sundance-communications.com/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX VoIP & Cloud Phones, Hosted PBX, General IP Phones GOOD Sip phone for starting out ?

Hi.

Can anyone recommend a good SIP phone for someone just starting out to learn about the technology.

There are so many brands, Polycom, Cisco, Linux, D-link,etc...

I am looking for something that will work and has a relatively user friendly configuration.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or does it really not matter if all SIP phones have to follow the same protocol?

I was thinking about picking a inexpensive d-link DPH-140S https://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=2&pid=407

Or if anyone had some other suggestions, I would be open to them.

I also have a Linksys SPA 3102 and perhaps I can create a gateway into my phone system at work and use the SIP phone at home.

Please let me know what you think?

Thanks.

If you just want something that will work for a little while then buy a Grandstream. Super cheap, easy to configure, and it will work for a little while.

If you want to learn something that you can stick with then learn Polycom or snom (in my opinion). There are others you can learn as well and you'll find everyone has their "Brand".

Don't have experience with Grandstream, but they are a good starter phone - just remember that cheaper phones are lower quality (to a point).

Personally, I like Aastra phones. Especially the 9133i. I know another guy that swears by Polycom. Linksys even works for some.

Another brand I haven't tried, but want to is Snom. On the newer (360 and 370, I think) phones, you can load a beta firmware image that has OpenVPN on it. Perfect for putting a phone at someone's house without having to open up your network to the outside world for them.

If you have a correctly handled server you shouldn't have to worry about the phone's side of the NAT. Problem is a correctly handled server behind a NAT either involves forwarding massive numbers of ports to it or using an intelligent (read: complex) SIP router like OpenSER. Of course you can alleviate all of that by having the SIP Server on the Internet with a real IP Address, just need to make sure you know how to make it firewall itself (in the case of Asterisk). You don't always have that option with other sip servers.

Asterisk also handles some of the SIP issues by breaking the RFC and ignoring the IP Address of the SIP Endpoint if it doesn't make sense.

Thanks for all the great suggestions! I will research those different makes at a starting point.

Let me ask you another few questions if I could.

1. These phone can call a linksys SPA-3102 which I believe is a SIP VOIP gateway which can intergraded into a phone system?

2. Can you make a SIP phone to SIP phone call within a LAN without the need of an Asterisk PBX?

For example, if you have 2 SIP phones on the same network. Can you call the other phone without a Asterisk voip pbx or do these phone all need to connect to a central point like with a wired phone system?

Thanks for your help.

Depends on the phone. Polycom's can make direct IP to IP calls.

The Aastra phones are good. They can be fully configured right from the phone. Don't bother with Uniden or Cisco they are configured completely from files residing in a TFTP server. Polycom's are nice as well. Not quite as easy to setup as the Aastra, but still nice.

BTW, I prefer the Aastra 5i series phones.

I've played with a few Aastras and Linksys and one Polycom. The Polycom was definately the best sound quality, but slightly trickier to set up. The linksys phones have been real easy and low latency, but the Aastras seem to have the best features...
If I had to pick one that I was going to use however, I'd go with the Polycom.

Polycom's are about a 9 out of 10 on the PITA scale to configure. But once you learn how to configure them, you can configure 500 phones at an average of less then 5 minutes a phone.

Nerd Vittles (www.nerdvittles.com) recommends the
Aastra's 57i as the best Asterisk phone(best balance of price, features and ease of programing). For the compleate write up, go to
www.nerdvittles.com and scroll down to the March 4th entry "The World’s Best Asterisk Phone"

Have fun...