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Snom

Snom Summer Special – Buy 5 Get 1 FREE!

snomProVu are delighted to bring you the ‘snom summer sales special’, until the middle of August we are running a promotion on the snom 821 and snom 870.

snom 821

snom 821

The most popular handset in the 8 series range due to its versatility, price and feature set which recently qualified for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

**Buy 5 snom 821s and get one snom 821 free, all with snom OCS edition Firmware included!**

snom 870

snom 870

The latest model of the 8 series is the snom 870 with 5 way call conferencing, 12 different SIP identities, 12 freely programmable virtual keys and an advanced touchscreen display enabling 5-way conferencing via drag and drop.

**Buy 5 snom 870s and get one snom 870 for free!**

ProVu and snom are offering you the following snom summer sales special, valid until August 15, 2011.

To place your order for this amazing offer please contact a member of the ProVu Sales Team on 01484 840048.

Snom phones using SIPS/SRTP encryption with Asterisk 1.8

I’ve been looking forward to the time when Asterisk catches up with the rest of the SIP world and starts working with encrypted SIP and encrypted RTP (SIPS & SRTP respectively). Asterisk has supported it since the recent release of version 1.8 so I had to get it working.

Asterisk only supports a fairly fixed set of encryption options so you’ve got to set the phone up just right for it to work. I’d also say that SIPS & SRTP is very much new functionality in Asterisk so I’d treat it as for testing purposes only right now….although it’s looking promising.

Snom phones have supported both SIPS & SRTP for years (in fact I think they were the first IP phones on the market to do so). So if any phone can get it right it should be them, perfect to test with.

I am using the following to test with:

  • Current Debian Asterisk 1.8 packages maintained by Digium on Debian Squeeze (deb http://packages.asterisk.org/deb squeeze main)

  • My actual Asterisk version at the time of writing is “1.8.4.1-1digium1~squeeze”. Some older ones didn’t work.

  • Snom 300 with 8.4.31 firmware. It will not work with much older versions.

I’m not going to go into the setup of Asterisk itself as there is plenty of information on this out on the Internet, not to mention quite a lot of different ways of doing it. I will just mention that I am using a self-signed SSL certificate, this means you either have to leave server verification turned off on the phone (which it is by default on this firmware version) or import your own CA into the phone. Neither of which are ideal for a real world deployment, you’d buy a server certificate from a recognised CA in that case but for testing….

The important bits in Asterisk

OK so I will mention a couple of things in the Asterisk setup… all in sip.conf

  • tlsenable=yes : in general section

  • domain=ast18.provu.co.uk:5061 : this is needed for it to work

  • transport=tls : used in the general section or in each sip peer/friend to turn on tls for SIPS

  • port=5061 : in general or each sip peer/friend. 5061 is the usual port for SIPS

  • encryption=yes : turns on SRTP, if you have set this then the SIP device(s) MUST use it, it’s either on or off, not optional

There are more settings needed than this, please read the Asterisk documentation.

Snom phone setup

Everything is in identity 1, these are obviously examples only! You’ll need to put your own Registrar in etc…

Login tab:

  • Account: sip username

  • Password: sip password/secret

  • Registrar: ast18.provu.co.uk

  • Outbound Proxy: sips:ast18.provu.co.uk:5061

  • Authentication Username: sip username

SIP tab:

  • Support Broken Registrar: on

RTP tab:

  • RTP Encryption: on (should be default…)

  • SRTP Auth-tag: AES-80

  • RTP/SAVP: mandatory

That should be it. As mentioned the Snom phones do not verify the server certificates by default. If you want to turn this on then go to the “Certificates” page in the phone setup and click “Activate”. But bear in mind you must either use a certificate from a known CA or import your own certificate into each phone manually. Certificates must be in DER format for this.

To confirm it’s working, look for the little lock symbol on the phone screen during calls. It should look closed when the call is secure. For further confirmation you can do a pcap trace on the phone, open this up in Wireshark and then not be able to view the SIP packets or decode the audio to anything but white-noise.

Let me know if anyone thinks it’s worth me putting together a how-to with the full Asterisk config too.

End of an Era – last Snom360

Today ProVu shipped the last black Snom 360.

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We first shipped this product in March 2005, giving a product life of 6 years.

Snom360 was probably the first really good VoIP phone, with a decent DSP and handset to match. It has lived through 6 major versions of Snom firmware.

The product has been on notice of withdrawal for around a year. It has still sold strongly, but we have finally run out. The range is a little crowded with snom320 just below and snom370 just above.

If you do still want a Snom360, we have 5 white units still in stock – first come first served.

For alternatives, then buy a Snom320 or a Snom370

SnomONE and Voipfone

I’ve just diagnosed an issue a customer had getting a Voipfone SIP trunk Registered on a SnomONE PBX.

The trick to getting this to work is:

    • Turn on long SIP headers. Go to the admin, general settings page and set “Use Short SIP Headers” to “long”

 

    • If you are using IP access control then you need to enable the IP range 195.189.172.1 – 195.189.173.254 to ensure Voipfone will work

 

SnomOne more info

Recommended replacement products

Recently we have added lots of new items to our product portfolio but have also had to say goodbye to some old ones too.

A lot of the items do not have a direct replacement from the manufacturers, so here is a guide to our recommended replacements:

Discontinued products Recommended replacements
Gigaset C47 Gigaset C59H
Gigaset C475IP Gigaset C59H and Gigaset N300 AIP
Gigaset S68 Gigaset S79H
Gigaset S685IP Gigaset S79H and Gigaset N300 AIP
Gigaset HC450 ProTalk SIP doorphones
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
Cisco SPA-525G Cisco SPA-525G2
snom M3 snom M9*

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.

* Please note the snom M9 handset is not fully compatible with the snom M3 base and vice versa

Snom announce they are Microsoft approved with Snom 821 for OCS 2007 RC2

The snom 821 is now approved for use with Microsoft OCS 2007 RC2. This joins their other approved phone, the snom 300.

The snom 821 OCS edition will be on display from March 8-9 at UCEXPO in London, United Kingdom (Booth 717).

Read more from snom Channel UK: snom 821 Executive Phone Achieves Microsoft Office Communications Server Qualification in Microsoft’s Compatible Device Program

10 cool things you can do with your snom desk phone

snom video integration1. You can integrate video and can open doors with your snom phone when using the ProTalk SIP door entry phone
How: Connect your door with ProTalk door entry system and control it using snom phone. You can even see door phone video on snom 8xx series phone. The door phone has relays that can be activated using DTMF tones.

2. You can customise the screen of your snom phone
How: For the 821 and 870 use our idle screen generator or if you have a phone from the 3xx series view our information on snom screen branding

3. You can customise your ringtone
How: Choose your desired ringtone then visit our ringtone generator to upload it.

4. You can completely restyle your phone including touch screen buttons, icons and display colours (snom 370, 821 and 870)
How: visit the snom wiki guide on how to brand your phone

5. You can customise the outside look of your phone with a DesignSkin
How: visit snom DesignSkins and choose from many designs or even create your own.

6. You can add images of your contacts so that when they call, their picture appears (snom 821 and 870)
How: Browse to your phone and add a phone book entry. You can also add a nickname, e-mail address, birthday, include in a group and make them a favourite.

7. Stream videos on your snom 821 or 870
How: visit snom’s video wiki guide for more information.

snom the iPhone phone changer8. You can charge your mobile through the USB port of your 821 or 870 snom phone
How: Simply plug in your mobile cable into the USB port of your phone, see the snom blog post.

9.You can create your own custom apps
How about being creative and making some really useful applications for your phone whether its a game or a calendar feed. snom shares some apps that other users have created on their did you know… webpage.

10. You can call people using click-to-dial
How: By integrating your snom phone with your existing database.

Have fun 🙂

Please note: we do not offer support on the services not provided by us

Snom UK to demonstrate new VoIP solutions at the Unified Communications Expo

UCExposnom will be launching its complete telephone solution, the snom ONE Plus, to the UK market at Unified Communications Expo in Olympia on 8th – 9th March. To find out more about the snom ONE plus, you can visit stand 717 in the Microsoft Partner Village at the UCExpo event.

Read more from snom Channel UK: snom UK to demonstrate new VoIP solutions at the Unified Communications Expo

Differences between SARK and SnomONE PBX

I’m being asked which is better, SARK or SnomONE a lot at the moment. Rather than a Harry Hill style fight, I’d thought up a quick comparison list. I don’t believe either system is “better” than the other, they have their own advantages which work in certain scenarios. Horses for courses…

Advantages of SnomONE over SARK:

– 10 user version free and downloadable.

– Windows, Linux & Mac versions (nice easy installers for each although I’m yet to try the Mac version as I don’t have a Mac).

– software only (some people see this as an advantage)

– PnP snom phone config (even slicker than Adopt in SARK)

Advantages of SARK over SnomONE:

– complete solution inc hardware (some people see this as an advantage)

– supports any SIP/IAX etc… end point (snomone is basically snom phones only apart from the odd one or two periphery devices)

– extensible : you can write your own Asterisk code and modify existing code.

– 100s if not 1000s of 3rd party bits of software support Asterisk to do all sorts of things. Including call centre reporting, operator panels, call billing etc…etc…

– choice of telephony interfaces for connecting to ISDN lines.

– custom code gives options for much more complicated call routing scenarios.

That’s all I can think of right now, this isn’t an exhaustive list 🙂

Snom joins compatible devices program for Microsoft Lync 2010

Following on from the recent news that the Snom300 is compatible with OCS 2007R2, Snom have also joined the “Compatible Devices Program for Lync 2010”. This means that it is continuing it’s development of “OCS” firmware to include the new features that will be present in the future Lync release.

Lync is the new name Microsoft has given to the next version of OCS, it was generally referred to as Wave14 until this official name was released. Lync is currently at the public beta stage so not yet ready for production use.

ProVu will be testing Lync with Snom phones in due course and Snom themselves will be developing the new features possible with Lync.