Aastra’s AastraLink Pro 160 - a great first pass
We received our first AastraLink Pro 160 last week. I’ll be posting much more about this rather interesting unit in the next few weeks, but first impressions are:
1. The hardware implementation is top-notch. A small form-factor wall-mountable case is supplied with a brief but useable getting-started guide, and all the cables that you’ll need. There are 6 FXO slots, an FXS failover slot, an additional FXS slot suitable for fax use, music-in and out, a microSD card slot for backups/voicemail etc., a 100BaseTX ethernet port and a number of contacts for monitoring/controlling door contacts, bell-pushes etc.. It is well built and functional.
2. This Asterisk-based appliance has a custom web-based GUI that’s a little awkward to get around, but certainly useable. Certain features such as the advanced Auto-Attendant configuration could use some more work, but I’ve seen worse implementations.
3. The AastraLink Pro 160 requires certain Aastra phones - it’s not like many products out there that can use generic SIP phones. A principal reason for this is that the solution does fully automatic handset provisioning. Currently, the 53i, 55i, 57i, 57iCT, 9143i, 9480i and 9480iCT models are supported. You buy the standard version of these phones and the first time you plug them in with an AastraLink Pro 160 on the network they download revised firmware from the appliance. From that point on they can take advantage of all the features that the appliance has to offer. Auto-provisioning includes the ability for an end-user to input their personal details right on the handset. Very nice.
We’ll be posting a more in-depth review over the coming days. It’s not perfect, but considering that this is Aastra’s first stab at an Asterisk-based appliance I have to say that they’ve done rather well.