I need to buy some new phones for our own offices. I've used only Polycom phones until now, but I'd like to broaden my experience. I'm trying to decide which phones to experiment with. I have these options: - A combination of Polycom, Aastra and Snom - Just Polycom One the one hand, I'd like to keep things uniform, since it greatly simplifies provisioning. On the other hand, I don't want to broaden my knowledge. Advice, anyone? -Stephen-
Stephen Bosch wrote:> I need to buy some new phones for our own offices. > > I've used only Polycom phones until now, but I'd like to broaden my > experience. > > I'm trying to decide which phones to experiment with. I have these options: > > - A combination of Polycom, Aastra and Snom > > - Just Polycom > > One the one hand, I'd like to keep things uniform, since it greatly > simplifies provisioning. On the other hand, I don't want to broaden my > knowledge......because I like to stay dumb. Of course, that's not what I meant :) -Stephen-
Quoting Stephen Bosch <posting@vodacomm.ca>:> I'm trying to decide which phones to experiment with. I have these > options: > - A combination of Polycom, Aastra and Snom > - Just Polycom > > One the one hand, I'd like to keep things uniform, since it greatly > simplifies provisioning. On the other hand, I don't want to broaden > my > knowledge. > > Advice, anyone? > > -Stephen-You said 'office' so I'm presuming you want business quality. If you have already tried the Polycom's I'd look at Aastra (just did a 50+ seat implementation with 9133i's & 480i's) and also look at the Cisco 79xx's. Cisco's & Aastra's both handle multiple appearances differently but both are excellent. Cisco has superb handsfree quality. Aastra has better BLF support. You will have to evaluate for yourself. Aastra is significantly cheaper. That said, there is a 7960 on my desk that isn't going anywhere soon. I hear the Grandstream firmware is better now but physically they are still pretty flimsy. I would stay away from them for anything but experimentation. dbc.
Drew Gibson wrote:> Stephen Bosch wrote: > > Stephen Bosch wrote: > > > >> I need to buy some new phones for our own offices. > >> > >> I've used only Polycom phones until now, but I'd like to broaden my > >> experience. > >> > >> I'm trying to decide which phones to experiment with. I have these options: > >> > >> - A combination of Polycom, Aastra and Snom > >> > >> - Just Polycom > >> > >> One the one hand, I'd like to keep things uniform, since it greatly > >> simplifies provisioning. On the other hand, I don't want to broaden my > >> knowledge... > >> > > > > ...because I like to stay dumb. > > > > Of course, that's not what I meant :) > > > > > We have Cisco, Aastra 480i and Grandstream GXP2000 phones in house. > > I only recommend the Cisco phones to people I don't like, overpriced and > far too much work. > > The Aastra 480i is a good quality phone, on par with Cisco and probably > with Polycom (though I've never used them). Voice quality is good, phone > feels robust. Config is well documented and contained in two text files > (one global, one MAC specific). Good web interface on the phone. Aastra > support have been very responsive. > > Grandstream phones are lower quality but good value for money. Sound and > feel of phones is not so good as Aastra or Cisco. Configuration is > through a binary file, a bit fiddly, but quite manageable with a few > scripts. Good web interface on the phone. Grandstream support have also > been very responsive. > > regards, > > Drew > > -- > Drew Gibson > > Systems Administrator > OANDA Corporation > www.oanda.com >I have Cisco 7960G, Polycom SP 501, Aastra 480i, Grandstream GXP2000 and Budgetone 200 desk phones in my test lab. Overall, I like the Cisco best. I even bought one for home use. Configuration was no more difficult than any other. The Cisco, Aastra and Polycom have similar voice quality. They're all very good handsets and speakerphones. Of these three, the Aastra is the only backlit display, but it is hard to read from an angle and the backlight is not very effective. Aastra is also very vulnerable to glare. The Cisco and Polycom are easier to read unless you are in a darkened room. The Grandstream GXP2000 and Budgetone 200 have nice, bright and easy to read displays, but the phone aesthetics are not up to par with the others. For daily use, the Cisco and Polycom buttons are smoothest. The Aastra is close, but not as comfortable to use. It seems that round buttons function better. The Grandstream buttons are just heavy and cumbersome. The Polycom is the biggest pain in the ass to initially configure because of the extended boot time. All other brands I've used boot within a minute and are ready to use. The Polycom takes around 4 and if you are using the web interface for initial configuration, you need to reboot frequently. Once you've worked out your configuration, new phone installs are pretty simple with any brand. The Aastra and Grandstream web interfaces are easy to use and you may make multiple changes and then reboot when you're done. The Cisco has no web interface. For routine provisioning, Cisco only supports tftp and telnet. The Polycom supports tftp, ftp, sftp, http and https. The Aastra supports tftp, ftp & http. Placing a logo on the Cisco display is trivial. I have not been successful with any other brand so far. For PoE use, the Polycom and Aastra use 802.3af. Up to the 7970, Cisco used a proprietary PoE pin configuration and require a special cable to use with a standards compliant PoE switch. The cable is easy to make, but you have to ensure that users are aware of the difference. As for price, Drew is right about the high cost of Cisco. If I hadn't found one on eBay, my personal phone would likely be Aastra.
>From overall apprecation feedback :#1 Polycom (Any) #2 Aastra 480i #3 Cisco 7940+ #4 Linksys SPA-94x On 4/11/07, Stephen Bosch <posting@vodacomm.ca> wrote:> > I need to buy some new phones for our own offices. > > I've used only Polycom phones until now, but I'd like to broaden my > experience. > > I'm trying to decide which phones to experiment with. I have these > options: > > - A combination of Polycom, Aastra and Snom > > - Just Polycom > > One the one hand, I'd like to keep things uniform, since it greatly > simplifies provisioning. On the other hand, I don't want to broaden my > knowledge. > > Advice, anyone? > > -Stephen- > _______________________________________________ > --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 >-- Mike Sales Manager http://www.voicemeup.com Making it happen 1.877.807.VOIP (8647) 1.514.312.7030 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20070412/1b6740d8/attachment.htm
I've had experience with quite a few different phones, so I think I'm qualified to drop my two cents: Alex is quite right that the Cisco phones are only designed to be used with Cisco Call Manager. They are capable of being decent SIP telephones, but Cisco won't provide the documentation so that you can use them effectively with anything other than Cisco Call Manager, so that's the deal killer. Like everything else Cisco, they're also ridiculously expensive. Despite what Alex says, the Cisco SIP phones have plenty of fundamental flaws. I have a number of expensive 7970G phones with a beautiful color display. Each of the various SIP firmware versions available for that product has a serious flaw. The most acceptable version is about a year old. It's biggest flaw is that the Message Waiting Indicator doesn't work. Most of the other SIP firmware versions won't register with Asterisk. If you are planning to usee Asterisk, save your money and your sanity and buy something else. In my last project, I used the Aastra 480i phones. Yes, the documentation is lacking, but that's largely because the platform was evolving quickly. Aastra has excellent and responsive technical support via e-mail. Finally, the customer was very satisfied with the quality and the price of the 480i phones. In my latest project, I used the newer Aastra 57i and 57i CT phones. It is obvious that these phones derived from the 480i software, but they are much faster and more full-featured with great displays, etc. The initial documentation with these is fairly good and complete. I have them doing all kinds of things, including using the XML capabilities to push server applications to the display, update the softkeys in real-time, etc. As contrasted against Cisco, Aastra even provides PHP include files to greatly simplify web development on whatever platform (Asterisk, Sylantro, etc.) you are using. The 57i phones are a little expensive, but they are a top-notch product that works very well with Asterisk right out of the box. Plus, they look and sound great and have 12 softkeys that shift to 20. One of the others that responded to your question mentioned something about setting up a TFTP server and I want to elaborate on that a little. If you are deploying more than a small handful of phones, you will want to setup a TFTP server anyway. It would be muy loco to try deploying and supporting a few dozen phones otherwise. Many of the phone's features aren't even accessible through the web interface anyway - you have to have a TFTP server and make use of the configuration files for full functionality. And that applies to Aastra, Cisco, Polycom or whatever. Finally, it can take a fair amount of labor to configure Asterisk and your particular phone to work together as a system. Don't kill yourself by attempting to mix and match various phones on the same system as that seriously increases the complexity. Keep it simple. For what it's worth.... Ken
Product selection is not cut and dry. What are your business requirements? So you need encryption? If so, what kind? Do they need support for outbound proxies? Are you going to use the same model for remote deployments? Do you need WAP capabilities? Do you need programmable speed dials? Do you need modular admin sidecars? Do you need IPSEC capabilities built into the handset? Do you need advanced/specific codec support? Do you need guaranteed interoperability with specific vendor supplied components? Are you looking for a phone for 10 people, 100 people, or 10000 people? If you are scaling, what does your provisioning system look like? Do you need phone features like video or quality speaker phone? What is your budget for phones? Do you need an RTCP capable handset? Do you need a handset that support 802.11p for QoS? The more specific you can get about your business requirements, the better targeted your product selection will be. -------------------------------------------------- Salvatore Giudice Salvatore.Giudice@VoIPSecurityTraining.com VoIP Security Training, LLC http://VoIPSecurityTraining.com 848 N. Rainbow Blvd. #1676 Las Vegas, NV 89107 Phone: (702)?979-2906 Fax: (212) 279-2906 -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Bosch Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 5:54 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: [asterisk-users] Which SIP phones to buy? I need to buy some new phones for our own offices. I've used only Polycom phones until now, but I'd like to broaden my experience. I'm trying to decide which phones to experiment with. I have these options: - A combination of Polycom, Aastra and Snom - Just Polycom One the one hand, I'd like to keep things uniform, since it greatly simplifies provisioning. On the other hand, I don't want to broaden my knowledge. Advice, anyone? -Stephen- _______________________________________________ --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