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On Thu, 5 May 2011, Simon Waters wrote:
On 05/05/11 14:30, Gordon Henderson wrote:The video phone solution was much better than trying to get various family members with combinations of old PCs, Macs, Linux boxes, etc. all into a common format.... (Until one decides to change their ISP to an el-cheapo bundled product one when it all goes pear-shaped)I think one may have already done that without asking first :( Which video phones do you sell (or recommend), since the far ends have cash, the pending poverty is all this end but for a compatible system I'm sure Aunts and Granddads can be relied on.
The only ones I have experience of are the Grandstreams.But I have to say, I've not actually sold any into a commercial setting. I'm not convinced that video phoning is ready for the SME yet (or vice versa!) There are still issues with conferencing and bandwidth requirements - OK if you're on a LAN though, but get bi-directional traffic going at >200Kb/sec each way and you really need a decent ISP - which (incredibly!) a lot of smaller businesses won't pay for.
Add into that the issues with VoIP and NAT, effectively needing a 3rd-party to relay data through and it starts to look unattractive (from my point of view, at least!). There are various ways and means to get 2 partys behind NAT to talk directly to each other, but it doesn't always work due to the way various routers handle NAT and so on, but it doesn't always work, so you need to relay it externally.... (Which is what I think 'supernodes' do in the Skype world)
However, I did recently have someone looking at putting 300 GXV3140's into a new (gated) apartment complex and the concierge desks - they did some tests and were happy enough - all part of the combined service/door entry/Internet/phone service to be supplied. Hm. Must chase that one up!
I have a batch of the older GXV3000's. They're OK, but suffered the usual Grandstream flaky early software symptom, but I've had them in-use for nearly 3 years now.
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq