[asterisk-users] [IAX] Recommended soft- and hardphones?

[Michael Graves]

On Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:33:02 -0400, John Todd wrote:

>
>On Oct 30, 2009, at 7:55 AM, Vincent wrote:
>
>> Hello
>>
>> Since SIP/RTP is a pain to use with road warriors who need to connect
>> from any location over the Internet, I'd like to get them some IAX
>> phones instead.
>>
>> For those of you using this protocol instead of SIP, what would you
>> recommend as IAX hardphones and Windows (and ideally Mac) softphones?
>>
>> Thank you.
>
>
>I'll avoid the SIP/IAX religious war that usually breaks out over this  
>topic and actually provide an answer to your question.  :-)
>
>Citel just announced an IAX hardphone not long ago.  I haven't used  
>it, but maybe you'd want to give it a shot and let the rest of us know  
>how it works.  As far as softphones, I'd say Zoiper has been my choice  
>for a while - runs on Mac and Windows.   (note: these are not official  
>recommendations; just random personal selections made with no  
>discernible criteria other than "it seemed like a good idea at the  
>time")

As a road warrior myself I find that SIP soft phones have been becoming
more and more effecticve from hotels in the US & Canada. There are
still occasions when they won't work for reasons of port blocking or
NAT, but not very often anymore. Things have improved in recent years.

The larger issue I have with VoIP over hotel networks are congestion
and Wifi. Often hotel networks are very slow which renders then useless
for VoIP. And wifi is usually a problem. As a shared medium I find that
Wifi can be a significant impediment to good voip calls.

That said, when Eyebeam or PhonerLite doesn't work for me Skype almost
always does.

Michael
--
Michael Graves
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