Newer handset firmware solved that problem, but the upgrade process was tedious. And even after we had the new firmware installed, the units would power on with a "Bad Battery" message. We had to replace the existing batteries--perhaps part of some effort on SpectraLink's part to discourage the use of other batteries. We were also disappointed to discover that the batteries in the i640 and e340 phones are not interchangeable.
Managing the SpectraLink phone was easy, but unlike some of the other products, it was a decidedly manual process. The phone's interface is controlled using the keypad, and the amount of information you need to input is minimal: SSID, WEP key (if necessary) and the device IP address (we chose DHCP). Every time the phones are powered up, they check to see if they have the latest firmware installed. If not, it is retrieved via TFTP and the phones restart themselves. This check takes only a few seconds, but provides an easy way to deploy new code.
Although there is no Web interface on the telephony gateway, the text-based menu interface, accessible via serial port or telnet, is well-designed. There is also limited SNMP alert support on the gateway. Installing a device is as simple as going to the registration menu and selecting "On Air Register." The next time a phone is turned on, the MAC address of the phone is added to the list and a device name and phone extension can be assigned. One shortcoming of the registration process is that the phone's extension, as set in the menu, is not transmitted back to the phone. This could easily cause confusion, as it did for us.
Because the gateway is not a call manager, calls made from phone to phone always go through the PBX or analog interface. If you want more of a peer-to-peer VoIP environment, you can use SpectraLink phones on Cisco's CCM, since SpectraLink phones support SCCP. By changing the license type and SSID, we were able to make calls from our SpectraLink phones to Cisco VoIP clients. SpectraLink has mapped most of the features of the Cisco 7960 VoIP phone onto its system. Alas, you'll need to pay an extra $50 per device for an SCCP license, not to mention a Cisco CCM client license.
We experienced intermittent "No Gateway Found" messages during our initial testing using Cisco 1200 APs. SpectraLink acknowledged that there are outstanding problems with the Cisco 1200 APs, and the company recommended that we use the Cisco 350. Nevertheless, we still experienced problems until we cycled the power on the gateway and the SVP server. Once we got past these problems, the coverage was good and the phones performed as promised with good overall voice quality. The system performed well with moderate packet loss, but it did not handle our out-of-order packet test very effectively, resulting in muddy voice quality. The system performed well with Layer 2 roaming between APs.
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