Does anyone know of a VOIP desk phone that I could place in several points around my small, home office and use to call between "extensions?" I also want a connection to my long line service.

What is the catch? I don't want to mess with an in-office VOIP server or VOIP PBX and all of that hassle.

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 8d;-Dan

Don't do it. Whatever you buy will almost work and frustrate you. Build FreeSWITCH and it will compensate for whatever deficiencies you have with whatever handsets and provider you find. It's like the Linux of VOIP.

I have that recommendation from others. Perhaps it is time to listen (blush/grin).

So where do I find almost stand-alone VOIP handsets (desksets)? I'm finding loads of olde Bell™ 2550's but little else.

~~~ 0;-Dan

I've been picking up Cisco 7940's and 7910's on Ebay.

For the 7910's, you'll need the mod_skinny module. With a tftp server and FreeSWITCH, you can function as a Cisco Call Manager for these old phones.

The 7940 is more of a true SIP phone, but you'll need the current firmware available to gain full control over it:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/A...one+cisco+79xx

Also see http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Interop_List

Have fun.

I'm using Cisco ebay phones for my business, and a SPA112 with a DECT cordless for my home phone. The SPA112 had a caller id bug that I was waiting for a Cisco firmware upgrade to fix. I haven't checked on it lately.

You've got a few choices here.

If you want an "extension" at each location, then you will need a phone or computer at each location.

Take a look at Aastra VOIP phones. They're good and there are plenty of others.

You could use a "softphone". Debain has twinkle among others in the repos.

Asterisk is not that hard to do and will run on most older P4s with about 1 GIG of RAM.

There are plenty of VOIP carriers around if you want to go that route.

You might want to try out a softphone first to get the hang of it and go from there.

PS Have one Optiplex gx240 with 1 gig of ram with a 20 gig hard that has ran for 5 years with maybe a reboot onece or twice a year.

Let me re-state my project in hopes of finding some answers. I'm certain that what I ask for exists somewhere, and that I'm simply not connected to the right telephone world sources of information.

Regardless of how I get "dial tone", somewhere in my small-office-home-office (SOHO) there is an RJ-11 jack for voice telephone service.

1. I want to connect some "box" to that jack.

2. The "box" makes voice telephone service available on my SOHO LAN -- wired and wireless. Currently, I don't need to make calls from other computers or from software.

3. Throughout my rooms, I want a "desk set" that connects to the SOHO LAN. This set can then make or receive voice telephone calls. All connections are either wired or wireless ethernet.

4. Cordless handsets that play 802.11-a/b/g/n would be nice as the base would only be for battery charging. A "traditional desk phone" that plays ethernet is fine too.

5. I want each "desk set" to also be able to make voice calls to any other "desk set" -- as intercom.

6. Currently, I'm looking for a dumb box [see item #1], but would like something that will permit me to add branch exchange (PBX) features over time as I can afford and justify them.

If you know of some other place online where this sort of question and ethernet telephone issues are discussed, I would appreciate learning about them.

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 0;-Dan