[Asterisk-Users] Cisco 7960g

[Siggi Langauf]

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 dlah at tis.hr wrote:

> Has anybody tried Cisco 7960G? Or 7940?

sure, using them all the time here (the Skinny version, which requires
Cisco CallManager which in turn connects to asterisk via H.323).

The hardware (same as for the SIP version, in fact you can convert between
SIP, MGCP and Skinny versions by uploading new firmware) is pretty cool:
great speaker phone, support for standard headset, big LCD. Just the
handset is a bit chunky at least for European standards, and it often
sounds worse than speakerphone mode...

WRT the software, it's another thing, though: I found the phones crashing
quite often, as soon as you try doing anything but standard phone calls
(like using XML push services to display stuff on the LCD, or daring to
assign non-CallManager URLs to some of the service buttons).
So if stability is important, don't run them outside protected intranet
environments!

> What audio compressions can I use with this phone and Asterisk? Reason
> why I'm asking is because Cisco supports G.711 and G.729a audio
> compression (probobaly some tohers but they are not listed on data
> sheet) and on Asterisk features i found that it supports G.729 but need
> licence.

G.711 (both A-law and µ-Law) works fine with asterisk. (That's just log
scale PCM audio, so while it comes at 64kbit/s, it's quite good quality.)

> What I'm asking is wheter Cisco 7960G is working with Asterisk and what
> can I expect from it (quality, codec support, ...)

Sure is. I've seen people running the 79xx SIP models with Asterisk.
G.711 is supported out of the Box whereas G.729 support for asterisk works
if you purchase a license from Digium.

> Second question would be, are two SIP phones enough for testing/playing
> with Asterisk?

Yes, but for fully functioning Music on Hold or conferences, you'll need a
zaptel device: either one of the digium cards or one of the software
dummies (ztdummy, zaprtc or hfcdummy, IIRC). They are required to provide
timing interrupts for synchronization.

Cheers,
	Siggi