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R E V I E W

Polycom KOs Proprietary VoIP Woes

August 21, 2003
By Peter Morrissey

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Snom Technology Snom200 VoIP phone

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	In this article
	Introduction
	It's All Good
	Just Managing
	Polycom SoundPoint IP 600
	Mitel Networks Corp. 5055 SIP Phone 2.0
	Siemens optiPoint 400 standard SIP 2.2
	Zultys Technologies ZIP 4x4
	Snom Technology Snom200 VoIP phone
	ipDialog SipTone
	How We Tested
	SIP and NAT: Not So Perfect Together
	Web Links
	Report Card

The Snom200 is a small, low-profile phone without as many bells and whistles as its rivals, but it's one of the least expensive devices tested, with a retail price of $289. The Snom200 includes five lighted call-appearance buttons that can be reprogrammed for other functions. In addition, it sports a scrollable menu, as well as keys to control the speakerphone and to conference and redial.

Like the Siemens optiPoint, the Snom200 supports H.323, though it does not implement QoS (Quality of Service) support at Layer 2 (Layer 3 QoS is present, but that doesn't help the phone-to-wiring closet connection). We consider this a major weakness for a phone that is sharing voice conversations with data from a PC, and Snom's score reflected it.

However, we decided to give Berlin-based Snom a break, in part because it has some unique solutions for dealing with NAT (network address translation). The company says its SIP phones support both UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) and STUN (Simple Traversal of UDP through NAT; RFC 3489). We tested the Snom200's UPnP compliance, and it worked well (see "SIP and NAT: Not So Perfect Together,").

Snom200 VoIP phone, $289. Snom Technology, (972) 745-1221. www.snom.com