[plug] VOIP - I'm connected!

[Steve Boak]

Free phonecalls, here I come :-)

I received my IP phone today, a Grandstream Budgetone 100 from iTech. It took 
all of five minutes to set it up using the one-page internal web form, get a 
number from Free World Dialup, now all I need is someone to talk to...

For those interested, the phone came in black, not the white that was 
advertised (I don't mind), wrapped in bubble-wrap in a flimsy cardboard box. 
It seems well made, looks and feels exactly like a 'normal' phone, except it 
plugs into a network cable instead of a phone line. 

There was no instructions of any kind with the unit, but a google search of 
'grandstream budge-tone 100' gave me the current 36 page user manual on the 
top of the first page. The only thing I needed the manual for was to find the 
default login password for the internal webpage, and everything I needed to 
know about configuration was on the FWD site. All local network configuration 
was completely automatic via dhcp. 

And yes, it does seem to work seemlessly over a NAT enabled firewall, once I 
poked a hole at udp port 5060 for the SIP stream. 

Call quality seems excellent, although with a noticeable (but not bad) delay 
when talking to the FWD echo server as a test. I assume this would be much 
less apparent in a real conversation.

All in all, a definite thumbs-up :-)

Steve
 
-- 
Free World Dial number 454566 - Via 128k ISDN - 24hrs

"Most men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves
up and continue on as if nothing had happened." - Winston Churchill