ShoreTel (previously known as Shoreline) touts its ability to easily distribute all the functionality that comes with its call manager across multiple appliances via a single image. The company proposed two ShoreGear 120/24 voice switches for distributed call control, so if HaveNoFear loses one box, only that portion of the system is affected. With IP phone failover, the phones will link to a new box automatically. If it wanted more redundancy, HaveNoFear could add a third ShoreGear-120/24 for $5,000.
ShoreTel had all the standard PBX capabilities from our 19-item checklist, except group paging and trunk-callback queuing, which is employed when all outgoing trunks to the PSTN are in use. It will call back a phone that attempted to make a call during that time as soon as an outgoing trunk becomes available.
The company's phones are adequate, but ShoreTel and Mitel were the only vendors that didn't implement VAD/silence suppression. The company proposed its own IP210 phones as conference phones. However, these lack the omnidirectional design of most conference models. One notable feature that all its phones have is a Wideband codec. The ITU standard Wideband codec, known as G.722, provides a wider range of sound than conventional codecs, which could be helpful for conference calls. The downside is that G.722 requires a lot more bandwidth, though for LAN implementations that should not be an issue.
ShoreTel5 IP Phone System, $96,952. (800) 425-9385, (408) 331-3300. www.shoretel.com
Peter Morrissey is a full-time faculty member of Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, and a contributing editor and columnist for Network Computing. Write to him at [email protected].
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