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

[shadowym]

I'm a big fan of these phones too for all of the reasons you pointed out.
They really stand out now that their firmware is mature.

I especially like their commitment to the open source community and
associated firmware/support policies.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim St. Pierre [mailto:tim at communicatefreely.net] 
Sent: Saturday, September 09, 2006 8:38 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Whcih phones are better for mass deployment

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