extensive planning process, and lifting floorboards/ceilings is out of the question, you may find yourself without an alternative. So, for all the criticism, I'll continue using cheap switches, recycled hardware and GXP-2000s in scenarios where the customer's budget simply can't stretch to anything else. Regards, Chris -- C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited This email is made from 100% recycled electrons ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Chris Bagnall wrote: ...or if your asterisk server is also a file server (which should never be done) I know I'm attracting flames for disagreeing, but sometimes when you're dealing with small business customers there simply isn't the budget to have separate machines for doing x, y and z, and often one finds the asterisk server is the only *nix box on-site. That makes it an ideal box to use for light file serving duties: 1) linux RAID1 support is pretty good, so you've got reasonable data integrity without having to fork out for separate RAID controllers 2) samba works fairly well as a domain controller 3) you aren't buying another windows licence Of course, in an ideal world you'd have a separate box as a file server, but even in that instance, the asterisk box makes a good choice for storing backups to (especially if they're scheduled late at night from workstations) when the phones are unlikely to be in use. I suspect that having a separate box would be cheaper in the long run than buying switches that support QoS and then maintaining them. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On 2/25/06, Chris Bagnall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's a fascinating thread, this. So, for all the criticism, I'll continue using cheap switches, recycled Chris, I mostly agree.. In Europe a 'small' business often only counts 2 - 5 persons. When the budget doesn't allow it, the only way one can keep a customer satisfied, is by trying to get the best of both worlds.. Wich isn't always easy, but sometimes necessary. (not all SMB's need a failover server, etc..) However.. When possible, I also try to use manageable switches, high-end hardware, and dedicated servers for important tasks. The idea of having an asterisk server that also handles 'other' tasks during the night (in case the company isn't open 24hrs..) is a good one and one to remember.. Cheers.. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
I have one question, How does a large file transfer like your excel spreadsheet example, affect communication between an Asterisk server and SIP phone? The only possible configuration I can think of that would cause a problem is if the client PC is sharing the same eternet cable and therefore the same physical port on the switch as the SIP phone. Other than that or if your asterisk server is also a file server (which should never be done), I don't see a problem or am I missing something. What you seem to be missing is the fact that so many people say You must have QoS on your LAN to make voice work well. In my experience that is not the case and creates needless complication on your LAN. My general policy is Plan for QoS on the LAN (only buy switches that can do it), but only actually set it up if it's needed. Of course, QoS on a WAN is totally different. I'd agree with that 100%. The issue on switches becomes very apparent when multiple switches are involved, and a downstream switch has many PC's running at 100 meg (for example only) contending for a 100 meg uplink (to the next switch). In very small installations (one or two swithes), that may not cause an issue until multipe devices attempt to do something at the same time, which in many cases will cause rtp delays and/or dropped packets. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
How does a large file transfer like your excel spreadsheet example, affect communication between an Asterisk server and SIP phone? The only possible configuration I can think of that would cause a problem is if the client PC is sharing the same eternet cable and therefore the same physical port on the switch as the SIP phone. Other than that or if your asterisk server is also a file server (which should never be done), I don't see a problem or am I missing something. Theoretically if you had 2 switches, with your servers on 1 and clients + phones on the other, and only a single link between them, you could saturate the link between the two switches. Exactly, and that's when a reasonable switch with management will report dropped packets on the uplink port. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Sat, 2006-02-25 at 17:19 +, Chris Bagnall wrote: ...or if your asterisk server is also a file server (which should never be done) I know I'm attracting flames for disagreeing, but sometimes when you're dealing with small business customers there simply isn't the budget to have separate machines for doing x, y and z, and often one finds the asterisk server is the only *nix box on-site. That makes it an ideal box to use for light file serving duties: 1) linux RAID1 support is pretty good, so you've got reasonable data integrity without having to fork out for separate RAID controllers 2) samba works fairly well as a domain controller 3) you aren't buying another windows licence Of course, in an ideal world you'd have a separate box as a file server, but even in that instance, the asterisk box makes a good choice for storing backups to (especially if they're scheduled late at night from workstations) when the phones are unlikely to be in use. It's a fascinating thread, this. Don't just rule out certain hardware or design choices because it isn't what's normally considered a professional or correct way of doing things. If you work with small businesses you'll often encounter scenarios where you have to work within a very tight budget. That means you'll often be making compromises that in an ideal world you wouldn't want to make - cheap switches, reusing old hardware as routers, etc.. To give you an example: ever run a network over old 2-pair telephone wire? I have, and in a fair number of cases it works. It's not something one would do in an ideal world, it's sure as hell nowhere near cat5-compliant, but if you're dealing with a listed building where trunking isn't permitted without an extensive planning process, and lifting floorboards/ceilings is out of the question, you may find yourself without an alternative. So, for all the criticism, I'll continue using cheap switches, recycled hardware and GXP-2000s in scenarios where the customer's budget simply can't stretch to anything else. Hi Chris, I find the same thing often - what I'm curious about is how you deal with the situation when the 'less than ideal' solution doesn't work (or doesn't work consistently)? Rgds Pete ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Fri, 2006-02-24 at 10:54 +1100, David Ankers wrote: Are you sure those switch figures are right? 16ms delay in the switch path sounds a bit long. Cisco's mid-range switches like the 2950 have switching times measured in micro seconds. Then again a 2626 procurve is only around $700. I meant micro-seconds, yes - my apologies. The 26xx series are ok, but I had specifically the 4108 in mind when I said 'good experience'. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
It must be microseconds that is being quoted, as even the 2626 that you mention lists a less than 13.3 microsecond latency. - Brad -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Ankers Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 6:54 PM To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Are you sure those switch figures are right? 16ms delay in the switch path sounds a bit long. Cisco's mid-range switches like the 2950 have switching times measured in micro seconds. Then again a 2626 procurve is only around $700. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Conrad Wood Sent: Friday, 24 February 2006 7:50 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Simple formula: 1. Total Revenue 2. % of revenue derived from phone usage 3. =Cost of downtime by using SoHo or consumer gear. It's not a question of if a SoHo or low cost device will screw up, it is a question of when. This is 23 years of experience talking. Where I work, the value of #3 above is $16 Cdn a *second*. We are below 500 employees, so we fall into the SMB segment. Sometimes I'm appalled by statements that a $700 switch or a $400 phone isn't worth it. Huh?? Maybe in Absolutely right! for something as critical as switches cabling I always recommend to spend real money. Don't ever try to save money any equipment that is required to operate the business. (Had very good experience with HP procurves over the last 10 years or so). There is no point buying netgear or other low-cost switches for a business ever. The cost saving of being able to pin-point a cabling/NIC/bandwidth problem down to the port on the switch easily and quickly is wonderful. Combined with SNMP and all the other goodies good switches come with, our clients save a lot of money by paying me less for my time ( d'oh ;-) ). The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! I see no reason however to spend $400 on a single phone though, because if a single phone breaks, it's not going to bring your business to a standstill, is it? (I guess unless you only have one in the first place ;-) ) conrad ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users The contents of this e-mail are intended for the named addressee only. It contains information that may be confidential. Unless you are the named addressee or an authorized designee, you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you received it in error please notify us immediately and then destroy it. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Aha, micro seconds in networking terms is normally written usecs or us (actually it's the greek letter mu as in ulaw) rather than ms which are milliseconds seconds - what had me puzzled was that it was stated that this could harm the voice path! The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! There is then only 8 usecs between the two switches, how on earth would this make any difference to the voice path at all? Let alone induce any echo... Obviously the originally poster didn't understand the difference. And based on this, he's probably advising people not to use Netgear switches for voice, oh dear. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Watkins, Bradley Sent: Friday, 24 February 2006 10:08 PM To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use It must be microseconds that is being quoted, as even the 2626 that you mention lists a less than 13.3 microsecond latency. - Brad -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Ankers Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 6:54 PM To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Are you sure those switch figures are right? 16ms delay in the switch path sounds a bit long. Cisco's mid-range switches like the 2950 have switching times measured in micro seconds. Then again a 2626 procurve is only around $700. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Conrad Wood Sent: Friday, 24 February 2006 7:50 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Simple formula: 1. Total Revenue 2. % of revenue derived from phone usage 3. =Cost of downtime by using SoHo or consumer gear. It's not a question of if a SoHo or low cost device will screw up, it is a question of when. This is 23 years of experience talking. Where I work, the value of #3 above is $16 Cdn a *second*. We are below 500 employees, so we fall into the SMB segment. Sometimes I'm appalled by statements that a $700 switch or a $400 phone isn't worth it. Huh?? Maybe in Absolutely right! for something as critical as switches cabling I always recommend to spend real money. Don't ever try to save money any equipment that is required to operate the business. (Had very good experience with HP procurves over the last 10 years or so). There is no point buying netgear or other low-cost switches for a business ever. The cost saving of being able to pin-point a cabling/NIC/bandwidth problem down to the port on the switch easily and quickly is wonderful. Combined with SNMP and all the other goodies good switches come with, our clients save a lot of money by paying me less for my time ( d'oh ;-) ). The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! I see no reason however to spend $400 on a single phone though, because if a single phone breaks, it's not going to bring your business to a standstill, is it? (I guess unless you only have one in the first place ;-) ) conrad ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users The contents of this e-mail are intended for the named addressee only. It contains information that may be confidential. Unless you are the named addressee or an authorized designee, you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you received it in error please notify us immediately and then destroy it. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
I have seen some very expensive switches fail. Nice thing about lower cost devices is that you can afford to have spares. If you stick to a standard way of labeling and connecting wires you can use good open source monitoring software to detect switch failure. If you allow people to randomly connect to a bank of switches it is not so easy to quickly find and remedy such problems. The more expensive switches are good if you are going to take advantage of the features they offer. I have recently seen situations like employees installing things like camera and itunes software that caused local network problems. Managed switches allowed immediate remote disconnection of the workstations. At this customer site the fancy switches are used for all workstations and some 3rd party servers(security video system is a good example). However, the customer-owned servers I installed are plugged into a $40 switch. Those servers are properly managed so there is no need for the features found in the more expensive switches. David Ankers wrote: Aha, micro seconds in networking terms is normally written usecs or us (actually it's the greek letter mu as in ulaw) rather than ms which are milliseconds seconds - what had me puzzled was that it was stated that this could harm the voice path! The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! There is then only 8 usecs between the two switches, how on earth would this make any difference to the voice path at all? Let alone induce any echo... Obviously the originally poster didn't understand the difference. And based on this, he's probably advising people not to use Netgear switches for voice, oh dear. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Watkins, Bradley Sent: Friday, 24 February 2006 10:08 PM To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use It must be microseconds that is being quoted, as even the 2626 that you mention lists a less than 13.3 microsecond latency. - Brad -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Ankers Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 6:54 PM To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Are you sure those switch figures are right? 16ms delay in the switch path sounds a bit long. Cisco's mid-range switches like the 2950 have switching times measured in micro seconds. Then again a 2626 procurve is only around $700. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Conrad Wood Sent: Friday, 24 February 2006 7:50 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Simple formula: 1. Total Revenue 2. % of revenue derived from phone usage 3. =Cost of downtime by using SoHo or consumer gear. It's not a question of if a SoHo or low cost device will screw up, it is a question of when. This is 23 years of experience talking. Where I work, the value of #3 above is $16 Cdn a *second*. We are below 500 employees, so we fall into the SMB segment. Sometimes I'm appalled by statements that a $700 switch or a $400 phone isn't worth it. Huh?? Maybe in Absolutely right! for something as critical as switches cabling I always recommend to spend real money. Don't ever try to save money any equipment that is required to operate the business. (Had very good experience with HP procurves over the last 10 years or so). There is no point buying netgear or other low-cost switches for a business ever. The cost saving of being able to pin-point a cabling/NIC/bandwidth problem down to the port on the switch easily and quickly is wonderful. Combined with SNMP and all the other goodies good switches come with, our clients save a lot of money by paying me less for my time ( d'oh ;-) ). The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! I see no reason however to spend $400 on a single phone though, because if a single phone breaks, it's not going to bring your business to a standstill, is it? (I guess unless you only have one in the first place ;-) ) conrad ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Sat, 2006-02-25 at 00:21 +1100, David Ankers wrote: Aha, micro seconds in networking terms is normally written usecs or us (actually it's the greek letter mu as in ulaw) rather than ms which are milliseconds seconds - what had me puzzled was that it was stated that this could harm the voice path! The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! There is then only 8 usecs between the two switches, how on earth would this make any difference to the voice path at all? Let alone induce any echo... Obviously the originally poster didn't understand the difference. And based on this, he's probably advising people not to use Netgear switches for voice, oh dear. Agree , previous statement was incorrect and I should probably not post late at night ;-) A few microseconds delay in the path obviously doesn't cause extra echo. Thank you for pointing that out. == Conrad ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 18:02:27 -0800, mustardman29 wrote: Just the person I have been looking for. If you don't mind, would it be possible to get your opinion on feature for feature comparisons between the 501 and 480i CT(not including cordless phone). Things like programmable buttons, display, dialing button quality, and most importantly, handset and speakerphone quality. Any info would be greatly appreciated. I used the IP600 for about a year on my desk, and several IP500s elsewhere around the place. It's a home office but I work from home full time so it's a real working office environment. I found that the physical quality of the Polycom phones was absolutely top notch. They're a joy to use. Completely professional and very reliable. But they're not perfect. They're a little harder to provision. They're very configurable but that also adds to the complexity. I had mine TFTP loading firmware and a common speed dial directory from an XML file on my Astlinux server. The phones take a fair amount of time to boot and force a reboot when you change many of their settings. You can spend an afternoon repeatedly rebooting the phone as you manually work out its initial configuration. Of course Polycom doesn't support Asterisk, but others seem to fill this void well enough. The IP600 and IP500 are very similar but the differences are considerable. The IP600 supports 6 line buttons and has a much better LCD. Higher resolution, but still not backlit. Once you've used the 600 it'll be hard to go back to the 500 just because the display is not as nice. The IP500 provides only 3 line buttons. Both phones support multiple registrations. The Aastra 480 is the only thing that I've seen that comes close to the Polycom's. Physically it's just about as solid. Not quite as hefty in the hand, but very nice. The LCD display is backlit. This is a major advantage if you ever work in dim lighting. All other manufacturers...LISTEN UP...this is a really big deal! I can't believe how long its taken for someone to realise this fact. Aastra configuration was a LOT easier both manually on the phone and remotely. The on-phone menus are very easy to navigate and I almost didn't bother setting up the central provisioning. With only a few phones I could get by without it. Firmware and configs can be loaded via tftp, ftp or http. The on-phone directory and call logs are comparable on all three the I have used. Actually, I prefer the way SNOM phones handle this as they require fewer button presses. The Aastra phone makes it especially easy to delete an entire call log with only a couple of button presses. The 480 supports up to 9 lines with any 4 active at on time, or so I'm told. I have mine registered for four lines so that incomming PSTN, FWD, Gizmo and Skype calls each ring a different line. The latest firmware supposedly support BLF indications but I've not used this. It's really easy to assign speed dials to the six programmable keys on the LCD. In fact, almost all of the buttons can be reassigned to new functions. Also you can write XML applications that put the LCD to work as an interactive menu. Mostly I live and die by speakerphone quality. I think that the Polycom's have a little edge on the Aastra phone, but not by much. If I need to rework my entire system I'll probably migrate to all Aastra phones. Audio quality using the handset is excellent on all of them. Even on the cordless handset with the 480i CT. They all support POE...which I use to keep the phone system up during power failures. I had to buy the injectors separately for the Aastra IP600 phones. The IP500s came with injector cables. The big dissappointment in my SIP phone testing was the Zultys 4x5. It just feels cheap and many functions are too counterintuitive. I really like the idea of the local FXO but they were never able to tell me how to get the FXO port forwarded to the PBX for VM. Zultys provides no end user support except through dealers and the dealers I dealt with didn't know much about the specifics of the Zultys firmware. Also, I'm curious about the newest SNOM phones. Some time ago I used a SNOM 200 and like the way the web based I/F was integrated into the use of the phone beyond simply configuration. You could access the speed dials and place a call from the web I/F. You could also dial the phone from a link or shortcut to a url pointed at the phone. That's a fair substitute for desktop TAPI. If they've taken this any further it could be very good. I've not tried any of the lesser phones like Grandstream or Linksys. Life's too short to use a cheap phoneat least if your budget permits better. Michael Graves -- Michael Graves [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Product Specialist www.pixelpower.com Pixel Power Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] o713-861-4005 o800-905-6412 c713-201-1262 fwd 54245 ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Polycom does support Asterisk, Asterisk Business Edition. -Original Message- From: Michael Graves [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 6:00 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 18:02:27 -0800, mustardman29 wrote: Just the person I have been looking for. If you don't mind, would it be possible to get your opinion on feature for feature comparisons between the 501 and 480i CT(not including cordless phone). Things like programmable buttons, display, dialing button quality, and most importantly, handset and speakerphone quality. Any info would be greatly appreciated. I used the IP600 for about a year on my desk, and several IP500s elsewhere around the place. It's a home office but I work from home full time so it's a real working office environment. I found that the physical quality of the Polycom phones was absolutely top notch. They're a joy to use. Completely professional and very reliable. But they're not perfect. They're a little harder to provision. They're very configurable but that also adds to the complexity. I had mine TFTP loading firmware and a common speed dial directory from an XML file on my Astlinux server. The phones take a fair amount of time to boot and force a reboot when you change many of their settings. You can spend an afternoon repeatedly rebooting the phone as you manually work out its initial configuration. Of course Polycom doesn't support Asterisk, but others seem to fill this void well enough. The IP600 and IP500 are very similar but the differences are considerable. The IP600 supports 6 line buttons and has a much better LCD. Higher resolution, but still not backlit. Once you've used the 600 it'll be hard to go back to the 500 just because the display is not as nice. The IP500 provides only 3 line buttons. Both phones support multiple registrations. The Aastra 480 is the only thing that I've seen that comes close to the Polycom's. Physically it's just about as solid. Not quite as hefty in the hand, but very nice. The LCD display is backlit. This is a major advantage if you ever work in dim lighting. All other manufacturers...LISTEN UP...this is a really big deal! I can't believe how long its taken for someone to realise this fact. Aastra configuration was a LOT easier both manually on the phone and remotely. The on-phone menus are very easy to navigate and I almost didn't bother setting up the central provisioning. With only a few phones I could get by without it. Firmware and configs can be loaded via tftp, ftp or http. The on-phone directory and call logs are comparable on all three the I have used. Actually, I prefer the way SNOM phones handle this as they require fewer button presses. The Aastra phone makes it especially easy to delete an entire call log with only a couple of button presses. The 480 supports up to 9 lines with any 4 active at on time, or so I'm told. I have mine registered for four lines so that incomming PSTN, FWD, Gizmo and Skype calls each ring a different line. The latest firmware supposedly support BLF indications but I've not used this. It's really easy to assign speed dials to the six programmable keys on the LCD. In fact, almost all of the buttons can be reassigned to new functions. Also you can write XML applications that put the LCD to work as an interactive menu. Mostly I live and die by speakerphone quality. I think that the Polycom's have a little edge on the Aastra phone, but not by much. If I need to rework my entire system I'll probably migrate to all Aastra phones. Audio quality using the handset is excellent on all of them. Even on the cordless handset with the 480i CT. They all support POE...which I use to keep the phone system up during power failures. I had to buy the injectors separately for the Aastra IP600 phones. The IP500s came with injector cables. The big dissappointment in my SIP phone testing was the Zultys 4x5. It just feels cheap and many functions are too counterintuitive. I really like the idea of the local FXO but they were never able to tell me how to get the FXO port forwarded to the PBX for VM. Zultys provides no end user support except through dealers and the dealers I dealt with didn't know much about the specifics of the Zultys firmware. Also, I'm curious about the newest SNOM phones. Some time ago I used a SNOM 200 and like the way the web based I/F was integrated into the use of the phone beyond simply configuration. You could access the speed dials and place a call from the web I/F. You could also dial the phone from a link or shortcut to a url pointed at the phone. That's a fair substitute for desktop TAPI. If they've taken this any further it could be very good. I've not tried any of the lesser phones like Grandstream or Linksys. Life's too short to use a cheap phoneat least if your budget permits better. Michael Graves -- Michael Graves
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Anything under 1ms is so far below the threshold of perceivable sound quality, echo, delay etc. that it's a mute point to discuss IMHO. Not even in any cumulative effect it may have. I can certainly see the advantages of SNMP for remote troubleshooting but hard to justify for small offices with less than 10 extensions. A good quality unmanaged switch is all you need IMHO. Not a cheap plastic Dlink or Linksys you buy at your local wallmart mind you. -Original Message- From: Conrad Wood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 3:02 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use On Fri, 2006-02-24 at 10:54 +1100, David Ankers wrote: Are you sure those switch figures are right? 16ms delay in the switch path sounds a bit long. Cisco's mid-range switches like the 2950 have switching times measured in micro seconds. Then again a 2626 procurve is only around $700. I meant micro-seconds, yes - my apologies. The 26xx series are ok, but I had specifically the 4108 in mind when I said 'good experience'. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Aha, micro seconds in networking terms is normally written usecs or us (actually it's the greek letter mu as in ulaw) rather than ms which are milliseconds seconds - what had me puzzled was that it was stated that this could harm the voice path! The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! There is then only 8 usecs between the two switches, how on earth would this make any difference to the voice path at all? Let alone induce any echo... Obviously the originally poster didn't understand the difference. And based on this, he's probably advising people not to use Netgear switches for voice, oh dear. I'll jump in here to make a couple of comments relative to ethernet switches. Not all switches are created equal!!! If you take the cover off a switch, write down the part numbers for the chips used, and read the doc on those chips, you'll see major differences. (We've actually tested several switches over the past several years in real customer's networks as well.) Many entry level switches on the market have only minimal buffering for inbound and outbound packets. Its not uncommon for output buffers to be limited to one or two packets, and as a user, you can't chnage it. Port congestion frequently shows up when two (or more) devices connected to a switch (assume 100 mbs for now) try to communicate via a single upstream port (assume 100 mbs for now). The instantanous offered traffic is essentially 200 mbs, and the switch is expected to send that traffic out via a 100 mbs port. For those devices with minimal buffering, packets will be dropped. For newer switches with deeper buffers, some packets will be held up in the chip's internal queue waiting to get on the outbound port's wire. The delay in the buffer will become jitter, and depending upon exactly how many ports are contending for the outboud port, the jitter _can_ become noticable. (That _is_ one of the reasons why some switch vendors support QoS.) One can talk about wire speed throughput, etc, and it doesn't mean squat. Those are all marketing and sales words, not engineering specs. There are plenty of very well known switch vendors that purchase switches from other manufacturers and put their names on the front covers. Some of those have characteristics as noted above, while others manage the buffering and queuing much better then what their marketing/sales words imply. Its fairly common to see engineers in large corporate networks using workgroup switches to consolidate traffic from multiple wiring closets, and not pay any attention whatsoever to dropped packets in the switches. That's about the time when senior mgmt intervens and asks an external company to assess their network performance to resolve the internal fingerpointing. Our company has completed many of these. The _only_ way to know for sure what a switch is doing (eg, dropping pkts) is to ensure the switches have some form of network management. Even the simple Dell 2708 (eight port gig switch for $100) has some level of mgmt in it. Certainly not the best, but at least you can identify some issues. With the pricing drops that we've all seen over the last couple of years, its fairly easy to find managed switches at very reasonable cost. I'd _never_ using unmanaged switches in any environment where critical application data flows across the net, and I'd suggest voip traffic represents critical traffic in all production networks. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Interesting, So are there any sort of specifications to look for? What your talking about does not sound like a managed vs unmanaged issue. More like cheap crap vs half decent. I would never want any switch to drop packets VoIP or not. Does not sound like QoS could help resolve that or jitter if the conflicting packets both have SIP priority. Managed switches used to imply higher quality but I think we are starting to see cheap and crappy managed switches coming onto the market. I would still choose a $500 unmanaged switch over a $100 managed switch. If the switch is doing it's job you should never have to view what is going on in there anyways. -Original Message- From: Rich Adamson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 9:43 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Aha, micro seconds in networking terms is normally written usecs or us (actually it's the greek letter mu as in ulaw) rather than ms which are milliseconds seconds - what had me puzzled was that it was stated that this could harm the voice path! The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! There is then only 8 usecs between the two switches, how on earth would this make any difference to the voice path at all? Let alone induce any echo... Obviously the originally poster didn't understand the difference. And based on this, he's probably advising people not to use Netgear switches for voice, oh dear. I'll jump in here to make a couple of comments relative to ethernet switches. Not all switches are created equal!!! If you take the cover off a switch, write down the part numbers for the chips used, and read the doc on those chips, you'll see major differences. (We've actually tested several switches over the past several years in real customer's networks as well.) Many entry level switches on the market have only minimal buffering for inbound and outbound packets. Its not uncommon for output buffers to be limited to one or two packets, and as a user, you can't chnage it. Port congestion frequently shows up when two (or more) devices connected to a switch (assume 100 mbs for now) try to communicate via a single upstream port (assume 100 mbs for now). The instantanous offered traffic is essentially 200 mbs, and the switch is expected to send that traffic out via a 100 mbs port. For those devices with minimal buffering, packets will be dropped. For newer switches with deeper buffers, some packets will be held up in the chip's internal queue waiting to get on the outbound port's wire. The delay in the buffer will become jitter, and depending upon exactly how many ports are contending for the outboud port, the jitter _can_ become noticable. (That _is_ one of the reasons why some switch vendors support QoS.) One can talk about wire speed throughput, etc, and it doesn't mean squat. Those are all marketing and sales words, not engineering specs. There are plenty of very well known switch vendors that purchase switches from other manufacturers and put their names on the front covers. Some of those have characteristics as noted above, while others manage the buffering and queuing much better then what their marketing/sales words imply. Its fairly common to see engineers in large corporate networks using workgroup switches to consolidate traffic from multiple wiring closets, and not pay any attention whatsoever to dropped packets in the switches. That's about the time when senior mgmt intervens and asks an external company to assess their network performance to resolve the internal fingerpointing. Our company has completed many of these. The _only_ way to know for sure what a switch is doing (eg, dropping pkts) is to ensure the switches have some form of network management. Even the simple Dell 2708 (eight port gig switch for $100) has some level of mgmt in it. Certainly not the best, but at least you can identify some issues. With the pricing drops that we've all seen over the last couple of years, its fairly easy to find managed switches at very reasonable cost. I'd _never_ using unmanaged switches in any environment where critical application data flows across the net, and I'd suggest voip traffic represents critical traffic in all production networks. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Has anyone tried the Linksys SRW224P? 24 Port managed switch, 10/100, 2 Gig Uplink Ports, PoE: a.. Delivers reliable power over 10/100 Ethernet ports using IEEE 802.3af standard b.. Secure management via SSH/SSL and secure user control via 802.1x MAC filtering c.. IGMP snooping, L2/L3 COS, queuing scheduling makes solution ideal for Voice/Video d.. Intelligent traffic management with Rate Limiting, Policing ACLs, and Storm control All that for around $450we have not put one of these through any heavy duty production stress tests, but I was amazed at the features on this thing for the price. Cory J Andrews VOIPSupply.com 454 Sonwil Drive Buffalo, NY 14225 ++ voice - 716.630.1555 X22 email - [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM - B2CORY - Original Message - From: mustardman29 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 8:01 PM Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Interesting, So are there any sort of specifications to look for? What your talking about does not sound like a managed vs unmanaged issue. More like cheap crap vs half decent. I would never want any switch to drop packets VoIP or not. Does not sound like QoS could help resolve that or jitter if the conflicting packets both have SIP priority. Managed switches used to imply higher quality but I think we are starting to see cheap and crappy managed switches coming onto the market. I would still choose a $500 unmanaged switch over a $100 managed switch. If the switch is doing it's job you should never have to view what is going on in there anyways. -Original Message- From: Rich Adamson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 9:43 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Aha, micro seconds in networking terms is normally written usecs or us (actually it's the greek letter mu as in ulaw) rather than ms which are milliseconds seconds - what had me puzzled was that it was stated that this could harm the voice path! The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! There is then only 8 usecs between the two switches, how on earth would this make any difference to the voice path at all? Let alone induce any echo... Obviously the originally poster didn't understand the difference. And based on this, he's probably advising people not to use Netgear switches for voice, oh dear. I'll jump in here to make a couple of comments relative to ethernet switches. Not all switches are created equal!!! If you take the cover off a switch, write down the part numbers for the chips used, and read the doc on those chips, you'll see major differences. (We've actually tested several switches over the past several years in real customer's networks as well.) Many entry level switches on the market have only minimal buffering for inbound and outbound packets. Its not uncommon for output buffers to be limited to one or two packets, and as a user, you can't chnage it. Port congestion frequently shows up when two (or more) devices connected to a switch (assume 100 mbs for now) try to communicate via a single upstream port (assume 100 mbs for now). The instantanous offered traffic is essentially 200 mbs, and the switch is expected to send that traffic out via a 100 mbs port. For those devices with minimal buffering, packets will be dropped. For newer switches with deeper buffers, some packets will be held up in the chip's internal queue waiting to get on the outbound port's wire. The delay in the buffer will become jitter, and depending upon exactly how many ports are contending for the outboud port, the jitter _can_ become noticable. (That _is_ one of the reasons why some switch vendors support QoS.) One can talk about wire speed throughput, etc, and it doesn't mean squat. Those are all marketing and sales words, not engineering specs. There are plenty of very well known switch vendors that purchase switches from other manufacturers and put their names on the front covers. Some of those have characteristics as noted above, while others manage the buffering and queuing much better then what their marketing/sales words imply. Its fairly common to see engineers in large corporate networks using workgroup switches to consolidate traffic from multiple wiring closets, and not pay any attention whatsoever to dropped packets in the switches. That's about the time when senior mgmt intervens and asks an external company to assess their network performance to resolve the internal fingerpointing. Our company has completed many of these. The _only_ way
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Simple formula: 1. Total Revenue 2. % of revenue derived from phone usage 3. =Cost of downtime by using SoHo or consumer gear. It's not a question of if a SoHo or low cost device will screw up, it is a question of when. This is 23 years of experience talking. Where I work, the value of #3 above is $16 Cdn a *second*. We are below 500 employees, so we fall into the SMB segment. Sometimes I'm appalled by statements that a $700 switch or a $400 phone isn't worth it. Huh?? Maybe in Absolutely right! for something as critical as switches cabling I always recommend to spend real money. Don't ever try to save money any equipment that is required to operate the business. (Had very good experience with HP procurves over the last 10 years or so). There is no point buying netgear or other low-cost switches for a business ever. The cost saving of being able to pin-point a cabling/NIC/bandwidth problem down to the port on the switch easily and quickly is wonderful. Combined with SNMP and all the other goodies good switches come with, our clients save a lot of money by paying me less for my time ( d'oh ;-) ). The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! I see no reason however to spend $400 on a single phone though, because if a single phone breaks, it's not going to bring your business to a standstill, is it? (I guess unless you only have one in the first place ;-) ) conrad ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
The cost saving of being able to pin-point a cabling/NIC/bandwidth problem down to the port on the switch easily and quickly is wonderful We also use 3com NJ-200's which is a 4 port switch in a wall plate that has SNMP and other goodies. I can troubleshoot down to the wall plate, anywhere in the world. Last year I was on holidays in Vancouver (1000K away from the office) and I got the call that an exec couldn't plug his laptop into the wall, no signal, and he was pissed. I whip out my laptop, walk across the street to Starbucks, got a wifi signal, VPN in, I check it out - nope, it's your stupid laptop, PHB-boy. Turns out he disabled the onboard NIC. That single incident, to me justifies the whole expense of a good infrastructure (and to the PHB too - he was spooked that I could do that) ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Are you sure those switch figures are right? 16ms delay in the switch path sounds a bit long. Cisco's mid-range switches like the 2950 have switching times measured in micro seconds. Then again a 2626 procurve is only around $700. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Conrad Wood Sent: Friday, 24 February 2006 7:50 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Simple formula: 1. Total Revenue 2. % of revenue derived from phone usage 3. =Cost of downtime by using SoHo or consumer gear. It's not a question of if a SoHo or low cost device will screw up, it is a question of when. This is 23 years of experience talking. Where I work, the value of #3 above is $16 Cdn a *second*. We are below 500 employees, so we fall into the SMB segment. Sometimes I'm appalled by statements that a $700 switch or a $400 phone isn't worth it. Huh?? Maybe in Absolutely right! for something as critical as switches cabling I always recommend to spend real money. Don't ever try to save money any equipment that is required to operate the business. (Had very good experience with HP procurves over the last 10 years or so). There is no point buying netgear or other low-cost switches for a business ever. The cost saving of being able to pin-point a cabling/NIC/bandwidth problem down to the port on the switch easily and quickly is wonderful. Combined with SNMP and all the other goodies good switches come with, our clients save a lot of money by paying me less for my time ( d'oh ;-) ). The difference can also cause unnecessary delays and therefor echo in the path. For example, procurve switches typically have 13ms switching time, the high-end netgears about 21ms. As soon as you stack a couple of switches you are talking 26ms vs 42ms extra delay in the path! I see no reason however to spend $400 on a single phone though, because if a single phone breaks, it's not going to bring your business to a standstill, is it? (I guess unless you only have one in the first place ;-) ) conrad ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 15:48 -0700, Colin Anderson wrote: The cost saving of being able to pin-point a cabling/NIC/bandwidth problem down to the port on the switch easily and quickly is wonderful We also use 3com NJ-200's which is a 4 port switch in a wall plate that has SNMP and other goodies. I can troubleshoot down to the wall plate, anywhere in the world. Last year I was on holidays in Vancouver (1000K away from the office) and I got the call that an exec couldn't plug his laptop into the wall, no signal, and he was pissed. I whip out my laptop, walk across the street to Starbucks, got a wifi signal, VPN in, I check it out - nope, it's your stupid laptop, PHB-boy. Turns out he disabled the onboard NIC. That single incident, to me justifies the whole expense of a good infrastructure (and to the PHB too - he was spooked that I could do that) ___ I used to have VNC and TopgunSSH on my Palm and an Infred connection to my mobile and from there on to the internet ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On 2/22/06, Clint Sharp [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I had to drop 1.0.1.12 because it has a serious handset volume issue that seems to cut the handset volume in half. Fix one bug, cause another. True, but the latest (beta, okay, but does that matter?) firmware fixes bot and some other. Please watch the voip-info wiki to check the current status, but it seems to be heading the good way.. cheers ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Any news about new Snom 300? Mimmus ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Tuesday 21 Feb 2006 23:16, Chris Bagnall wrote: £40! That would be a cheap and nasty switch with no prospect of any management. A managed switch is worth its weight in gold, /especially/ when you have to look after things remotely. How does one justify the extra cost of a managed switch for an office of no more than 5-10 users with limited SMB file sharing and lightweight internet access going over the thing? It's just not doable. In larger organizations, I agree entirely, a managed switch *is* worth its weight in gold, but not for small businesses. You are lucky then that you have never been in a position to try and work out why a node or network does not work when you are many miles away. How much do you charge a day? The chances are that just one days callout would pay for it. Using anything else other than a managed switch for a business smacks of incompetence. It can also tell if your customers have been playing sillybuggers with the network. B -- http://www.mailtrap.org.uk/ ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, Cory Andrews wrote: Clint - Looks like your wish has been granted, and your love affair with Snom can continue. They are soon releasing the new Snom 300, which has most of the features your are fond of in the 360 and 320 models, and should be quite near, if not at, your $100 price point. Read up on it here - http://www.snom.com/pressinformation_details.html?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=354tx_ttnews[backPid]=33cHash=1bb97caf5cL=1 Detailed specs here - http://www.snom.com/snom300_voip_phone.html?L=1 Looks like snom wants to compete with the aastra 9112i and the polycom ip301. -Dan ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, Clint Sharp wrote: 2) GXP-2000: Not much better than the Budgetones, but at least the firmware [...[ that phone's quality). The speakerphone is useless due to echo issues. speakerphone echo bug was fixed in 1.0.1.12 -Dan ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, The VoIP Connection wrote: The 941/942 are very nice phones. They are well made and so far the firmware seems very solid, but like their Cisco brethren they are a little expensive for what they offer in my opinion. If they were 25-30% cheaper I would be a lot more enthusiastic. If the 941 was priced like the 841 it would be a homerun. does the 942 have two 10meg ports or two 100meg ports? and is it poe only, or does it have the option of being powered from a wallwart without a poe injector? -Dan ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
I like the specs on this, the only thing that it seems to be missing is POE. Anyone know if POE is going to be supported on the 300? Looks nice and I could see it for low use areas, but would suck for wall mounting if it can't do POE. On 2/22/06, Cory Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Clint - Looks like your wish has been granted, and your love affair with Snom can continue. They are soon releasing the new Snom 300, which has most of the features your are fond of in the 360 and 320 models, and should be quite near, if not at, your $100 price point. Read up on it here - http://www.snom.com/pressinformation_details.html?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=354tx_ttnews[backPid]=33cHash=1bb97caf5cL=1 Detailed specs here - http://www.snom.com/snom300_voip_phone.html?L=1 Cory J AndrewsVOIPSupply.com454 Sonwil DriveBuffalo, NY 14225++voice - 716.630.1555 X22email - [EMAIL PROTECTED]AIM - B2CORY - Original Message - From: Clint Sharp To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 1:03 AM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use It's funny this thread has been coming up, because I've been testing out phones at my office, and I just did a fairly intensive quality test on them.1) Budgetones: Don't bother for a business setting. The speaker phone is basically useless (echo problems) and the handset is horrible. If you follow the suggestion on the Wiki to drill out the handset, it improves things marginally, but not much. Users talking to you will constantly complain about you sound muffled. It's think it's a frequency response thing and not a volume thing, I think it's just getting lower than a standard 8 khz sample out of the microphone, because it's so cheap. 2) GXP-2000: Not much better than the Budgetones, but at least the firmware is still in active development. Feature-wise it's pretty cool, but poor firmware and poor handset hardware again make this a real problem for us. We lost one handset to static electricity yesterday (which was fixed by adding in a microphone from an old business set, which actually improved that phone's quality). The speakerphone is useless due to echo issues. However, 4 line appearances is pretty cool for that price of phone, and passthrough Ethernet at 100 mbs is pretty cool too. Overall, I can't recommend them, because while they sound slightly better than the budgetones, I still get many complaints about muffled calls. 3) Polycom: Of the 4 phone brands we're actively using (not including the Wifi phone which rarely gets used), this was the best until I got the Snom in today. The handset is of good quality. I have an IP 301, but if the cheapest phone is this good, I'd definitely get a 501 or 601 (and am considering ordering some, although I may order Snom 320s instead). Their support policies do get on my nerves, I'd like to not have to worry about what reseller I'm using, but it's a solid phone with solid features, although the menus are cumbersome and I haven't gotten MWI to work on it yet. 4) Snom 320: This is an excellent phone based off one days testing. Minimal configuration, professional looking web interface, and the best sound quality of any of the phones I tested. THe speakerphone works great, and the handset quality is outstanding, and tested the best with my callers that were listening to me through the PSTN. I haven't upgraded firmware or anything on this yet, so can't tell you there, but I can't see a compelling reason to upgrade from whatever it shipped with that this point (i'm not feature crazy, I only upgrade the firmware if basic features don't seem to be working right). Overall, stay away from the Grandstream's IMHO. The audio quality issues will drive you insane. I'm hoping someone will come out with a sub-$100 phone that drops some features but fixes what should be the cheapest part of the phone to manufacture, since they've been the same for nearly 50 years, the handset. Clint ___--Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing listTo UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___--Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --Asterisk-Users mailing listTo UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Having just read this thread from start to present I'd like to offer that I really like my Polycom 600/601s. the 501a are ok too. But I actually use an Aastra 480i CT personally. It's a great phone. Costs a little more but is by far the best I've used. Easy to setup. Central provisioning. Firmware issolid. Supports Asterisk. I'm s happpy to be rid of the ATA-Cordless combination. Michael --Original Message Text--- From: Joe Pukepail Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 07:20:17 -0600 I like the specs on this, the only thing that it seems to be missing is POE. Anyone know if POE is going to be supported on the 300? Looks nice and I could see it for low use areas, but would suck for wall mounting if it can't do POE. On 2/22/06, Cory Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Clint - Looks like your wish has been granted, and your love affair with Snom can continue. They are soon releasing the new Snom 300, which has most of the features your are fond of in the 360 and 320 models, and should be quite near, if not at, your $100 price point. Read up on it here - http://www.snom.com/pressinformation_details.html?_ttnews[tt_news]=354_ttnews[backPid]=33=1bb97caf5c=1 Detailed specs here - http://www.snom.com/snom300_voip_phone.html?=1 Cory J Andrews VOIPSupply.com 454 Sonwil Drive Buffalo, NY 14225 ++ voice - 716.630.1555 X22 email - [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM - B2CORY - Original Message - From: Clint Sharp To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 1:03 AM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use It's funny this thread has been coming up, because I've been testing out phones at my office, and I just did a fairly intensive quality test on them. 1) Budgetones: Don't bother for a business setting. The speaker phone is basically useless (echo problems) and the handset is horrible. If you follow the suggestion on the Wiki to drill out the handset, it improves things marginally, but not much. Users talking to you will constantly complain about you sound muffled. It's think it's a frequency response thing and not a volume thing, I think it's just getting lower than a standard 8 khz sample out of the microphone, because it's so cheap. 2) GXP-2000: Not much better than the Budgetones, but at least the firmware is still in active development. Feature-wise it's pretty cool, but poor firmware and poor handset hardware again make this a real problem for us. We lost one handset to static electricity yesterday (which was fixed by adding in a microphone from an old business set, which actually improved that phone's quality). The speakerphone is useless due to echo issues. However, 4 line appearances is pretty cool for that price of phone, and passthrough Ethernet at 100 mbs is pretty cool too. Overall, I can't recommend them, because while they sound slightly better than the budgetones, I still get many complaints about muffled calls. 3) Polycom: Of the 4 phone brands we're actively using (not including the Wifi phone which rarely gets used), this was the best until I got the Snom in today. The handset is of good quality. I have an IP 301, but if the cheapest phone is this good, I'd definitely get a 501 or 601 (and am considering ordering some, although I may order Snom 320s instead). Their support policies do get on my nerves, I'd like to not have to worry about what reseller I'm using, but it's a solid phone with solid features, although the menus are cumbersome and I haven't gotten MWI to work on it yet. 4) Snom 320: This is an excellent phone based off one days testing. Minimal configuration, professional looking web interface, and the best sound quality of any of the phones I tested. THe speakerphone works great, and the handset quality is outstanding, and tested the best with my callers that were listening to me through the PSTN. I haven't upgraded firmware or anything on this yet, so can't tell you there, but I can't see a compelling reason to upgrade from whatever it shipped with that this point (i'm not feature crazy, I only upgrade the firmware if basic features don't seem to be working right). Overall, stay away from the Grandstream's IMHO. The audio quality issues will drive you insane. I'm hoping someone will come out with a sub-$100 phone that drops some features but fixes what should be the cheapest part of the phone to manufacture, since they've been the same for nearly 50 years, the handset. Clint ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
The PCB has PoE "prepared" - if you open it you will see that there is a lot of space where you can solder all kinds of resistors and capacitors. Thats for PoE. However we decided that we don't place the necessary components because it would increase the price to the end customer by 25 USD - which would take us into a different pricing region. But apart from that we put everything else from the snom 320/360 there. And IMHO the audio quality is nothing less than the "high end" models, the handsfree mode probably even better (we avoided some mistakes we made in the other models). Even the 3-way conference is supported. Low use?! I would say at least 80 % of phone users today are "low use".A phone with great audio and mandatory (but not sexy) features like security for a mainstream price was missing for those users. And yes, I am from snom... (see my address!). Please excuse my excitement. Christian From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joe PukepailSent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 8:31 AMTo: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial DiscussionSubject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use I like the specs on this, the only thing that it seems to be missing is POE. Anyone know if POE is going to be supported on the 300? Looks nice and I could see it for low use areas, but would suck for wall mounting if it can't do POE. On 2/22/06, Cory Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Clint - Looks like your wish has been granted, and your love affair with Snom can continue. They are soon releasing the new Snom 300, which has most of the features your are fond of in the 360 and 320 models, and should be quite near, if not at, your $100 price point. Read up on it here - http://www.snom.com/pressinformation_details.html?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=354tx_ttnews[backPid]=33cHash=1bb97caf5cL=1 Detailed specs here - http://www.snom.com/snom300_voip_phone.html?L=1 Cory J AndrewsVOIPSupply.com454 Sonwil DriveBuffalo, NY 14225++voice - 716.630.1555 X22email - [EMAIL PROTECTED]AIM - B2CORY - Original Message - From: Clint Sharp To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 1:03 AM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use It's funny this thread has been coming up, because I've been testing out phones at my office, and I just did a fairly intensive quality test on them.1) Budgetones: Don't bother for a business setting. The speaker phone is basically useless (echo problems) and the handset is horrible. If you follow the suggestion on the Wiki to drill out the handset, it improves things marginally, but not much. Users talking to you will constantly complain about you sound muffled. It's think it's a frequency response thing and not a volume thing, I think it's just getting lower than a standard 8 khz sample out of the microphone, because it's so cheap. 2) GXP-2000: Not much better than the Budgetones, but at least the firmware is still in active development. Feature-wise it's pretty cool, but poor firmware and poor handset hardware again make this a real problem for us. We lost one handset to static electricity yesterday (which was fixed by adding in a microphone from an old business set, which actually improved that phone's quality). The speakerphone is useless due to echo issues. However, 4 line appearances is pretty cool for that price of phone, and passthrough Ethernet at 100 mbs is pretty cool too. Overall, I can't recommend them, because while they sound slightly better than the budgetones, I still get many complaints about muffled calls. 3) Polycom: Of the 4 phone brands we're actively using (not including the Wifi phone which rarely gets used), this was the best until I got the Snom in today. The handset is of good quality. I have an IP 301, but if the cheapest phone is this good, I'd definitely get a 501 or 601 (and am considering ordering some, although I may order Snom 320s instead). Their support policies do get on my nerves, I'd like to not have to worry about what reseller I'm using, but it's a solid phone with solid features, although the menus are cumbersome and I haven't gotten MWI to work on it yet. 4) Snom 320: This is an excellent phone based off one days testing. Minimal configuration, professional looking web interface, and the best sound quality of any of the phones I tested. THe speakerphone works great, and the handset quality is outstanding, and tested the best with my callers that were listening to me through the PST
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Do you know when it's coming out? What will the price be?- WaldoOn Feb 22, 2006, at 1:18 AM, Cory Andrews wrote: Clint - Looks like your wish has been granted, and your love affair with Snom can continue. They are soon releasing the new Snom 300, which has most of the features your are fond of in the 360 and 320 models, and should be quite near, if not at, your $100 price point. Read up on it here - http://www.snom.com/pressinformation_details.html?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=354tx_ttnews[backPid]=33cHash=1bb97caf5cL=1 Detailed specs here - http://www.snom.com/snom300_voip_phone.html?L=1 Cory J AndrewsVOIPSupply.com454 Sonwil DriveBuffalo, NY 14225++voice - 716.630.1555 X22email - [EMAIL PROTECTED]AIM - B2CORY___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
From: Christian Stredicke [EMAIL PROTECTED] The PCB has PoE prepared - if you open it you will see that there is a lot of space where you can solder all kinds of resistors and capacitors. Thats for PoE. However we decided that we don't place the necessary components because it would increase the price to the end customer by 25 USD - which would take us into a different pricing region. But apart from that we put everything else from the snom 320/360 there. And IMHO the audio quality is nothing less than the high end models, the handsfree mode probably even better (we avoided some mistakes we made in the other models). Even the 3-way conference is supported. Low use?! I would say at least 80 % of phone users today are low use. A phone with great audio and mandatory (but not sexy) features like security for a mainstream price was missing for those users. And yes, I am from snom... (see my address!). Please excuse my excitement. What is the expected target date for efforts to begin filling the reseller channel? ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Don't have an SPA-942 here right now, but a D-Link switch detects the SPA-941 as 10base-T/half-duplex. Just like real Cisco phones, the 942 can be powered with a wall wart but it does not come with one (extra charge). -Mike Michael Crown Managing Partner www.thevoipconnection.com 321.989.6728 ext. 611 sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 5:30 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Cc: 'mustardman29' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, The VoIP Connection wrote: The 941/942 are very nice phones. They are well made and so far the firmware seems very solid, but like their Cisco brethren they are a little expensive for what they offer in my opinion. If they were 25-30% cheaper I would be a lot more enthusiastic. If the 941 was priced like the 841 it would be a homerun. does the 942 have two 10meg ports or two 100meg ports? and is it poe only, or does it have the option of being powered from a wallwart without a poe injector? -Dan ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
True, but managed switches fail too. My suggestion, buy two cheap ones, and keep one in the box... Bob McDowell -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Colin Anderson Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 5:40 PM To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use How does one justify the extra cost of a managed switch for an office of no more than 5-10 users with limited SMB file sharing and lightweight internet access going over the thing? It's just not doable. In larger organizations, I agree entirely, a managed switch *is* worth its weight in gold, but not for small businesses. Simple formula: 1. Total Revenue 2. % of revenue derived from phone usage 3. =Cost of downtime by using SoHo or consumer gear. It's not a question of if a SoHo or low cost device will screw up, it is a question of when. This is 23 years of experience talking. Where I work, the value of #3 above is $16 Cdn a *second*. We are below 500 employees, so we fall into the SMB segment. Sometimes I'm appalled by statements that a $700 switch or a $400 phone isn't worth it. Huh?? Maybe in your home office, or whatever, but in any kind of meaningful business context, you *always* buy the best, and you only cry once. If you argue that your business can't support that kind of cost (which is really, actually quite cheap. Anyone remember $6000 switches? I do.) then perhaps you may want to re-evaluate whether it's appropriate to use VoIP in your business in the first place. Sure, a managed switch is not a silver bullet - but it is part of a quality implementation that *is* a silver bullet. Weakest link, and all that. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
I had to drop 1.0.1.12 because it has a serious handset volume issue that seems to cut the handset volume in half. Fix one bug, cause another. Clint On 2/22/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, Clint Sharp wrote: 2) GXP-2000: Not much better than the Budgetones, but at least the firmware [...[ that phone's quality).The speakerphone is useless due to echo issues. speakerphone echo bug was fixed in 1.0.1.12-Dan ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
1) Budgetones: Don't bother for a business setting. The speaker phone is basically useless (echo problems) and the handset is horrible. If you follow the suggestion on the Wiki to drill out the handset, it improves things marginally, but not much. Users talking to you will constantly complain about you sound muffled. It's think it's a frequency response thing and not a volume thing, I think it's just getting lower than a standard 8 khz sample out of the microphone, because it's so cheap. I wouldn't dismiss the budgetones so easily. We use about 20 budgetones 100/101. We exclusively use firmware 1.0.6.7. All the phones are provisioned centrally via tftp which works really well (almost plug and play, except I got to type in the MAC of a new phone into my script and run the script). I cannot recall a single time a phone 'crashed','froze' or didn't register properly. We tried snom 320 and a telappliant phone[1]. We sent the telappliant phone straight back to the supplier because it was so horrible. We still use the snom for our receptionist, but our users actually prefer the budgetones. Personally I really like the snom 320, but not all users find phones as exciting as me ;-) We have no issues with echo nor complaints about the voice quality. When we introduced the phones (coming from BT analogue phones) users actually commented on the improved clarity of speech. None of the phones broke (and they do get mistreated ;) ) since we started using them, which is about 2 years ago. Here in UK the phone cost less than £50, considerably less if you buy 30+. Of course it's not the right phone for receptionists or phone-power-users or people who rely on a speakerphone, but it's simplicity seems to appeal to some users. Heck, for that price it's worth buying one as a demonstration unit. The headset jack on the back is also a nice feature: If you don't like the headset you can simply plug your earphones in. It might be worth mentioning that we disabled most of the 'features' on the phone itself, like call waiting, transfer etc and instead are handled by asterisk which might explain why our phones don't crash ;-) conrad [1] http://www.voiptalk.org/products/Telappliant+IP2006+SIP+Phone ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Micheal, Just the person I have been looking for. If you don't mind, would it be possible to get your opinion on feature for feature comparisons between the 501 and 480i CT(not including cordless phone). Things like programmable buttons, display, dialing button quality, and most importantly, handset and speakerphone quality. Any info would be greatly appreciated. -Original Message- From: Michael Graves [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 5:57 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Having just read this thread from start to present I'd like to offer that I really like my Polycom 600/601s. the 501a are ok too. But I actually use an Aastra 480i CT personally. It's a great phone. Costs a little more but is by far the best I've used. Easy to setup. Central provisioning. Firmware issolid. Supports Asterisk. I'm s happpy to be rid of the ATA-Cordless combination. Michael --Original Message Text--- From: Joe Pukepail Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 07:20:17 -0600 I like the specs on this, the only thing that it seems to be missing is POE. Anyone know if POE is going to be supported on the 300? Looks nice and I could see it for low use areas, but would suck for wall mounting if it can't do POE. On 2/22/06, Cory Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Clint - Looks like your wish has been granted, and your love affair with Snom can continue. They are soon releasing the new Snom 300, which has most of the features your are fond of in the 360 and 320 models, and should be quite near, if not at, your $100 price point. Read up on it here - http://www.snom.com/pressinformation_details.html?tx_ttnews[t t_news]=354tx_ttnews[backPid]=33cHash=1bb97caf5cL=1 Detailed specs here - http://www.snom.com/snom300_voip_phone.html?L=1 Cory J Andrews VOIPSupply.com 454 Sonwil Drive Buffalo, NY 14225 ++ voice - 716.630.1555 X22 email - [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM - B2CORY - Original Message - From: Clint Sharp To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 1:03 AM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use It's funny this thread has been coming up, because I've been testing out phones at my office, and I just did a fairly intensive quality test on them. 1) Budgetones: Don't bother for a business setting. The speaker phone is basically useless (echo problems) and the handset is horrible. If you follow the suggestion on the Wiki to drill out the handset, it improves things marginally, but not much. Users talking to you will constantly complain about you sound muffled. It's think it's a frequency response thing and not a volume thing, I think it's just getting lower than a standard 8 khz sample out of the microphone, because it's so cheap. 2) GXP-2000: Not much better than the Budgetones, but at least the firmware is still in active development. Feature-wise it's pretty cool, but poor firmware and poor handset hardware again make this a real problem for us. We lost one handset to static electricity yesterday (which was fixed by adding in a microphone from an old business set, which actually improved that phone's quality). The speakerphone is useless due to echo issues. However, 4 line appearances is pretty cool for that price of phone, and passthrough Ethernet at 100 mbs is pretty cool too. Overall, I can't recommend them, because while they sound slightly better than the budgetones, I still get many complaints about muffled calls. 3) Polycom: Of the 4 phone brands we're actively using (not including the Wifi phone which rarely gets used), this was the best until I got the Snom in today. The handset is of good quality. I have an IP 301, but if the cheapest phone is this good, I'd definitely get a 501 or 601 (and am considering ordering some, although I may order Snom 320s instead). Their support policies do get on my nerves, I'd like to not have to worry about what reseller I'm using, but it's a solid phone with solid features, although the menus are cumbersome and I haven't gotten MWI to work on it yet. 4) Snom 320: This is an excellent phone based off one days testing. Minimal configuration, professional looking web interface, and the best sound quality of any of the phones I tested. THe speakerphone works great, and the handset quality is outstanding, and tested the best with my callers that were listening to me through the PSTN. I haven't upgraded firmware or anything on this yet, so can't tell you there, but I can't see a compelling reason to upgrade from whatever it shipped with that this point (i'm not feature crazy, I only upgrade the firmware if basic features don't seem to be working right). Overall, stay away from the Grandstream's IMHO. The audio
[Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
I have been struggling with this issue for about a year now. There were just too many IP phones to choose from at all sorts of price points and not enough information about any of them. Now I am looking at the situation again and if anything it has gotten worse. There are even more phones and all sorts of opinions. For every person that says phone x is great there is someone else complaining about it. I ended up buying a Grandstream GXP2000 and an Aastra 9133i to test so I pretty much know what those two phones are about. Lot's of people talking about Polycom phones but they still seem to have their problems and since they don't officially support Asterisk I have my concerns. I really don't want to have to keep buying phones to find out for myself as it get's expensive real fast. Is there any unbiased comparison of various phones and features anywhere. If someone wrote a book I'd buy it but it would probably be obsolete before it was published with the rate of new IP phone introductions and firmware revisons. I hear some people praising the GXP2000 phones and I gotta wonder what they are smokin (regardless of firmware revison) so I just don't know who to believe anymore. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
[Mr.] Mustard, There's no one-stop IP phone review site that I know of (that has one person/company comparing all of the IP phones side by side). You're right, the gxp-2000 is a little on the low end as IP phones go. However, you're also getting a lot of features for your buck with the GXP. I used the GXP2000's in a bakery installation; the users of the phone always have stuff all over their hands, thus I didn't see much sense in putting a really nice phone there. Two of the phones have already needed to be replaced because of people spilling liquids all over them; it was only $100 to replace a GXP2000 vs. 200+ to replace a nice polycom with many call appearances. Regarding the polycoms-- I wouldn't worry about the polycoms not 'officially' supporting asterisk. LOTS of people use them with Asterisk (including myself). For me, the biggest pain was getting them configured correctly (the xml config files are a horrendous PITA--if someone were to write a book, I'd prefer it be on this ;) ). BUT once they're configured, I LOVE them. And so do the users of the phones. They have great build quality and a great speakerphone (one of the best). In short, I would give the Polycoms a solid recommendation for an all-around good business phone to use with Asterisk. I know lots of people also love the Snoms. I can't really vouch for them too much; I have one, I just haven't used it really. Someone should make an epinions.com of sorts for IP phones and IP phone equipment. I think it would get used... -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of mustardman29 Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 11:58 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use I have been struggling with this issue for about a year now. There were just too many IP phones to choose from at all sorts of price points and not enough information about any of them. Now I am looking at the situation again and if anything it has gotten worse. There are even more phones and all sorts of opinions. For every person that says phone x is great there is someone else complaining about it. I ended up buying a Grandstream GXP2000 and an Aastra 9133i to test so I pretty much know what those two phones are about. Lot's of people talking about Polycom phones but they still seem to have their problems and since they don't officially support Asterisk I have my concerns. I really don't want to have to keep buying phones to find out for myself as it get's expensive real fast. Is there any unbiased comparison of various phones and features anywhere. If someone wrote a book I'd buy it but it would probably be obsolete before it was published with the rate of new IP phone introductions and firmware revisons. I hear some people praising the GXP2000 phones and I gotta wonder what they are smokin (regardless of firmware revison) so I just don't know who to believe anymore. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
I hear some people praising the GXP2000 phones and I gotta wonder what they are smokin (regardless of firmware revison) so I just don't know who to believe anymore. As one of those who's praised the GXP2000, I feel I should just add that it's all relative *to the price point*. The GXP2000 is probably the best phone I can get hold of at that price point (£70 or so) here in the UK. The 9133i is £80 + PoE injector (£14), which is quite a big increase in budget on 20 or 30 phones. Is there any unbiased comparison of various phones and features anywhere. As the discussion about the GXP2000 showed, it's not really features that's important - it's more a question of reliable firmware, build quality, etc. If you're after one or two nice office phones, I don't think you can beat getting 2nd hand Cisco 7960s off ebay, putting the latest SCCP firmware on them and using them with chan_sccp. I've done that at 3 locations where I spend lots of time, and I really like the feel of the 7960. I can't justify the price of them new, but from auction, the prices are far more reasonable (going rate seems to be about £110 in the UK). Regards, Chris -- C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited This email is made from 100% recycled electrons ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
For every person that says phone x is great there is someone else complaining about it. Its very simple why there are soo many answers to the what phone to use question. The answer really comes down to a matter of personal preferance and end-users needs. Mind you, some phones are better than others but the answer really comes down to what you plan on doing with the phones and the types of end-users using the phones. With that said, here are my personal recommendations and why 1) SNOM 360/320: If you are transintioning a small business from something similar to an Avaya partner system, these are the phones to use. They are moderatly stable and support features that many end-users are used to such as Intercom, Line Indicators, MWI etc. In the newest firmwares, you get the highest flexibility of soft button configuration of any phone in the market. Be sure to due some testing before implementing any new firmwares on thiese phones though. SNOM has been less than stellar when it comes to testing new release versions. Currently 5.3 seems to crash the phones regularly. Other than that, they are a good solid phone, they look and feel like business telephones (something you can't say about many phones like the Grandstream and the like) Team these up with some of the new low cost PoE options from Linksys and Netgear and you have yourself a great solution. The web based configuration file ability on these phones makes for interesting things you can do with PHP and dynamic config files. As the phones also support GSM, you can get arround having to buy G729 licenses when bandwidth is a concern. The best part is that the price is somewhat moderate on these phones. Don't expect to beat out pricing on rock bottom systems with these phones, but as they say, you get what you pay for. 2) Polycom 301/501/601: Also a solid performer. The 601 makes for a great attendant phone with the option of an expansion pack with LCD programmable labels for the soft buttons. (great if you have a fluid office situation). I find the configuration files a bit more confusing and you'll have to use TFTP instead of HTTP with these precluding the use of dynamic PHP driven config files. On the upside, Polycom support is much better than SNOM. I get responses from them in a day wheras from SNOM it sometimes takes up to a week to get a question answered. The prices on these cannot be beat for the functionality that they offer. They also support many of the features like Line indication and Intercom. Phone stability is quite high and there is a lesser problem with buggy firmware being released 3) Cisco 79XX: A great phone and solid performer but it comes at a steep price. I use these only in enviroments where end-users have worked with them before lowering training costs overall. In those situations, the phones nearly sell themselves so long as people are willing to pay for the Cisco premium. Other than their rock solid reliability, they really don't offer anything special unless you are in an enviroement that might use phone based XML applications Now all of this is not to say that a sub $100 phone might not be the right choice for your situation. For business phones though, I tend to follow this set of guidelines. 1) If it doesn't support PoE I won't implement it. Support phones with wall-warts or bricks is just a added hassle and adds TCO as most end up being replaced once or twice during the lifetime of the phone when someone trips over them etc. With PoE switches from linksys starting at $500, there is absolutely no reason not to consider them. 2) Autoconfiguration should be simple yet powerful and VERY well documented.. If you can't get the phone manufacturer to give you a manual on TFTP configuration or HTTP configuration that is clear and concise, it just isn't worth the effort of trying to figure it out yourself. 3) Stability, Stability, Stability. People have gotten used to the fact that phone networks and systems rarely go down. Telling someone their phone crashed usually gets you a funny look. If a phone you are selecting crashes twice while you are testing, that is far too many time. Heck, once it too many times. 4) Is the company going to be around tomorrow: A lot of VoIP manufactures have come and gone, many more will come and go. Stick to the bigger names. You'll end up paying more up front, but they will be around to support you in the future and at least you will be able to give your end-users an upgrade path that minimalizes the learning curve. I.e. older SNOM phones work very similarly to the newer ones so when you upgrade say a Snom 190 to a 320/360, the user just needs to figure out where the buttons are now but otherwise feels they are on a same or similar phone. These are my recommendations. As with all such things, your mileage may vary. I have sold and installed pretty much every kind of phone there is out
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
I agree with most of Raymond's other points, but I have to take issue with this one: 1) If it doesn't support PoE I won't implement it. Support phones with wall-warts or bricks is just a added hassle and adds TCO as most end up being replaced once or twice during the lifetime of the phone when someone trips over them etc. With PoE switches from linksys starting at $500, there is absolutely no reason not to consider them. That's one *bloody* expensive switch, considering a decent quality 24-port 10/100 switch can be had for £40 (say $70). It's very difficult to justify a recommendation that a small business should pay over 7 times the price for a PoE capable switch. Regards, Chris -- C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited This email is made from 100% recycled electrons ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Tue, 21 Feb 2006, mustardman29 wrote: I hear some people praising the GXP2000 phones and I gotta wonder what they are smokin (regardless of firmware revison) so I just don't know who to believe anymore. The GXP2000 is probably the best phone you can buy _for under $100_. Got it? Under $100. Let me repeat that. Under $100. Under $100. Got it? Under $100. Clear now? Yes? Good. Is it a great phone? No. Is it an adequate phone? Maybe. Depends on your needs. You do get a lot of value for your $80. It wont fit everyones needs, but to imply it fits nobodys is completely bogus. There are lots of $200 and $300 phones which are worse than the GXP2000. -Dan ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Tue, 21 Feb 2006, Ross C wrote: I wouldn't worry about the polycoms not 'officially' supporting asterisk. LOTS of people use them with Asterisk (including myself). The biggest gripes with polycoms seem to be: cumbersome config, 7 blf limit (making the sidecars useless), and polycom's retarded firmware policy (eg, dont ever buy used polycoms from anyone but an authorized polycom reseller. which rules out most online auctions). and no backlight. -Dan ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
On Tuesday 21 Feb 2006 19:55, Chris Bagnall wrote: I agree with most of Raymond's other points, but I have to take issue with this one: 1) If it doesn't support PoE I won't implement it. Support phones with wall-warts or bricks is just a added hassle and adds TCO as most end up being replaced once or twice during the lifetime of the phone when someone trips over them etc. With PoE switches from linksys starting at $500, there is absolutely no reason not to consider them. That's one *bloody* expensive switch, considering a decent quality 24-port 10/100 switch can be had for £40 (say $70). It's very difficult to justify a recommendation that a small business should pay over 7 times the price for a PoE capable switch. £40! That would be a cheap and nasty switch with no prospect of any management. A managed switch is worth its weight in gold, /especially/ when you have to look after things remotely. B -- http://www.mailtrap.org.uk/ ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
I have used every phone and talk to customers using different devices all day long and I can tell you there is no single IP phone that is perfect for everyone. You will not find the answer on a newsgroup or a wiki, you need to judge for yourself. For example, while I may love the decidedly euro ergonomics of the snom, you may find it impossibly unconventional. We have lots of customers who are very happy with their GXP-2000's as well as a number who are not. It depends on how they are being used (especially LAN or WAN) as well as the firmware version and networking environment. We also have many customers who love their Polycoms and there is no doubt that they build a quality product. They aren't cheap but they don't disappoint. By the way, Polycom officially supports Asterisk through certified resellers as of October 2005. Snoms are great also but they seem to be having some trouble getting the version 5.0 firmware stable. If you can live with the features in V4.x for a while, these phones are terrific. Probably the best overall integration with Asterisk of any IP phone currently available. Aastra seems to be getting it together at last and also are worthy of consideration. I sell phones for a living and here's what I recommend: First, select a reliable and competent vendor who will work with you (shameless plug for The VoIP Connection). Talk to them and narrow the field to a sampling of the phones you think will work for your organization. Set up a test scenario that simulates the network environment you will have and learn how to set the phones up with Asterisk (and vice-versa) so that they work the way they should. Learn how to use the features well enough to teach them (if you can't explain the basic operation of the phone in 5 minutes forget it), and then put them in front of a sampling of the people who will use them every day. Pay special attention to your receptionist and office manager since they will be the ones you will hear from the most. There really is no shortcut if you want your users to be happy. Michael Crown Managing Partner www.thevoipconnection.com 321.989.6728 ext. 611 sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: mustardman29 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 12:58 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use I have been struggling with this issue for about a year now. There were just too many IP phones to choose from at all sorts of price points and not enough information about any of them. Now I am looking at the situation again and if anything it has gotten worse. There are even more phones and all sorts of opinions. For every person that says phone x is great there is someone else complaining about it. I ended up buying a Grandstream GXP2000 and an Aastra 9133i to test so I pretty much know what those two phones are about. Lot's of people talking about Polycom phones but they still seem to have their problems and since they don't officially support Asterisk I have my concerns. I really don't want to have to keep buying phones to find out for myself as it get's expensive real fast. Is there any unbiased comparison of various phones and features anywhere. If someone wrote a book I'd buy it but it would probably be obsolete before it was published with the rate of new IP phone introductions and firmware revisons. I hear some people praising the GXP2000 phones and I gotta wonder what they are smokin (regardless of firmware revison) so I just don't know who to believe anymore. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
The VoIP Connection wrote: I have used every phone and talk to customers using different devices all day long and I can tell you there is no single IP phone that is perfect for everyone. You will not find the answer on a newsgroup or a wiki, you need to judge for yourself. For example, while I may love the decidedly euro ergonomics of the snom, you may find it impossibly unconventional. We have lots of customers who are very happy with their GXP-2000's as well as a number who are not. It depends on how they are being used (especially LAN or WAN) as well as the firmware version and networking environment. We also have many customers who love their Polycoms and there is no doubt that they build a quality product. They aren't cheap but they don't disappoint. By the way, Polycom officially supports Asterisk through certified resellers as of October 2005. Snoms are great also but they seem to be having some trouble getting the version 5.0 firmware stable. If you can live with the features in V4.x for a while, these phones are terrific. Probably the best overall integration with Asterisk of any IP phone currently available. Aastra seems to be getting it together at last and also are worthy of consideration. I sell phones for a living and here's what I recommend: First, select a reliable and competent vendor who will work with you (shameless plug for The VoIP Connection). Talk to them and narrow the field to a sampling of the phones you think will work for your organization. Set up a test scenario that simulates the network environment you will have and learn how to set the phones up with Asterisk (and vice-versa) so that they work the way they should. Learn how to use the features well enough to teach them (if you can't explain the basic operation of the phone in 5 minutes forget it), and then put them in front of a sampling of the people who will use them every day. Pay special attention to your receptionist and office manager since they will be the ones you will hear from the most. There really is no shortcut if you want your users to be happy. Michael Crown Managing Partner www.thevoipconnection.com 321.989.6728 ext. 611 sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: mustardman29 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 12:58 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use I have been struggling with this issue for about a year now. There were just too many IP phones to choose from at all sorts of price points and not enough information about any of them. Now I am looking at the situation again and if anything it has gotten worse. There are even more phones and all sorts of opinions. For every person that says phone x is great there is someone else complaining about it. I ended up buying a Grandstream GXP2000 and an Aastra 9133i to test so I pretty much know what those two phones are about. Lot's of people talking about Polycom phones but they still seem to have their problems and since they don't officially support Asterisk I have my concerns. I really don't want to have to keep buying phones to find out for myself as it get's expensive real fast. Is there any unbiased comparison of various phones and features anywhere. If someone wrote a book I'd buy it but it would probably be obsolete before it was published with the rate of new IP phone introductions and firmware revisons. I hear some people praising the GXP2000 phones and I gotta wonder what they are smokin (regardless of firmware revison) so I just don't know who to believe anymore. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users From my point of view.. we tried grandstream 101/102 and the GXP 2000, we tried sipuras, polycoms and cisco.. and definitelly i put my bet for the polycoms.. now the GXP 2000 at his new prices probably will be a good answer, before at the same price that the polycoms don't have anything to do... budgetone don't ever bother u spend more time in support that his price. so at the long run u don't save anything. there are fine when u have 1 or 2.. but mass deployment :D that's another history... sipura 841 the only issue for me the spearker phone.. they are super stables but not to be used in a callcenter, they trend to brake.. i still think that an analog phone buy in what ever is better in callcenters that every other phone, but for have one in 1 office that don't need to use that much the speaker phone are super. cisco they are fine.. i still prefer polycoms. regards Saul ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
It's funny, but I found it more challening to buy a second hand car than to buy phones. PaulH - Original Message - From: mustardman29 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 4:57 AM Subject: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use I have been struggling with this issue for about a year now. There were just too many IP phones to choose from at all sorts of price points and not enough information about any of them. Now I am looking at the situation again and if anything it has gotten worse. There are even more phones and all sorts of opinions. For every person that says phone x is great there is someone else complaining about it. I ended up buying a Grandstream GXP2000 and an Aastra 9133i to test so I pretty much know what those two phones are about. Lot's of people talking about Polycom phones but they still seem to have their problems and since they don't officially support Asterisk I have my concerns. I really don't want to have to keep buying phones to find out for myself as it get's expensive real fast. Is there any unbiased comparison of various phones and features anywhere. If someone wrote a book I'd buy it but it would probably be obsolete before it was published with the rate of new IP phone introductions and firmware revisons. I hear some people praising the GXP2000 phones and I gotta wonder what they are smokin (regardless of firmware revison) so I just don't know who to believe anymore. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
) If it doesn't support PoE I won't implement it. Support phones with wall-warts or bricks is just a added hassle and adds TCO as most end up being replaced once or twice during the lifetime of the phone when someone trips over them etc. With PoE switches from linksys starting at $500, there is absolutely no reason not to consider them. How much juice does a typical IP phone draw? I noticed that the Linksys SRW2224P only provides 7.5W if you use all 24 PoE ports (or 15W to 12 ports). My Polycom IP501 has a 9W brick but I dunno if there's some headroom in that figure or not. The Dell 3424P will provide full 15W power to it's 24 ports but it's $749. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
£40! That would be a cheap and nasty switch with no prospect of any management. A managed switch is worth its weight in gold, /especially/ when you have to look after things remotely. How does one justify the extra cost of a managed switch for an office of no more than 5-10 users with limited SMB file sharing and lightweight internet access going over the thing? It's just not doable. In larger organizations, I agree entirely, a managed switch *is* worth its weight in gold, but not for small businesses. Regards, Chris -- C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited This email is made from 100% recycled electrons ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
How does one justify the extra cost of a managed switch for an office of no more than 5-10 users with limited SMB file sharing and lightweight internet access going over the thing? It's just not doable. In larger organizations, I agree entirely, a managed switch *is* worth its weight in gold, but not for small businesses. Simple formula: 1. Total Revenue 2. % of revenue derived from phone usage 3. =Cost of downtime by using SoHo or consumer gear. It's not a question of if a SoHo or low cost device will screw up, it is a question of when. This is 23 years of experience talking. Where I work, the value of #3 above is $16 Cdn a *second*. We are below 500 employees, so we fall into the SMB segment. Sometimes I'm appalled by statements that a $700 switch or a $400 phone isn't worth it. Huh?? Maybe in your home office, or whatever, but in any kind of meaningful business context, you *always* buy the best, and you only cry once. If you argue that your business can't support that kind of cost (which is really, actually quite cheap. Anyone remember $6000 switches? I do.) then perhaps you may want to re-evaluate whether it's appropriate to use VoIP in your business in the first place. Sure, a managed switch is not a silver bullet - but it is part of a quality implementation that *is* a silver bullet. Weakest link, and all that. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Thanks Michael, That sounds like good advice. I am surprised that some customers like the GXP2000. Cheap looking, cheap sounding, high failure rates. What sort of customers are we talking about within the context of business users if you don't mind me asking? Not home users. Business users in office environments. I have been gravitating towards the Aastra's because I like the features/price points the 3 flavors hit. I also really like the support I have been get from the manufacturer of the phones and firmware. I have been patiently waiting for the firmware to improve and I think it is just about there now. I do have concerns about Polycom's arms length attitude towards the end user but knowing they now sort of support Asterisk is a good thing. I can see why you would advise to find a good reseller for Polycom's. I guess I will have to fly out to a VoIP trade show somewhere where I can touch and use a bunch of different phones without having to buy them. Anyone have any opinions on the Linksys 941/942? It sounds like the firmware is ok but my main concern is always the hardware which won't really improve over time like firmware. What are the handset/speakerphone/buttons like compared to GXP2000, Aastra480, Aastra9133i, Polycom 501 etc. Any info would be greatly appreciated. -Original Message- From: The VoIP Connection [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 12:55 PM To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use I have used every phone and talk to customers using different devices all day long and I can tell you there is no single IP phone that is perfect for everyone. You will not find the answer on a newsgroup or a wiki, you need to judge for yourself. For example, while I may love the decidedly euro ergonomics of the snom, you may find it impossibly unconventional. We have lots of customers who are very happy with their GXP-2000's as well as a number who are not. It depends on how they are being used (especially LAN or WAN) as well as the firmware version and networking environment. We also have many customers who love their Polycoms and there is no doubt that they build a quality product. They aren't cheap but they don't disappoint. By the way, Polycom officially supports Asterisk through certified resellers as of October 2005. Snoms are great also but they seem to be having some trouble getting the version 5.0 firmware stable. If you can live with the features in V4.x for a while, these phones are terrific. Probably the best overall integration with Asterisk of any IP phone currently available. Aastra seems to be getting it together at last and also are worthy of consideration. I sell phones for a living and here's what I recommend: First, select a reliable and competent vendor who will work with you (shameless plug for The VoIP Connection). Talk to them and narrow the field to a sampling of the phones you think will work for your organization. Set up a test scenario that simulates the network environment you will have and learn how to set the phones up with Asterisk (and vice-versa) so that they work the way they should. Learn how to use the features well enough to teach them (if you can't explain the basic operation of the phone in 5 minutes forget it), and then put them in front of a sampling of the people who will use them every day. Pay special attention to your receptionist and office manager since they will be the ones you will hear from the most. There really is no shortcut if you want your users to be happy. Michael Crown Managing Partner www.thevoipconnection.com 321.989.6728 ext. 611 sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: mustardman29 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 12:58 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use I have been struggling with this issue for about a year now. There were just too many IP phones to choose from at all sorts of price points and not enough information about any of them. Now I am looking at the situation again and if anything it has gotten worse. There are even more phones and all sorts of opinions. For every person that says phone x is great there is someone else complaining about it. I ended up buying a Grandstream GXP2000 and an Aastra 9133i to test so I pretty much know what those two phones are about. Lot's of people talking about Polycom phones but they still seem to have their problems and since they don't officially support Asterisk I have my concerns. I really don't want to have to keep buying phones to find out for myself as it get's expensive real fast. Is there any unbiased comparison of various phones and features anywhere. If someone wrote a book I'd
RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
There's lots to like about the GXP-2000 in terms of features for the money and Grandstream is working very hard to make the phone work well with Asterisk. The sound is on a par with more expensive phones and many people find the clean, minimalist look of the GXP-2000 appealing. The ergonomics are also very familiar for Americans. Again, personal taste factors into the mix as does budget. Some people can't just stand rubber buttons, some don't like plastic. We have been watching the Aastra line for about two years now waiting for the firmware to be ready for primetime and we are currently in the process of adding them to our catalog. They are certainly a capable group and we have also found them to be easy to deal with. The reality is that they are a little late to the game with a viable offering and they have some catching up to do, but their progress is encouraging. The 941/942 are very nice phones. They are well made and so far the firmware seems very solid, but like their Cisco brethren they are a little expensive for what they offer in my opinion. If they were 25-30% cheaper I would be a lot more enthusiastic. If the 941 was priced like the 841 it would be a homerun. Polycom,like most of the higher end manufacturers, supports the user through their channel. If you buy your phones from a cut-rate or unauthorized reseller you will not get good support. Factor it into your decision making process. And finally, you don't need to fly to a trade show to try a variety of phones. If you contact us we can set you up with a 30 day test program. Michael Crown Managing Partner www.thevoipconnection.com 321.989.6728 ext. 611 sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: mustardman29 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 11:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use Thanks Michael, That sounds like good advice. I am surprised that some customers like the GXP2000. Cheap looking, cheap sounding, high failure rates. What sort of customers are we talking about within the context of business users if you don't mind me asking? Not home users. Business users in office environments. I have been gravitating towards the Aastra's because I like the features/price points the 3 flavors hit. I also really like the support I have been get from the manufacturer of the phones and firmware. I have been patiently waiting for the firmware to improve and I think it is just about there now. I do have concerns about Polycom's arms length attitude towards the end user but knowing they now sort of support Asterisk is a good thing. I can see why you would advise to find a good reseller for Polycom's. I guess I will have to fly out to a VoIP trade show somewhere where I can touch and use a bunch of different phones without having to buy them. Anyone have any opinions on the Linksys 941/942? It sounds like the firmware is ok but my main concern is always the hardware which won't really improve over time like firmware. What are the handset/speakerphone/buttons like compared to GXP2000, Aastra480, Aastra9133i, Polycom 501 etc. Any info would be greatly appreciated. -Original Message- From: The VoIP Connection [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 12:55 PM To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use I have used every phone and talk to customers using different devices all day long and I can tell you there is no single IP phone that is perfect for everyone. You will not find the answer on a newsgroup or a wiki, you need to judge for yourself. For example, while I may love the decidedly euro ergonomics of the snom, you may find it impossibly unconventional. We have lots of customers who are very happy with their GXP-2000's as well as a number who are not. It depends on how they are being used (especially LAN or WAN) as well as the firmware version and networking environment. We also have many customers who love their Polycoms and there is no doubt that they build a quality product. They aren't cheap but they don't disappoint. By the way, Polycom officially supports Asterisk through certified resellers as of October 2005. Snoms are great also but they seem to be having some trouble getting the version 5.0 firmware stable. If you can live with the features in V4.x for a while, these phones are terrific. Probably the best overall integration with Asterisk of any IP phone currently available. Aastra seems to be getting it together at last and also are worthy of consideration. I sell phones for a living and here's what I recommend: First, select a reliable and competent vendor who will work with you
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
It's funny this thread has been coming up, because I've been testing out phones at my office, and I just did a fairly intensive quality test on them.1) Budgetones: Don't bother for a business setting. The speaker phone is basically useless (echo problems) and the handset is horrible. If you follow the suggestion on the Wiki to drill out the handset, it improves things marginally, but not much. Users talking to you will constantly complain about you sound muffled. It's think it's a frequency response thing and not a volume thing, I think it's just getting lower than a standard 8 khz sample out of the microphone, because it's so cheap. 2) GXP-2000: Not much better than the Budgetones, but at least the firmware is still in active development. Feature-wise it's pretty cool, but poor firmware and poor handset hardware again make this a real problem for us. We lost one handset to static electricity yesterday (which was fixed by adding in a microphone from an old business set, which actually improved that phone's quality). The speakerphone is useless due to echo issues. However, 4 line appearances is pretty cool for that price of phone, and passthrough Ethernet at 100 mbs is pretty cool too. Overall, I can't recommend them, because while they sound slightly better than the budgetones, I still get many complaints about muffled calls. 3) Polycom: Of the 4 phone brands we're actively using (not including the Wifi phone which rarely gets used), this was the best until I got the Snom in today. The handset is of good quality. I have an IP 301, but if the cheapest phone is this good, I'd definitely get a 501 or 601 (and am considering ordering some, although I may order Snom 320s instead). Their support policies do get on my nerves, I'd like to not have to worry about what reseller I'm using, but it's a solid phone with solid features, although the menus are cumbersome and I haven't gotten MWI to work on it yet. 4) Snom 320: This is an excellent phone based off one days testing. Minimal configuration, professional looking web interface, and the best sound quality of any of the phones I tested. THe speakerphone works great, and the handset quality is outstanding, and tested the best with my callers that were listening to me through the PSTN. I haven't upgraded firmware or anything on this yet, so can't tell you there, but I can't see a compelling reason to upgrade from whatever it shipped with that this point (i'm not feature crazy, I only upgrade the firmware if basic features don't seem to be working right). Overall, stay away from the Grandstream's IMHO. The audio quality issues will drive you insane. I'm hoping someone will come out with a sub-$100 phone that drops some features but fixes what should be the cheapest part of the phone to manufacture, since they've been the same for nearly 50 years, the handset. Clint ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use
Clint - Looks like your wish has been granted, and your love affair with Snom can continue. They are soon releasing the new Snom 300, which has most of the features your are fond of in the 360 and 320 models, and should be quite near, if not at, your $100 price point. Read up on it here - http://www.snom.com/pressinformation_details.html?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=354tx_ttnews[backPid]=33cHash=1bb97caf5cL=1 Detailed specs here - http://www.snom.com/snom300_voip_phone.html?L=1 Cory J AndrewsVOIPSupply.com454 Sonwil DriveBuffalo, NY 14225++voice - 716.630.1555 X22email - [EMAIL PROTECTED]AIM - B2CORY - Original Message - From: Clint Sharp To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 1:03 AM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use It's funny this thread has been coming up, because I've been testing out phones at my office, and I just did a fairly intensive quality test on them.1) Budgetones: Don't bother for a business setting. The speaker phone is basically useless (echo problems) and the handset is horrible. If you follow the suggestion on the Wiki to drill out the handset, it improves things marginally, but not much. Users talking to you will constantly complain about you sound muffled. It's think it's a frequency response thing and not a volume thing, I think it's just getting lower than a standard 8 khz sample out of the microphone, because it's so cheap. 2) GXP-2000: Not much better than the Budgetones, but at least the firmware is still in active development. Feature-wise it's pretty cool, but poor firmware and poor handset hardware again make this a real problem for us. We lost one handset to static electricity yesterday (which was fixed by adding in a microphone from an old business set, which actually improved that phone's quality). The speakerphone is useless due to echo issues. However, 4 line appearances is pretty cool for that price of phone, and passthrough Ethernet at 100 mbs is pretty cool too. Overall, I can't recommend them, because while they sound slightly better than the budgetones, I still get many complaints about muffled calls. 3) Polycom: Of the 4 phone brands we're actively using (not including the Wifi phone which rarely gets used), this was the best until I got the Snom in today. The handset is of good quality. I have an IP 301, but if the cheapest phone is this good, I'd definitely get a 501 or 601 (and am considering ordering some, although I may order Snom 320s instead). Their support policies do get on my nerves, I'd like to not have to worry about what reseller I'm using, but it's a solid phone with solid features, although the menus are cumbersome and I haven't gotten MWI to work on it yet. 4) Snom 320: This is an excellent phone based off one days testing. Minimal configuration, professional looking web interface, and the best sound quality of any of the phones I tested. THe speakerphone works great, and the handset quality is outstanding, and tested the best with my callers that were listening to me through the PSTN. I haven't upgraded firmware or anything on this yet, so can't tell you there, but I can't see a compelling reason to upgrade from whatever it shipped with that this point (i'm not feature crazy, I only upgrade the firmware if basic features don't seem to be working right). Overall, stay away from the Grandstream's IMHO. The audio quality issues will drive you insane. I'm hoping someone will come out with a sub-$100 phone that drops some features but fixes what should be the cheapest part of the phone to manufacture, since they've been the same for nearly 50 years, the handset. Clint ___--Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --Asterisk-Users mailing listTo UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
