Linksys SPA-941 VoIP Phone Review
There is a quick review of the Linksys SPA-941 VoIP telephone over at TechwareLabs that critiques the newly launched VoIP telephone for small businesses. There are a small but growing number of home users that are converting their personal phone lines to an all IP network. These new phones will work equally as well for home consumers running a VoIP server such as the open source Asterisk software.
The SPA-941 is a great example where a business class product can work equally as well for a home user that is looking for a more advanced set of features and customizability with their home VoIP service. Granted, you need to have a whole home network and run a dedicated VoIP PBX to truly take advantage of the full feature set. But isn’t that the goal of any home networking fanatic? The review points out a few interesting facts and flaws of the phone that make it good read. One gripe with the phone is that it only has a single Ethernet jack. This means that you either need a small hub or multiple ports wherever you install the phone if you want to keep the port available to other devices.
Linksys is most commonly known for its consumer oriented home networking gear but has started to move decidedly up-market with the Cisco acquisition. Recent introductions of GigE routers with advanced networking features and IP PBX solutions for small and home offices are clear indications that Linksys is hoping to drive additional product sales in these markets. The good news is that these products and services also drive advances into the consumer end as well. Hopefully we’ll see more advances out of this type of gear so that you don’t have to be a certified PBX installer to configure something like this for your home.
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