Overview

The Grandstream GXP-2000 handsets are a relatively inexpensive handset that support most, but not all features offered by SipXecs. They are '4 line' handsets, supporting attended and unattended transfers, PoE, full duplex speakerphones, on-handset conferencing, etc.

The display is customizable, including a bitmap graphic, allowing the handset to be 'branded', using tools from the manufacturer's website.

The handsets can be successfully provisioned using the SipXecs provisioning server, allowing for centralized configuration. The configuration is downloaded each time the phones are booted.

Known Issues

Music on Hold

At the time of writing, I have not found a way to implement Music on Hold with the grandstream handsets. Instead of music, the party on hold hears an double tone every few seconds (about 6?), to indicate that the call is still live.

Caller places call on hold

At the time of writing, we have discovered an issue which only arises under very specific cirumstances. When the issue occurs, a call placed on hold cannot be retrieved from hold. The issue only occurs in the case where all the following are true:

Handset of the caller is configured to use a vlan
Handset of the called party is configured to send DTMF tones via RTP (RFC2833). Unfortunately, this is the only supported, and thus default, option for SipXecs provisioned handsets.
The caller is the person to put the call on hold. The issue does not occur if the called party puts the call on hold.

When these circumstances aline, the handset fails to transmit the proper packets to put the call on hold, even though it reports that it does to it's syslog server.

The issue is currently under investigation.

Configuration

When these handsets download their configuration, they do not clear or reset any settings that are not explicitly contained in the config file. As an example of this behaviour (how we noticed it), when a handset is first configured for multiple lines (ie. 2 different sip accounts), then later, if one of the lines is removed from the SipXecs interface, it is never removed from the GXP-2000. This is because the configuration for the second line is simply removed from the configuration, as opposed to being overwritten or reset to default values. This can be handy, if new settings are introduced in firmware updates, but which are not yet supported in the device template on SipXecs. In this case, the settings can at-least be set manually, and will not be overwritten by the downloaded config.

Useful Details

Phonebook

The 'phonebook' on the handset is limited to 349 entries in the current firmware revision. Entries in the phonebook override 'caller-id name' for incoming calls, and are responsible for outgoing 'called name' lookup. The phonebook can be either manually entered on the handset, or downloaded from a server. The file 'gs_phonebook.xml' will be downloaded from the configured server, which can be hosted via HTTP or TFTP.

The configuration screens on the phone allude to an 'LDAP' phonebook. This is a serious misnomer, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with LDAP. Instead, if configured, the phone makes an HTTP call to a script (could be php, .cgi, etc) which is expected to return the phonebook results in the same .xml format as is used for the 'gs_phonebook.xml'. This script CAN be passed parameters, which it should use to limit the returned results. Unfortunately, the 'LDAP phonebook' is NOT used for the 'called name lookup' or the incoming caller-id override as described above.

Configuration

The GXP-2000 handset hosts a web configuration interface. This can be handy to view the current settings of the handset, but if the phone is configured to download it's configuration from the server, and is provisioned in SipXecs, any changes made via the Handset's web interface will be overwritten upon reboot. This is further enforced by the fact that ANY change to the handset settings via the phone's web interface requires a reboot to take effect.

A utility called 'gsutil' can be used to dump a plaintext decoded version of the configuration from the handsets. This utility is available from http://www.pkts.ca/gsutil.shtml. This can be particularly handy when trying to compare configurations.

Ringtone

The default ringtone for the handset is terrible, as it sounds like a loud standard 'ringback' tone, so when a call is coming in, it sounds like a call has been dialled in handsfree mode, and the speakerphone is plaing the ringback tone. Thankfully, the other ringtones (there are 3 by default) sound more like traditional ringing tones.

Grandstream has a very neat downloadable ringtone, which rings once, then announces, via text to speech, the number of the incoming call. We've found this to be very handy when we're meeting just outside our office, and a call comes in, we can listen to see who is calling without running to look. Effectively, the most distinctive ringtone possible. Very slick.

Configuration screens

The following are screen captures of handsets setup in our environment, in which most features seem to be working.

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