Snom200 VoIP phone, $289. Snom Technology, (972) 745-1221. www.snom.com
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 [email protected].
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