On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 17:46, Lisa Kachold wrote: > > > On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 3:22 PM, JD Austin wrote: > >> Rhino does make good hardware. >> Another local vendor is Xorcom; while their parent company is based in >> Israel XorcomUSA is based in Phoenix. >> The only thing I like about Xorcom hardware over Rhino is that it scales a >> little easier. It is USB2 based so you don't have to worry about whether >> the motherboard is compatible with PCI cards (3v/5v), you can fit a lot of >> telephony hardware in a small amount of space (for example this install: >> http://picasaweb.google.com/twingeckos/FortPolkJointReadinessTrainingCenter#), >> and it generally comes out at a slightly lower price for the customer >> (sometimes significantly less). >> That said... I don't care for the XR1000 server that Xorcom sells as it is >> too underpowered to expand (ok for demos) but the XR2000 and XR3000 servers >> are fine; they will be coming out with a more powerful XR1000 soon >> thankfully. >> > > Yes, I agree! > > voip-info.org is a one stop reference for all things Asterisk, BTW. > > >> >> Sangoma also makes fine Asterisk telephony hardware. I haven't tried any >> of the Chinese Digium knockoffs and probably never will. I don't >> recommend mixing different vendor's Asterisk telephony hardware as it is >> very un-likely that the combination has been tested by either vendor. >> For 'roll your own' servers I recommend Server Micro hardware. >> > > I agree, provided the cards are installed right (PCI conflicts); if you are > using Digium or Rhino cards. I have not used the Xorcom USB2 stuff. > >> >> Since the phones are what users actually touch get good phones :) For >> phones I generally prefer Polycom or Aastra phones. You can use Cisco >> phones if you flash them with the SIP firmware (there is chan_skinny for >> Asterisk but why complicate matters); you may have to set qualify=no to >> avoid registration issues. >> > > 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.