SCCP is a proprietary protocol created and defined by Cisco, where SIP is a more open protocol and generally universal from what I've seen. The Cisco phones, however, were not as easy.Ĭisco has two different firmwares that you can load into the phone which will change it's behavior: SIP (Session Initiated Protocol) and SCCP (Skinny Call Control Protocol). Same thing with a softphone application on my Ubuntu desktop - Twinkle. Setting Trixbox to talk to my Polycom IP501 phone was extremely easy: went through the extension and phone setup pages and had everything configured in less than an hour thanks to YouTube videos and online tutorials. Configuration is done through a web page interface - perfect for a Linux Padawan like myself. Searching through the Internet, I found Trixbox - which is a self-contained Linux distro with Asterisk and FreePBX already installed. I was looking for a entry-level Asterisk server program that I could load on an old laptop for testing.

Cursory look on-line seemed that the configuration files were adequately documented so I started off on my journey. One day searching through eBay a couple of weeks ago, I found an auction from a local electronics warehouse that was selling 16 Cisco 7911G phones for a price I couldn't pass up. I have been thinking of experimenting with VoIP for a couple of years but never found a good reason to as I use my cellphone for just about everything. I have seen a few people experiment with VoIP phones running over a HSMM-MESH Ô link and thought this could be an interesting experiment.

Cisco ip phone 7911g firmware