Any Recommendations on Switches? Routers?

[Jerry]

Hi guys, just curious what your experience is with switches and/or routers? Ones to avoid or ones that work great.

 

This type of scenario-

 

 

Customer has cable modem or DSL bandwidth for their VoIP phones.

 

I'm thinking to just throw a basic Linksys type router on there and like a Netgear 8 or 12 or 24 port swtich?

 

Any though on Netgear switches when it comes to VOIP? Or is D-Link any better? The Cisco branded ones seem much more expensive. Are they worth it?

[James Mahood]

I have had good luck with the Linksys (Cisco but less expensive) switches such as SRW224P. This is a PoE (power over Ethernet) switch so it will power VoIP phones so you don't have to use power supplies at each phone. This also allows you to have a UPS on the switch, server, and DSL router so you phones stay working when the power goes off. DSL routers are all bad but if you use the one your DSL supplier provides you can get support from them

[jlumby]

I am very fond of the the Cisco ASA5505 firewall. It has PoE ports plus fully supports QoS. Not to mention it's fully SIP aware, so you never need to wory about private IP addresses getting embedded, and passed out across the public network. Since it also inspects the packets, you do not need to open up the RDP ports in the firewall, it will do it dynamically. The DHCP server supports option 66 and 150 for auto provisioning phones. I cannot think of any shortcomings of the unit.