Question : Could someone recommend an order of quality and performance on an IP Phone System?

I have an organization that has a total of 3 remote locations and 4 remote home users.  I currently have an outdated analog PBX system.  I'm to understand that with the IP Phones connecting all of my offices together directly through the internet and/or through a VPN channel would be possible.  

The main office will have approx 12 phones 1st satellite office will have approx 10 and the others 5 or less.  

My question is, could I get some recommendations on systems that will work for me?

Answer : Could someone recommend an order of quality and performance on an IP Phone System?

I would recommend an Asterisk system too.

Depending on your needs, there are a lot of flavors of Asterisk that will do the trick.

If you need "full control", and customization freedom...then I suggest going with a recent open source version of Asterisk.

You can connect any kind of softphone or hardware phone, as long as it is SIP capable. (or IAX).

X-lite is free... I sometimes use x-lite from my house, through a sonicwall global vpn client on my computer.

Bandwidth considerations should also be made since you are planning on integrating more than one office, who probably have varying speeds of connectivity.


A good desk phone that I recommend is LynkSys SPA942.  It's cheap and has a lot of features.  Looks just like the cisco phones (who oddly enough purchased linksys).

If you need any help in the setup/planning, I would be glad to help.