Wireless IP Phones

[jeremyhoff]

Greetings,

I'd like to hear about people's experiences with 802.11b IP Phones. Thanks in advance,

-jeremy

[jdlabadie]

I have some basic experience with Symbol VoIP phones. I did a large 802.11 roleout for Kmart and they use Symbol phones @ Super Kmart locations. The phones work really good, however I have been trying to piece together the backend of these things, as I was not involved in the voice portion. I do know that a ericsson box had to be installed for these phones to work, but I do not know its purpose, I am assuming a variation of a traditional PBX for basic calling features, but I am not 100%. Along with the original question posted, can anyone offer any insight to the backend of enterprise VoIP phones, and how they would integrate with a existing or new PBX?

Thanks

[jeremyhoff]

Thanks for the info.

At my location I have a Comdial DXP that we had considered upgrading to an FX-II -- the FX-II has VoIP capabilities built in.

In the case of the FX-II, the "back-end" is little more than a monster DSP with a PBX--to--IP converter. A simple converter can be seen on Grandstream's Site. (http://www.grandstream.com/y-product.htm) See the bottom picture... if my information is correct those will sell for under $100.00 each.

With Comdial, most of the features can be programmed into speed-dials on a POTs phone, which is essentially what the VoIP phone would be in my case. Comdial's iPrimo VoIP phone works as a proprietary phone, but they offer no wireless model as of yet.

My goal is to cover our campus with an 802.11b cloud for on-site wireless phone and networking, and then support our home-office users with a wired model.

-jeremy

[jsicuran]

I have been doing some very basic wirless voip testing in my own lab. The results are preety good in a singel outdoor cell. Howerver, I will be expanding upon my testing this month so I hope to have more info (testing results)for you and the gang here.

I am using soft phones on laptops and softphones in pdas to create my IP phones without the cost of something like a cisco 7920. Using the soft phone enables me to test SIP/H323 and the performance in different 802.11 environments(a/b/g) without being locked in.

In this voip forum there is another thread where I list some of the softphone and usb phones you can combine for testing that are inexpensive, if not free. I am thinkning of a WISP project with voice service hence the testing.

[jsicuran]

Originally posted by jeremyhoff
Thanks for the info.

At my location I have a Comdial DXP that we had considered upgrading to an FX-II -- the FX-II has VoIP capabilities built in.

In the case of the FX-II, the "back-end" is little more than a monster DSP with a PBX--to--IP converter. A simple converter can be seen on Grandstream's Site. (http://www.grandstream.com/y-product.htm) See the bottom picture... if my information is correct those will sell for under $100.00 each.

With Comdial, most of the features can be programmed into speed-dials on a POTs phone, which is essentially what the VoIP phone would be in my case. Comdial's iPrimo VoIP phone works as a proprietary phone, but they offer no wireless model as of yet.

My goal is to cover our campus with an 802.11b cloud for on-site wireless phone and networking, and then support our home-office users with a wired model.

-jeremy

Jeremy thanks for the link that unit looks interesting. To reciprocate take a look at this and let me know of your thoughts.

http://www.pcphoneline.com

Regards...
/JS

[jdlabadie]

Thanks for the info guys, just to follow up, those VoIP phones that I am used to are 802.11....straight 802.11 so it is only a 2MBS link on the wireless end. We had great coverage in the stores (Kmart) that we put them in. But if you think of it, there are 8-12 AP's per Kmart store, and a store is not really THAT big. But we still had good coverage and quality.

[jsicuran]

jdlabadie,

just curious were those symbol phones in kmart FHSS or DSSS based?

Regards..

/JS

[lwheeler]

I just put some Cisco 7920 wireless VoIP phones in and they are Smoking! Solid as a rock!
I was very impressed.
Larry

[jdlabadie]

Good to know on those 7920's....I have been looking at those and wondering how they worked....
jsicuran, those phones are DSSS based.

[jsicuran]

Originally posted by lwheeler
I just put some Cisco 7920 wireless VoIP phones in and they are Smoking! Solid as a rock!
I was very impressed.
Larry

Good to know also, thanks for the info. They are so expensive too. Around $400, is that correct? I do have a question for you Larry about the Licensing. Do I need to purchase some flash license or Call manager software plus license to use them?

Or can I just get a pair and use them in a singel cell or peer to peer with just a basic IP firmware config? I should be able to make peer to peer SIP calls maybe in H323 also and Skinny if applicable.

[jeremyhoff]

jdlabadie said:

there are 8-12 AP's per Kmart store, and a store is not really THAT big

I'm curious how big the stores are. Our building is large, plus there are lots of hallways, brick walls, copper pipes, and a second floor to worry about. We also plan to cover the outdoors where there are a few hotspots to overpower. :cool:

Thanks!

-jeremy

[lwheeler]

No, more like $600 a piece! I used them in a "call manager" setting with the customers existing VoIP network. I'm not sure you can use them without the call manager. I didn't see any configuration setting for anything other than 802.1x and call manager stuff. No other license was necessary other than the typical call manager.
Larry

[jdlabadie]

Have you ever been in a Kmart? Its hard to describe the actual size, I dont want to give you the wrong info, since it could matter. Kmarts buildings are part of the "Department Store Cookie Cutter". They are all the same for the most part, so if you have been in a Meijer, WalMart, or Target, then you can compare that to the size of a Kmart. Those bldgs are pretty open, so it might be a little easier for me to hit a mobile device inside a Kmart, then say, in your bldg. As you said you have alot of hallways, 2 floors, etc. These AP's were approx 100' apart, alot of overlapping. Most stores had 8, the SuperK's had 12. (SuperK's had large room-sized freezers, and we had trouble getting a signal to penatrate the freezers, go figure.) The Symbol AP's that we used had two seperate antenna connectors, wich were powered by two seperate radio amps, which was nice. We would hook up one antenna on the stores w/o the VoIP phones, and two on the stores with VoIP phones.

[cwclothier]

I just recently conducted a series of wireless phone testing using the Cisco 7920 wireless VoIP phones. Our goal was to determine thoptimin setups and measure performance so we could establish good intallation guidelines. We were using the IOS versions of the Cisco 1100 and 1200 access points. We also tested them accross a 350 bridge link. We tested exclusively with G.711 enabled devices.

We found that unless you REALLY know about all the fine details of wireless performance tuning, the default QoS settings worked best. We also verified that the recommendations Cisco makes are pretty accurate! I would suggest sticking to their recommendations. For access points, use a max of 8 phones per AP. For bridging, a maximum of 10 end-to-end calls across the link seemed to be the limit.

Our measure of quality was that the conversations must meet or exceed cell phone quality. This was a subjective measurement using our ears, but the performance was pretty black and white. It either was good, or it was clipping, dropouts and bad.

When the access points reached their limits, the conversation suffered from lost paqckets and jitter. The bridge started to longer and longer latency at it upper limit. Hope this helps you out.

-Chad

[Dannyk]

Ther're three mayor players for wireless IP-phone solutions, Spectralink, Cisco Systems, and Symbol. But by using wireless IP-phones it's important to use QoS in the network. You can use between 6 and 8 IP-phones on one Access Point.

[armada2004]

Dear Sir
I might be asking you a non conveniance question , so please reply if possible , could you please advice me by any good H323 IP phone to buy it with good company rate table , and please also if possible give me some details about the IP phone your speaking about , thaks a lot
Regards
Ahmad

[Dannyk]

Hello,

Here the 3 sites where you can find more information about the three brands.

www.spectralink.com
www.cisco.com
www.symbol.com

But why do you want H.323 phones and not the new SIP phones, SIP is the new standard for IP-telephony so that every one can connect whit every one.

[armada2004]

Dear Sir
Thanks for your reply
But the SIP phones IP Adress is the same for most of the companies , and this IP is blocked in my country Syria , so i want go back to the old protocol H323 . but if any one can tech me how ot change my SIP DUV1000 IP phones to another H323 or Sip server , it will be very great .
Regards
Ahmad

[Dannyk]

DUV-1000 is a two-in-one phone, allows Internet and PSTN phone calls. It is a dial-up Internet (IP) telephone, operates using Session Initialization Protocol (SIP) and H.323 protocol. It allows you to make inexpensive long distance (STD and ISD) calls on dial-up Internet connection. DUV-1000 needs to be configured once and there is no need to configure it again unless there is change in Internet access or calling card information. DUV-1000 is a standard based device and works with any Internet Service Provider (ISP) and VoIP (Internet telephone) service provider.

For further help look here http://www.phonewala.com/html/contact.html

[armada2004]

Dear Sir
All the DUV 1000 IPs are blocked here , and here is the most important question , could we switch them to h323 .
it will be very good .
Regards
Ahmad

[Dannyk]

Hello Ahmed,

Normaly you can change the configuration from SIP to H323 but you will need some extra things like a H323 server/gateway, and if the phones are locked then you have a extra challenge. The phone you discribe is not availabe in the Netherlands so I don't no what the next step is in your challenge, I think you must conctat the manufacturer they will know what to do.

Sorry that I can't help you

Regards and good luck

Danny

[armada2004]

Dear Sir
thanks for your help , the DUVs are not blocked , so i just need a H323 server/gateway , and the way to change them to the new H323 Gateway .
Regards
Ahmad