SME IP-PBX Systems
by Ken Percy, Randy Birdsall, Diane Poletti-Metzel and Eric Reichard
Posted 5/5/2003; Published 2/2003
Abstract:
They say that good things come in small packages. But after six weeks of
testing seven sub-1,000-station IP-PBXs, the results were uneven; some systems
offer innovative and sophisticated features, others can’t support even the most
basic capabilities.
The same held true for performance. Some products have a long way to go
before they offer a truly robust platform. In some instances, one-way latencies
were well above 100 milliseconds, which greatly reduced voice quality. Only
three of the products tested—those from Mitel, Siemens and Vertical—completed
100 percent of calls attempted during call-reliability testing, and most
reliability scores came in well below the coveted “five-nines” (99.999 percent)
rating.
Our testing took place during November and December 2002. The vendors and
systems tested were:
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3Com tested with release 4.1 of the SuperStack 3 NBX Networked Telephony
Solution and its NBX Business Phone, also release 4.1.
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Avaya tested with beta version 1.3 of the IP Office 403 along with the Avaya
4612 IP-phone, ver. 1.6. |
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AltiGen Communications submitted the AltiGen AltiServ Office, ver. 4.5. Its
new phone, the Alti-IP600, was in beta when tested.
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Mitel Networks delivered its 3300 Integrated Communications Platform (ICP),
version 3.2, and the phone was the 5140 IP Appliance, ver. 5.21.
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Nortel Networks was in beta with version 3.0 of the Business Communications
Manager (BCM) when it was tested with version 0602B41 of the I2004 phone.
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Siemens submitted version 3.0 of the HiPath 3700 and the OptiPoint 400
phone, ver. 3.5, which was in beta at testing.
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Vertical Networks tested with the InstantOffice 6500 system, release 5.0;
and the Polycom MGCP ver. 1.2 phone. |
Cisco Systems was invited to submit its small-sized system, the Integrated
Communications System (ICS) 7750. But as it did for the large enterprise system
review published in the January 2003 issue of BCR, Cisco declined our
invitation because timing issues conflicted with the release of new software.
The Nortel BCM handily took the BCR Best-In-Test. Best-in-Test
winners generally bat for average rather than hitting home runs, but the Nortel
BCM did both: It showed consistently well in all categories, and received the
highest ratings given in the Basic Features and Performance categories.
About the authors:
Ken Percy is a technology analyst, Randy Birdsall is a test engineer, Diane
Poletti-Metzel, is the manager of lab testing, and Eric Reichard is a test
engineer at Miercom, a network consultancy and product test center based in
Princeton Junction, NJ.
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