[asterisk-biz] Grandstream v. Polycom

[Thomas Kenyon]

Rob Peck wrote:
> John,
> 
> As someone who has both deployed in an office setting (GXP-2000s and 
> Polycom IP-330s, as well as a few PAPs and some other random crap), I 
> can give you a little info. Both work with Asterisk, but I would 
> recommend the Polycom. It's only about $30/each more for a better phone.
> 
I must be the only person left that still likes GXP-2000s. When they 
work, they're pretty good. (and have a fe wmore features than a 330).

I think I'm also the only person that thinks Polycom and Aastra phones 
are just plain ugly.

> The GXP has some neat features, but the quality of construction and 
> sound quality on the Polycoms is just so far ahead of the Grandstreams 
> that it's not even in the same ballpark. The Polycoms are also far 
> easier to provision (it's just simple XML).
> 
Grandstream sadly have the habit of releasing broken firmwares, and 
there are notoroiusly some phones with faulty hardware (which get replaced).

And admittedly provisioning can be a pain needing to encode the 
configuration plan, and being capable of handling multiple config files. 
(even with the old atcoms you could have a global config file with 
default settings and a separate per-unit one).

I've not tried it, but the unencrypted GXP2000 config files look like a 
small header and some URL-style form data at the end. You may be able to 
make global changes as simply as:

sed -e -i 's/P625=0/P625=1' cfg*

Would presumably reconfigure all the phones to auto-answer on line 4. 
(finding the keys is as simple as looking at the souce on one of the web 
pages).