Packet8 ATA's & Phones

I am bidding on a project to replace Packet8. The client has eight offices across the country with 2 - 8 extensions & phones in each office. His interest in a PBXiaf solution is reduced cost. I told him that I thought I could reuse the phones as they appear to just be analog display phones connected to ATA’s that resemble Linksys ATA’s. Anybody know anything about Packet8 phones and ATA’s ?

It depends on which model of Packet8. Some can get firmware updates easly and others can’t. We have a guy in the office who has one we’ve been playing with and it works. It also has a bug and we get a repeated error from the device in the console display every minute or so (-- Got SIP response 400 “Content To Short” back from xx). It works and seems to not cause a problem, but makes me wonder when the day will come and it suddenly does not. Get the specific model and start searching the internet…

In general I think it is better to use a VOIP phone like a Aastra, etc then to mess with ATA’s in a business setup. You get a ton of features that are expected directly on the phone versus having to remember all the feature codes. In volume you can get Aastra 9133’s for about $100 US and I think it’s well work it.

My Aastra tech support (ABPtech) told me that the Aastra’s would not work behind a nat gateway unless I configured a VPN or a sip proxy. This was after I had purchased a dozen Aastra’s from them and attempted to deploy some of them to teleworkers using residential DSL. In my test I was able to register both a SNOM360 and a Polycom330 but the Aastra 57i would not work. I have heard people claim that the Aastra’s work but I have not seen it.
Seeing is believing.
Ron Russell

I’ve never worked on the 57i to know but I can say for sure that the 9133s do. I have one at home behind a iptables firewall and it works great. Two other employee’s are behind a Linksys and dlink routers without a problem.

I’d go directly to the REAL aastra support people instead of your supplier and ask. I’d be shocked if they produced a phone that would not allow it to work behind a firewall after having phones that do. the 5xi series is supposed to be everything the 91xx series is plus more and not doing NAT would be a serious step backwards.

I have 3-57i’s in production that are connected:

57i => Nat Home Router => Internet => Pfsense Nat firewall => Asterisk

They work perfectly. Make sure you have the most recent firmware on the phones. Set them to use port 5060 (it is not set by default) and finally, make sure you are not running Asterisk 1.4.21. If you are, upgrade to 1.4.21.1 as 1.4.21 has issues.

fskrotzki, the “Content To Short” thing is a bug in the firmware - see http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Packet8+DTA310+and+Asterisk (scroll down to Firmware bug produces SIP response 400 “Content To Short”)

Yea I know. The problem with the Packet-8 devices our guy has is that the next version of firmware that fixes the issue doesn’t work on the unit he has. I forget the reason exactly, but possibly code doesn’t fit on the firmware. It’s a older unit.

I have another customer converting from Packet8 to PBIAF asterisk. This customer has several Aastra 6755i phones branded by Packet8. The default uid/password of admin/22222 does not work on these phones. Anyone know how to reset these phones to Aastra defaults?

Packet8 uses a different default password for their co-branded Aastra 675[x]i. The default username/password is admin/54321

Do they have the standard firmware and can the firmware be upgraded?
Thanks, Brian

Wow, one of those spam links is to 888 VoIP store.

Wonder what Kerry would have to say about this type of deceptive Admetrics manipualtion.

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SkykingOH, I removed the spam, that is why your comment is somewhat confusing:-) I opted to not delete your post.

hi,

I have a bunch of Packet8 phones, and I really hate the Packet8 service. I hate them even more now that I found out that these phones are “locked” and can only be used with Packet8.

Can someone give me step by step instructions on how I can remove the Packet8 lock on these phones so that I can test them with Freepbx and (ugh) other services? PS I’m a real newb when it comes to this stuff so step by step would be a big help to me if you can.

Thanks in advance,
Mark Prince

Mark - Read your message, you did not even mention what kind of phones they are.

Most likely they have a custom ROM and won’t be able to be unlocked.

Decent phones can be had for $100, this should not be a hinderance to changing.

Also, FreePBX is not a service, it is a software package and in itself provides PBX functions, you still need a service provider such as our partner SIP Station.