[asterisk-users] Grandstream GXP2020 / 2000

[Drew Gibson]

Erik Wartusch wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Has somebody experiences with the Grandstream GXP2020 / 2000 phones in a 
> business graded installation (with really traffic on .... not 3 calls a 
> day ;-) )
> Of course with Asterisk PBX (1.4.1 or 1.4.11 or 1.4 in generall)
>
>   
Hi Erik,

we have about 75 Grandstream GXP2000 phones running with Asterisk 1.2. 
We also have about 25 Aastra 480i phones in our call centre and 10 Cisco 
phones in meeting rooms.

The Grandstreams work fine on the whole, they are probably good value 
for money in smaller installations. We use some simple bash scripts to 
manage the configurations so the need to convert the config files from 
text to a binary format is not an issue. Sound quality is OK, the 
speaker phone is not great. Most users are happy with the Grandstreams 
but we give Aastras to anyone who spends a lot of time on the phone.

The reason I cannot recommend these devices for larger installations is 
the mediocre response from Grandstream's  technical support. Tech 
support will acknowledge your initial problem report but then ignore you 
if they don't have an immediate fix. This is a pattern repeated over 
several reported incidents.
Our latest issue is with the GXP2000's running f/w <= 1.1.1.14. The 
phone does not send a "keep-alive" packet when the mute function is 
used, despite this bug being documented as fixed in a much earlier 
release. This results in a disconnect after 5 minutes of being on 
"mute". Very annoying when on a conference call or on hold to tech 
support. This is fixed in 1.1.4.18 but this release introduces an issue 
with very loud (for our environment) ring tones rendering the GXP2000 
unusable in our office.

We no longer purchase Grandstream phones but will consider them again in 
the future should the support issues be resolved.

regards,

Drew

-- 
Drew Gibson

Systems Administrator
OANDA Corporation
www.oanda.com