[Wanted] VOIP SIP Phones for a project

[nsilvo]

Hi, Looking at doing a demo for Asterisk in our school, however need some sip phones to do it, don't really want to go buying some just to prove how useful it would be in the long term. if anybody can help me out that would be great. obviously would prefer it to be free

Thanks
Nathan Silveston
Pilgrims Way Primary School

[glennda]

Softphone applications?

[jamesreedersmith]

yes a softphone is best for this - or failing that you can get a cheap grandstream for £40

[glennda]

You can also get softphone App's for mobiles which aslong as you have a wireless system (even just a basic one to test) you can then call mobile to mobile which will be even more impressive!

[localzuk]

Can't help you with a device I'm afraid, but I thought I'd just mention that testing with a softphone is not ideal - they usually behave slightly differently in my experience when I set up a system at my last school.

Things like QOS are more complex to get right when you're using a connection which is shared between data and voip.

I would suggest ebay, get some cheap second hand ones from there to try out. GRANDSTREAM BUDGETONE BT-100 VOIP/SIP PHONE WITH POWER SUPPLY | eBay and UTStarcom F1000 WIFI Wireless VoIP SIP Internet Phone | eBay are a couple you could try.

[K.C.Leblanc]

It might be worth conntacting a few suppliers or manufacturers to see if any will let you have one on trial.

[plexer]

Nathan,

If you can cover the postage costs each way I have a Linksys you can borrow.

Ben

[nsilvo]

Hi thanks for all the replies, Ben what do you have?
I have tried the soft phone route for demos in the past (also used one for a radio station caller interface) and in my experience with them they are often buggy and can cause a lot of unnecessary bandwidth issues.
Saying that the 3cx version is pretty good. Stear clear of the cisco soft phone unless you have a dedicated ccm network however they do work ok using the asterisk sccp add-on.

i was lucky with my last job we had 20 cisco 7960's donated to us. shame i didn't keep a couple...