Do I really need to use Endpoint Manager

I planning to make a small phone system using Cisco IP phones. I’ve seen the Endpoint Manager used to create these templates but the free version only supports one brand of phone and buying a license for it is very expensive. Is it possible to setup a phone without having to go through Endpoint Manager and being forced to by a ‘Sangoma’ phone?

Also I just set up FreePBX and make an extension. I tried getting the X-Lite softphone to connect to the profile but it gives me an SIP error 408. User ID is the extension, domain is the server, password is the secret and the authorization name is the extension.

Thank you

I disagree with this, $150 for something that saves you hours and hours of work is not considered expensive at all.

Yes, simple SIP registration.

No one is forcing you to do that, if you buy a Sangoma Phone, you get a free management tool.

I assume you are trying to register using a wrong port.

Are you using ChanSIP or PJSIP? By default PJSIP is 5060 & ChanSIP is 5160.

Lastly, EPM won’t work with X-Lite.

Thank you for the reply. The Endpoint Manager license is very well expensive as I am just doing a small and simple phone system. Now I say this in my case but I am sure it’s useful for small or large organizations. I thought maybe that Endpoint Manager is the only way to do things because this softphone wasn’t working but it might just be my configuration.

I am using ChanSIP. It says on FreePBX,
This device uses CHAN_SIP technology listening on Port 5160 (UDP - this is a NON STANDARD port)

If I changed the port, would this work? Thank you

If you look at almost anything concerning your phones, you will probably realize that although most Cisco’s are cheap, they are also a Royal PITA because the available SIP firmware is very lame as they are really suited to CUCM. (that’s why they are cheap :slight_smile: ) (there are some legacy sipura/linksys phones that now masquerade as Cisco and are very happy with SIP, but you don’t say what you are using)

If you wait a few hours you will be encouraged to use their native skippy/skinny/whatever software load, and “roll your own” config files.

Given that, if you find a configuration that works for you, you can make yourself a ‘template’ with appropriate “place-holders” for things like individual extension names and password and thus generate as many MAC specific entities as you want with as little as 'sed ’ (stream editor), and a couple of other bash ‘primitives’ that you already have, this is basically how all “endpoint managers” work, but you will probably need to bone-up on your “bash foo” , luckily there are endless tutorials as to how to do that in google land.

Thank you. I am looking at the Cisco 7962G IP phones. As far as I know, I just have to set them to SIP rather than Cisco Call Manager, flash upgrades through a TFTP server then manually configure it as an extension.

Maybe you’ll get a semi lame working setup if you try really hard;-)

Personally I threw all mine in the trash compacter a long time ago, it’s just not worth the effort, I would just buy a cheap Yealink on ebay, you’ll be up and running in 5 minutes.

2 Likes

Alright, I will save myself the hassle and go with something else as you say it’s easier and I agree with you from what I see over the internet. Around an hour ago my X-Lite client got connected with my FreePBX server after doing an update through command line which I thought would not make a difference. Now it’s working on my phone too and more than happy at this point with how things are working. Would a Polycom or Grandstream phone work just as well too? I’ve seen some people use them.

Thank you for your input!

Why not use Sangoma Phones and support the project that Sangoma spends millions a year on for all to enjoy free of charge and open source.
Y ou also get dead simple setup and EPM for free along with a bunch of cool Phone Apps.

4 Likes

Always a religious argument here, personally I detest the make and feel of Grandstreams, the audio from a Polycom is hard to beat, and as @tonyclewis says if you have little invested yet then maybe the Sangoma’s would interest you.

1 Like

I use polycom vvx-410’s was very easy to set up the first phone, export the configuration, then import on each additional phone. I edit the file with the correct extension / ip info before importing. I want to get EPM so I can configure the BLF’s.

I recently just bought a used VVS 310 and I am exciting to set it up

It really depends on what you want to do and how much you want to learn. I come from the school of “teach a man to fish” and I have a complete FreePBX phone system for my business that has hardware consisting of whatever I could scrounge from the local Goodwill. There’s some Polycom’s a Yealink, a Grandstream and a few others I forget in there as well as some ATA adapters. None cost me more than $15 a phone most were around $10 a phone. And I didn’t spend a dime on software nor did I use Endpoint manager. But I did spend many many hours learning how the system works. My bill rate is such that I guarantee to you I would have saved money buying the Sangoma phones off Ebay or buying Endpoint Manager.
But - since people pay me to know how things work for them, I cannot in good conscience charge a customer money for a system that I don’t know anything about how it works myself. Other techs out there may be content being idiots and running to Sangoma for RTFM questions I am not. And the very best way to understand how a system works is to put it together from parts. So while I lost maybe a couple thousand in billable hours I consider it money well spent because I would have never learned the system as thoroughly as I did.

You may not give a tinkers damn about any of this and just want the cheapest system possible. If that is the case unless your time is worthless and nobody is paying you for it, then spend the money on Endpoint Manager and use whatever Goodwill finds you can secure in the way of IP phones. If you want a somewhat slicker looking system then skip Endpoint Manager and buy new Sangoma phones. You will save more money doing this.

1 Like

I buy EPM everytime, wether its a 4 phone or 40 phone setup. Its great and want to contribute to keep the project going.

1 Like

EPM is 100% worth it. If you only have a tiny handful of phones, I suppose you can configure manually. But once you get into BLFs, advanced configuration, etc., the EPM is really worth it’s weight in gold. $150 is not cost prohibitive.

I don’t use EPM, but it’s not to save the money (if it saved any of my time, I would gladly fork out the money).
The reason I don’t use it is because I have a config file that configures the phones (Grandstream) with all the options I want including screen background, time zone, DND, etc and the only thing my help desk has to do is to put the extension and the secret in the phone.

This pretty much sums it up. You get epm for free with the sangomas. An s205 is like 55 bucks and it just WORKS out of the box. We bought EPM and a bunch of other modules and reused our Aastras from our previous solution and having EPM was a no brainer.

Quit being cheap, you got an enormously powerful pbx system for free. If your time is worth 25 bucks an hour, at 6 hours of labor, that module will probably break even for even a small application, let alone if your needs ever grow.

We had some issues with our first 20 s500s after an update but it was fixed fairly quick, and we’re about to buy 20-30 more. Probably a mix of those 205s and some more 500s.

I don’t have any experience with making the Cisco’s work, but I’ve browsed these forums a bit and nobody ever really has anything nice to say about them and getting them working perfectly or easily.

I know the secret of getting Ciscos to work perfectly and easily, but it can’t be done with the Cisco SIP load because Cisco doesn’t want the SIP load to work perfectly or easily. There is a little bit of work getting them to go in Skinny mode, and Chan-SCCP-B is the tool for making that happen.

Unfortunately, there is no interface for either the commercial or Open Source EPM for Cisco phones in Skinny mode.

I use EPM for all of the supported SIP phones I buy, and I only buy supported SIP phones. If I have to use an unsupported phone, I don’t even bother with EPM. It’s amazingly binary. If you are using supported phones, either EPM is always worth the money (unless you are using Cisco, in which case having EPM is not the bullet you want to put in your gun) or it’s just a way to waste your time and money.

So, to answer the original question: If you are using a phone supported by EPM, then Yes - EPM is necessary. If you are not using a supported phone, it might be useful, but you’re going to waste a lot of time shoe-horning things to get it to work, if it will ever work at all.

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.