[asterisk-users] How many lines do you use.

[Michiel van Baak]

On 17:03, Wed 25 Nov 09, Robert Lister wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 08:46 -0500, David Gibbons wrote:
> > I use two ???lines??? though ???Line appearances??? would be a better term,
> > though still confusing in my book.
> 
> > One line for incoming, one line that auto-answers for paging. 
> 
> > Cisco really has so many line appearances on their phones to enable
> > BLF using SIP over TCP.
> 
> Cisco 7960 does not do BLF (at least not on the SIP firmware) but the
> 7961 might. It's a shame they haven't added such features, but there we
> go.)

It does with the skinny firmware :)

> 
> If you enable two line keys with the same user/pass then the phone will
> automatically put a second call/call waiting onto the second line key
> (assuming you have call waiting enabled.)
> 
> But personally I preferred the way it presented the second call before,
> on a single line, and found the way it displays it with two lines a bit
> confusing. (I can't remember exactly why now, something like it would
> flash the second line icon but not show you the call information until
> that key was pressed, or you scrolled to it.) I could see users not
> getting on with this, so I didn't configure it like that.
> 
> The rest can be used for speed dials, but these were of limited use to
> me since for some reason, although the line keys can be provisioned
> remotely over TFTP, the speed dials cannot. It's okay for personal use
> though.

With the skinny firmware you configure the lines and speeddials in
asterisk skinny.conf :)

> 
> Personally moved off my 7960 in favour of the SNOM 370 as this supports
> far more features than the Cisco SIP image, which is only really a piece
> of migration fluff to enable Cisco to migrate customers away from
> competitors SIP systems onto Call Manager with the dual-boot/application
> loader.

Asterisk has chan_skinny.

> 
> The SNOM perhaps doesn't look as fancy as the Cisco handset, but it wins
> hands-down on SIP features. (the remote provisioning system was a little
> complicated to set up, but once set up it's okay.)
> 
> It's a shame since the Cisco is a very capable (and expensive) handset,
> just let down by no development in the software other than small bug
> fixes for many years.

If you dont like it, send the cisco to wedhorn or me so we can make
chan_skinny even better. ;)

-- 

Michiel van Baak
michiel at vanbaak.eu
http://michiel.vanbaak.eu
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"Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?"