Issue TOC Print full article Print this page Download as PDF E-Mail this URL Discuss this article Flame the author     In this article Introduction It's All Good Just Managing Polycom SoundPoint IP 600 Mitel Networks Corp. 5055 SIP Phone 2.0 Siemens optiPoint 400 standard SIP 2.2 Zultys Technologies ZIP 4x4 Snom Technology Snom200 VoIP phone ipDialog SipTone How We Tested SIP and NAT: Not So Perfect Together Web Links Report Card

IPDialog is the only vendor in this review solely dedicated to producing SIP-based phones, and it offers the least expensive device, at $250 retail. However, the SipTone also has the skimpiest feature set of the phones we tested. For example, it has no extra call appearances, and only the minimum feature keys. It does include volume-control keys, but you're out of luck for one-button call transfers or conferences. Another big deficit is that the SipTone lacks support for Layer 2 or Layer 3 QoS.

On the plus side, the SipTone supports all three major codecs, and ipDialog says it supports silence suppression for every one of them as well (silence suppression helps conserve bandwidth by transmitting only audio data).

SipTone Ethernet Phone 1.2.0, $250. ipDialog, (408) 451-1430. www.ipdialog.com

Peter Morrissey is a full-time faculty member of Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, and a contributing editor and columnist for Network Computing. Write to him at ppmorris@syr.edu.

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