[asterisk-users] Whcih phones are better for mass deployment

[Tim St. Pierre]

I am a really big fan of Aastra phones.

It's a splinter company of Northern Telecom, so their quality is very good.

Provisioning is done via a text file on either a tftp or an ftp server.  There 
is a global file and a per phone file.  When you have a good set of config 
files built, you can include an option for the phones to check the files 
every day at a predetermined time and reboot if there are any changes.  You 
can also send an SIP NOTIFY to cause the phones to update their config if you 
change something and need it applied immediately.  There is no config utility 
needed, as the files are human readable.  There is an encryption utility if 
you are concerned about security.  

When you deploy a new phone, you need only set the TFTP server address.  After 
that, the phone can get all it's settings from the server.  I have about 40 
of them deployed at client sites that I usually don't have access to.  I can 
change everything from here.  

Sound quality is great, most of them support PoE and have a passthru ethernet 
port.  The displays are backlit, there is a full duplex speaker phone and 
headset jack on all models.  There is also a built in directory function that 
loads from a .csv file on the server.  BLF support is good on the 9133i and 
the 480i.  

I can't say enough good things about these phones.  Manufacturer support is 
also very good.  Free firmware downloads from the website and good 
documentation.

-Tim

On September 9, 2006 18:51, Zeeshan Zakaria wrote:
> I am having hard time with grandstream phones for a 30 phone setup. When a
> change in configuration is required, I have to change their configurations
> manually for almost all of them. Their configuration utility is not very
> straight forward to use.
>
> For my next installation, I would prefer some other phones with better
> configuration and remote accress utility. My question to those of you with
> more experience, what IP phones are better for mass deployment and easy
> management of updates and configurations? Or what other solution is better
> for mass deployment of phones?

-- 
Tim St. Pierre

IP telephony specialist
sip://5101@communicatefreely.net
Toronto: 647 722 6930
Toll-Free 1 888 488 6940
tim at communicatefreely.net
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