[Asterisk-Users] grandstream sip phone

[Greg Renouf]

I would like to present an alternative view of the Grandstream phones.

1.  The plastic they have used to build the cases is very flimsy.  If one
were going to deploy a commercial solution with Grandstream- expect a lot of
returns/exchanges.

2.  We have experienced a very dangerous problem with some of the
Grandstreams- that nobody has been able to solve.  It seems that the
Grandstream phones sometimes grab the MAC address of the nearest router and
use that MAC address of their own- the result is that network clients start
to get confused and start routing everything to the Grandstream.   I have
personally seen this happen with three different phones (and under 4
different versions of the GS software.)

3.  I have deployed 8 Grandstreams, along with another 12 phones to a group
of pilot users at a Dutch university.  They have complained that the phones
crash at random times,  the touch-tone buttons are much too sensitive, and
that the plastic case looks 'cheesy'.  On a positive side, they all really
like the blue flashing backlight for voicemail notification.

4. One of the pilot users has been able to bypass the security of the
Grandstream web interface, and get full access to the phone configuration
without using a password (this problem was discovered using a security
scanner.)

Now I understand that Grandstream is constantly improving the quality of
their project; however, some of these problems cannot be solved with
software updates alone...

I was excited about the Grandstream when I first got mine; in fact, I have
already predetermined in my mind that we would probably choose the
Grandstream.  After 5 weeks of commercial trials, I am now beginning to
change my mind.  In the long-term, I think a Grandstream platform may be
expensive to maintain- more importantly, they do not currently give a very
good end-user experience.

Since their birth, most people in the Western world have become used to the
fact that whenever they pick-up the phone they are provided with easy-to-use
'dialtone' services.  People have become VERY demanding about the quality of
their telephone service- not many are willing to comprimise.  Unless
Grandstream can improve the quality of their 'user interface' (many others
have already accomplished this goal,) I can see very few situations where
the $10-20 cost saving will make the quality sacrifice worthwhile.

Once again, I have seen very many improvements from Grandstream over the
past couple of months.  It will make me happy if they prove me wrong and
come-through with improvements to these problems.

-GSR


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stefano Finetti" <ssfinetti at lynxautomotive.it>
To: <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:49 PM
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] grandstream sip phone


> I'm working greatly with 40+ Grandstream phones. Audio quality is good
> enough for production environment, the cost is really low and the
> configuration is *Really* easy.
>
> But a little answer to Wipeout is:
>
> > The only issue that I still have is that the phone does not seem to be
> able to pickup the time >correctly from an NTP server that is not on the
> local network so the display always shows 1900->XX-XX for the date.. This
> issue I am sure will be solved in the near future..
> >
>
> Have you tried to mantain the default ntp server on your phone? (the *.gov
> one)
>
> I normally use internal ntp servers but in a particular context i've used
> that ntp server and it worked perfectly.
>
> Could be a Firewall issue, maybe?
>
> It works on every firmware since .58, for me.
>
> --
> Stefano
>
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