On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 18:26, JD Austin <jd@twingeckos.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 17:46, Lisa Kachold <lisakachold@obnosis.com>wrote:
>
>> ...<snip>
>> I don't see any benefit using Cisco phones over Polycom?  It's nice to
>> have a well supported firmware also.
>>
>
> I agree!  I've had a clients demand Cisco phones because it was 'what they
> knew they liked'.  It was a trial by fire the first time to figure out how
> to make them work (registration and other issues at first) and I had to roll
> my own directory code but that wasn't that hard.
>
> Polycom makes great phones and so does Aastra.  The main reason I like
> Aastra over Polycom isn't that their phones are better (they're on par with
> Polycom phones) but that they're much more asterisk savvy and way more
> approachable (I'm nobody and I have the direct line to the Western Regional
> sales manager).  Aastra phones even have a default mode where the phone asks
> you for it's extension number and password and it seeks out the PBX server
> (pretty neat) and a nice XML interface to make them do neat tricks.
>  Polycoms have an XML interface that you can drive from the server also.
>  NetXUSA does a pretty good job of supporting Polycom on Asterisk here
> though.
>

One other big plus for Aastra phones is that they have no proprietary POE
issues to worry about (no special cable or power injector needed; even
cheapo dlink POE switches work).  I wish more IP phone manufacturers
supported the IAX protocol (Asterisk's open source native protocol has less
overhead than SIP) but I guess they're hedging their bets and supporting the
protocol that everything uses (even though standards vary).  The ones I did
find that did IAX were complete junk.

JD