The last of the Cisco SPA 9 series

<br />SPA 924
For a while now the Cisco / Linksys SPA 9 series range of phones have been end of life, we made sure we stocked up on a few of your favourites. But we now only have 5 SPA942s left and then that’s it!

Below is a chart to remind you of our recommended replacement products:

Discontinued products Recommended replacements
Cisco SPA-901 Cisco SPA-301G
Cisco SPA-921 Cisco SPA-303G
Cisco SPA-922 Cisco SPA-502G
Cisco SPA-941 Cisco SPA-303G
Cisco SPA-942 Cisco SPA-504G
Cisco SPA-962 Cisco SPA-525G2

As these are not direct replacements some of the features may vary. Please check out the product information pages to make sure the items have all the features you need.

Aastra demonstrates new UC solutions at IP EXPO

Aastra Press Release:

As a leading company at the forefront of the IP communication market, Aastra will be exhibiting its advanced range of unified communications (UC) solutions at this year’s IP Expo. Entirely dedicated to enterprise communications, Aastra offers one of the most complete portfolios of UC solutions that can be tailored to satisfy individual customer requirements.

Aastra will be demonstrating its range of deskphones which are optimised for Microsoft® LyncTM These phones passed vigorous testing and their qualification ensures the Aastra 6721ip and 6725ip will provide a high quality user experience, with ‘just works’ installation, rich audio and a lower total cost of ownership, making them powerful UC devices.

View the full Aastra press release

Become a Yealink Certified Engineer

This training course is a must for any reseller interested in selling the Yealink range of phones. Completing the course will give your company Yealink certified reseller status. Enabling you to create that invaluable trust with your customers for being experts at working with Yealink phones.

ProVu and Yealink are running a one day course, taking place at The Red Hall Hotel in Bury, Greater Manchester on the 27th September 2011.

The course costs £200 and will include:

  • A complementary Yealink T28P

  • Breakfast bacon / sausage rolls

  • All day refreshments

  • Lunch

To reserve your place please visit the Yealink training booking page or speak to a member of the ProVu team on 01484 840048.

*If you wish to stay in the The Red Hall Hotel, the hotel are providing a special discounted rate for attendees of the course. For more details please give us a call*

Headset Compatibility

snom headsetBuying a headset for your VoIP phone can sometimes be confusing, but after some testing we have put together an easy to understand guide as to what headsets are compatible with which handsets. The guide tells you what choices you have and exactly what cables/adaptors are required to get your headsets working.

Check it out: Full headset compatibility Guide

Snom UC edition

Lync LogoUC = Unified Communications.

So the Snom300 and Snom821 UC editions are now `qualified for use with Microsoft Lync 2010`.

snom UC600Snom have also launched the UC600. A USB phone which is `optimized for Microsoft Lync`.

For full details on the announcement, see the full UC release.

If you want to place an order, contact your account manager at ProVu.

The main USP of the Snom UC edition phones is that they are a phone for Lync but also a full open standards SIP phone. This gives a few options:

  • Deploy SIP now, and upgrade to UC with Lync in the future

  • Use SIP for voice, but use Snom UC for presence. This shadow system is a very good way to migrate.

So buy the Snom UC edition to have a phone which is both a stand alone SIP phone and a UC phone for Lync. Protect your investment by buying open standards.

Phihong Midspan Explanation

Are the PhiHong Midspan units basically a switch/hub such that you can put them between a router and a set of phones? Or are they just power injection units essentially amalgamating 8, 16 or 24 channels where you have an in/out for each cable from the router on it’s way to the phone? Or something else….?

They are not a switch. They do nothing with the data. You still need a switch port to connect each power port to.

For each powered port they have an in and out socket.

in = data only to connect to the switch or router.
out = power and data to connect to IP phone or other Poe device.

When you are using the 8,16 or 24 port version you would usually need a set of short patch cables to connect all the in ports to the switch.

So why not just buy a POE switch?

1) Size. The spans aren’t very deep so will fit in most networking cabinets. Many POE switches are full depth devices

2) to power an existing switch. If you have made an investment in switches, you can add power without throwing away. For many high end managed switches, separate power can be cheaper than a powered switch to the same specification.

3) if you just want to power some ports.

Yealink Security Advisory

Yealink have recently issued “Technical Bulletin 01/11” which advises on security vulnerabilities. The bulletin advises users to upgrade phones to the latest firmware versions and also gives advice on the importance of changing default passwords.

We have attached the Technical Bulletin and a link to the location of latest firmware versions, http://www.yealink.co.uk/downloads/

ProVu Communications take the security of the products it sells very seriously and we would strongly advise that you follow the advice given by Yealink. If you need help or advice on any of these matters please do not hesitate to call our technical support team on 01484 840048

Additionally we may be able to help you deploy these changes to your Yealink handsets remotely using our Prosys phone management system. Prosys phone management will allow you to remotely access your CPE to change firmware versions and generate passwords amongst many other things. Again if you would like further information please contact ProVu Communications on 01484 840048.

One step closer to the Plug and Play IP PBX

SARK 500 flexibilityWouldn’t it be nice if you turned up to install an IP PBX and all you had to do was connect the lines and phones and everything just worked, with inbound calls automatically routed to the connected phones. With the combination of a SARK phone system plus snom and Yealink IP phones, it can be this simple.

Until now the reality has been quite different, the constant headache for telecoms engineers in setting up an on-site IP PBX has been in the configuring of extensions when they do not have control of the network. The largest time consuming element of any installation is the provisioning of the IP phones with the correct settings. Often getting this provisioning information to the phones has relied on special settings on a DHCP server . The problem with this is, that in most cases the telecoms installer does not have access to the DHCP server and even if they do, not all routers necessarily support this capability. The only option at this point is to manually set up each phone which is extremely time consuming and more importantly adds considerable cost to an installation.

The SARK development team led by Jeff Stokoe have harnessed a technology that has been embedded into snom and Yealink phones called SIP Multicast. During boot-up, the phones send out a SIP packet to a special IP address reserved for SIP Multicast. The SARK PBX listens to this address at all times and will respond, telling the phone where to get it’s configuration from. This achieves the same job as using the DHCP server but all the functionality is contained within the phone and phone system themselves. Therefore negating the requirement for the telecoms engineer to control the network. Furthermore, SARK will automatically generate extensions on the fly when it receives the Multicast message. The phone is then passed all it’s configuration information using an intelligent provisioning engine built into SARK. At this point the engineer has only had to physically connect and power up the SARK system and phones.

Paul Hayes, Product Development Director at ProVu Communications (the sole distributor for the SARK range of phone systems and distributor for Yealink UK) said: “The SARK system is designed to be accessed remotely, yet securely. In my mind this is essential for anyone wanting to install phone systems in any significant numbers. The zero-touch configuration system and remote access mechanisms in SARK allow engineers to manage systems without on-site visits, which significantly reduces both the installation and maintenance overhead for our resellers.”

ProVu Communications are the sole distributor for the SARK range of phone systems and the premier distributor for snom and Yealink phones.

Find more information on the SARK 500