Sipura 841 - 2 or 4 Line?

[MillsapsPE]

I just installed *@home yesterday. I am going to set up xten on one computer and want to buy a Sipura 841 IP phone (for now). Eventually, I will have the * box set up w/ 2 FXO ports (POTS & Vonage) and 1 account from BV or VoicePulse Connect. I will also have at least 4 IP phones for 4 employees.

I don't understand "line appearances". I haven't finished setting up my config files yet, but when an user picks up the phone to make a call, he/she doesn't need to select a line, or do they? What is the advantage of having more line appearances?

[daryll]

The SPA-841 supports 2 call appearances which can be configured as 1 or 2 lines if you don't pay extra. For an extra $30 you get 2 more call appearances.

Think of a call appearance as a call. If you get a call on the phone that uses a call appearanace. If you put it on hold and dial another number that's a second call appearanace.

So typically when I think of calling features I think of using 2 call appearances at a time. I want call waiting, 3-way calling, call hold, etc to work. To do that with the SPA-841 you assign both lines to the same extension.

With Asterisk you actually have more options. You can leave Asterisk in the media path and let it handle all those features for you. Then you could assign both lines to different extensions and still get full features. But you'd be dong that by dialing * codes to Asterisk and having Asterisk do the rest of the operation. Not nearly as clean as having the 841 do it.

I do use Asterisk and use both call appearances on one extension. Since I can configure Asterisk to talk to many different services and such there's not much point in having the phone register as more than one extension.

- |Daryll