plug] VOIP Shopping time

[R P Herrold]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2010, gm5729 wrote:

> I put together my own voip tis past weekend. After looking 
> at like 4-5 FOSS websites. I was honestly more confused then 
> when I started looking around. Everything to me looked like 
> stuff for call centers. I just want a simple phone.

On my list, the Grandstream BT-201 and the -102 are each a 
conventional looking black telephone with some feature butons 
and lights, look like a 'desk keyset' in an office, but with 
the property that instead of running back to a local phone 
controller usually over CAT-3 cabling, these units are 
assigned an IP, and connected through a RJ-45 ethernet 
connection, and routed like any other computer device.  Call 
control signals, voice data, and other signals (think: hold 
buttons, and message waiting lights) are manageable through 
SIP to a central Freeswitch or Asterisk 'PBX' which need not 
be on site

The rest of the units I mentioned are ATA -- analog telephone 
adapters, exporting FXS and FXO -- subscriber, and central 
office type lines, respectively -- which a plain old 'dumb' 
POTS phone's RJ-11 may be plugged

-- Russ herrold