VigorPhone 350 VoIP Telephone

Overview

VigorPhone 350 VoIP Telephone

The VigorPhone 350 is a VoIP telephone compliant with the industry standard SIP standard. The VigorPhone is designed to be sturdy, functional, easy to use and provide excellent voice quality on all modern VoIP systems. A quality speakerphone and dedicated headset port provide flexibility. A generous 16 soft keys, in addition to the screen and line buttons allow you to use the phone as best suits your business.

The VigorPhone 350 is compatible with IP PBX's (hosted or your own, such as the VigorIPPBX 2820) and public VoIP services such as DrayTEL and you can program up to 10 different SIP accounts, so including several SIP or PBX accounts, whether on local or remote servers. When used with a Vigor PBX, the VigorPhone can be auto-provisioned - i.e. will connect to the PBX and automatically download its configuration/account information.

For office deployment, the PoE facility means that you do not need an external power supply; power is provided from a suitable PoE Ethernet switch (for example our own VigorSwitch P2260 or P1080), saving floor clutter, power and additional wiring. If you do not have a PoE switch, you can use the regular mains power adaptor (supplied) instead. As well as the Ethernet connection to your LAN, a second Ethernet port provides connectivity to your desktop or other equipment; this saves running additional Ethernet sockets to each desk, making the transition to VoIP easy.

The VigorPhone 350's keyboard layout has been thoughtfully designed for efficiency; buttons are clearly labelled (no mysterious icons/symbols) and there are individual buttons to switch between headset and hands free. A dedicated Voicemail button also allow you to access you voicemail box quickly together with a very prominent MWI LED bar (Message Waiting Indicator) which flashes to indicate a waiting voicemail (if supported by your provider/IPPBX) - see right. The LED bar also flashes to indicate an incoming call which is useful in noisy environments or when you want to turn the ringer off and also lights up when you are on a call so that nearby colleages won't disturb you./p>

The dedicated headset socket can accept any compatible brand of wired or wireless headset, such as the Plantronics H-Top range (select the U10P type cable).

Also on the VigorPhone 350 are 16 convenient soft-keys, each with a built-in LED indicator. These soft-keys can be programmed to be used as:

• Quick Dial Memories - Call any external number or extension with one press
• Busy Lamp Field (BLF) - Lights up to show status of any extension/user and call them with one press

PPTP for more secure remote connectivity

SIP, the protocol used for communication between IP PBXs and IP phones provides great flexibility, but as it travels over your regular LANs and the Internet, it's also possible for people to try to access your PBX, particularly if your PBX is open to the Internet to allow remote extensions (one of the major advantages of an IP PBX). The VigorPhone 350, together with the DrayTek IP PBX is able to use PPTP, a tunnelling method, to connect to the PBX and pass the VoIP/SIP traffic within that tunnel. This has three major advantages:

1. By only allowing remote registration by PPTP, the PBX can close of its SIP listening service which is what hackers will use to identify an IP PBX and go on to try to exploit it. Hackers will scan millions of public IP addresses, sending SIP enquiry messages, looking for an IP PBX to respond. A normal IP PBX will have its SIP ports 'open' and will respond, thereby 'advertising' itself. As the Vigor IP PBX won't respond to SIP probes, the hacker will get no response and, most likely, move on.
2. The SIP transaction and voice data is within a tunnel so anyone looking for 'VoIP/SIP' won't recognise the data as VoIP traffic as it's all within the tunnel containment. In addition, the traffic itself is encrypted, so even if you do intercept the traffic, it's not clear audio transport or SIP messaging which could otherwise be played back or read in any packet sniffer.
3. If you are a guest on someone else's network (or in a cafe etc.), often their firewalls or general network setup may not be SIP/VoIP friendly, or set to deliberately block it, particularly because of the variable UDP port methods of SIP and when the network is applying NAT. PPTP, on the other hand, is a very common standard protocol, using standard UDP/TCP ports and so will pass out of and back into networks far more easily without the need of proxy or STUN methods.

By selecting the PPTP method on the VigorPhone 350, it will register with the DrayTek IP PBX using PPTP, and then pass the SIP and voice data through the encrypted tunnel.