I wish to select a VoIP handset to work with my Astrisk box. I’m new and the selection is overwheling.
Does anyone have experience with the 3COM 3101. Will it work well with SIP and Asterisk?
Thanks.
i’m looking 
to see if the 3Com VOIP phones will work with some form of SIP
if any one has any info on 3com 3101SP ( 3C10401SPKRA ) 
OR any other 3COM
thanks in advance 
i use sip 841 phones
yes it can be a bit overwhelming at first. 3com isn’t used that much with *. heres a few that are-
Grandstream- good budget alternative. If getting low-end phones get the BT200 not BT1xx series. GXP2000 is a decent midrange phone and GS is actively developing the firmware for it (see the gxp2000 page on voip-info.org). Bulk config files must be processed by their special generator tool to create phone-usable files. Documentation is okay but good user community around it. Supports 3 custom ring tones, formatted with available tool, downloaded via TFTP.
sidenote- i suggest bt200 because it supports intercom, auto hangup (on a bt100 if a speakerphone call ends it gives a busy tone and you must manually push the button to turn it off), as well as most features the GXP2000 does.
AAstra- good very high quality build. Easy text-based config files, supports TFTP from DHCP out of the box (so if you set up your network right it will configure itself with no button pushing required). Config files can be encrypted using freely available tool. EXCELLENT documentation and lots of it, also freely available. Responsive support. Great speakerphones. Doesn’t support custom ring tones at all, but has a few built in ‘warble’ ringers which can be specified via a SIP header for distinctive ring.
9112i- one line basic phone
9133i- three line phone, supports PoE (power over ethernet)
480i- 4 lines, large display which supports XML web pages (spec available) to create enhanced services.
480i CT- same as 480i but with a cordless extension that uses the same SIP account
SNOM- been very popular with * users since before * 1.0. XML-based config files slightly more complicated than AAstra but still quite usable. Supports TFTP via DHCP out of box. Good documentation, active Wiki community on snom.com and responsive support. Good speakerphone, not quite as good as AAstra IMHO but still good. Supports custom ring tones, tone is supplied to phone via HTTP (you tell the phone the HTTP path for the ringer). Rings are easily formatted WAV files. Rings can also be spec’d by SIP header for distinctive ring, just give it the address of the ringer you want it to use. IE- 12.23.34.45/ringers/myringer.wav. Phones have many feature keys (vmail, recordcall, dnd, etc) which means less using softkeys for these things. Featurekeys can be remapped to do other things or interact with *. SNOM’s have more LED speed dial keys than most (12 IIRC, aastra 9133 has 7) and the SNOM 360 supports a sidecar with like 40 more. Also supports encryption, although * doesn’t. If you work on VoIP systems you will like SNOM, because they can easily switch between ‘lines’ and do not require a reboot to apply config data. All others do.
Snom 300- very basic phone, no POE that I know of, no speed dials.
Snom 320- similar to 360 but without large display. Supports PoE.
Snom 360- large screen supports XML apps (documented).
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Generally I recommend AAstra or SNOM, they are great quality phones and are easy to work with.
Hope that helps!