[Asterisk-Users] 3com NBX phones

[Derek Bruce]

The 3com NBX phones use a protocol called H3, developed by graduate students
at MIT. The protocol has no documentation at all (except by a very P.O.ed
guy in Australia. 3com can by the protocol when they aquired NBX corp in
1999. (NBX corp was the company formed by MIT to market the system).

So....
Short answer... NO, the NBX phones can not be used by Asterisk or any other
system...
Long answer... There is supposed to be a beta SIP firmware for the NBX
phones, derived from the 3com SIP phones (which were apparently very similar
hardware). 3com disavowes any knowledge of this firmware, and their SIP
phone have been discontinued. There are people on this list that have used
said firmware, but they have not indicated a lot of success. 3com has
recently (weell, over a year ago.. but that's recent in terms of 3com
development) announced a system called the VBX (which is supposed to support
SIP) and SIP support for the NBX, which means that there may be a sip image
available eventually for the NBX phones. If you are looking at buying the
phones to use with Asterisk, you would be better off buying another vendors
product. If you already have an NBX... the landscape is going to be changing
soon (we hope).

BTW, the NBX was supposed to be, 4 years ago, what Asterisk is today... Open
Source, expandable and extensible. We did our research and asked our
questions and purchased the system. spent $14000 Canadian. It still sells
for about the same price. We even joined their Solutions Provider Program...
what we got was a system that will do what we want... but will cost us
another $10000 CDN.

So... cheers to Mark for starting, and continuing, a system that is all, and
much more, that the NBX wanted to, be but couldn't...

My appologies to all who feel this is off topic...

Derek Bruce
Calgary Telecom

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Sailer" <tps at buoy.com>
To: "Asterisk Users" <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 12:38 PM
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] 3com NBX phones


> Does anyone know if the 3Com NBX 2102 series phones with with * ? There
> are a crapload (a very precise measurement) on eBay, but I can't figure
> out what protocols they talk.
>
> Tim
>
> --
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
> >> Tim Sailer                       ><  Coastal Internet, Inc.          <<
> >> Network and Systems Operations   ><  PO Box 726                      <<
> >> http://www.buoy.com              ><  Moriches, NY 11955              <<
> >> tps at buoy.com                     ><  (631) 399-2910  (888) 924-3728  <<
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