Linksys SPA2100 ATA Review

Linksys SPA2100 ATA like to be good job.I did a lot of research on which one to buy and decided on a Linksys/Sipura model as they seemed to be reliable and the majority of people had positive things to say about them. I chose the Linksys SPA2100 for two reasons: A) because it had a WAN and a LAN port, which meant simply putting it between my DSL router and my PC, and B) because it had two FXS (phone) ports, so I could set one up with a permanent service (I use Callcentric, who have been very helpful in my learning phase) and then use the second one to play with, changing settings and providers to my hearts content while knowing I could still make and receive calls on the first port (as it turned out, the novelty of that wore off and I always keep Voipuser on the second one).

The Feature Set Clinched It

One other thing that the Linksys SPA2100 had in its favour was the QoS bit – it can tell the router it wants a higher priority than less important stuff, such as email, so the speech quality is not affected unnecessarily. I would have thought that this would have been a primary requirement for any ATA, however there are a lot of them (including some SPAs) that do not have QoS.

When my Linksys SPA2100 first arrived, I was pleased to see it even included a cable to connect to the DSL router, so it was ready to plug in and play with, which I did.

In Use

I managed to get the thing working adequately with Callcentric in a very short time, however it took weeks to get it to function properly with Voipuser (one way speech, then calls to the 0844 number telling me I was unavailable, despite the web site telling me I was logged in).

My problems were partly caused by the Linksys SPA2100 being so configurable that I didn’t know what I was doing, and partly because I am a male and therefore played around and didn’t bother reading instructions. Fortunately for me, someone else must have previously experienced the same issues and they shared their findings (I still haven’t read the Linksys SPA2100’s manual, although I did get as far as downloading it in a moment of despair).

Now that I have a fully functioning Linksys SPA2100 I am thrilled with it. The speech quality, whilst not being as good as PSTN calls, exceeded my expectations. The codec used obviously makes a great deal of difference to speech quality, although more often than not it uses the G711u codec, despite me telling it that G729a is my preferred one (G711u has got to be the best quality one it has, but I hate to think how much bandwidth it eats).

The echo cancellation seems to be as good as the ones the used in the PSTN international gateways here, and the only time I have experienced echo was when the far end user tried to put me on speakerphone (which I hate anyway).

Advanced Features

Having got the speech basics working, I set about making the Linksys SPA2100 do other things I consider important, namely making itself appear to fit in with my telecommunications ideals. To this end, I taught it how to make proper tones (it defaults to US tones – ewwww) and proper ringing cadences. This is where the ultra configurability that initially caused me problems now became my friend – my SPA now goes “ring ring” when someone calls me. It was worth teaching it the tones too, because although Voipuser seems to pass the ringing tones from the B party back to me (I like that), Callcentric does not; the ringing tone I get when making a Callcentric call actually comes from the Linksys SPA2100 (this is not the SPA's fault) and the speech path is only established once the B party answers (giving a short delay between losing ringing tone and being connected to the callee).

Other PSTN-like things the Linksys SPA2100 can do include CPC (sometimes called Clear Forwarding) and Answer Reversal, which means it can interface with analogue PABXs and answerphones and work as you would expect. The dialing plan is user configurable and can do useful things such as number translation, which is handy if you don’t want to keep dialing **275*448 in front of a Voipuser number when calling from other VSPs.

I like my Linksys SPA2100 so much that not only would I recommend it to people, but I also bought a second one as a gift for my father. Having learnt the hard way, I first configured it via the link I mentioned above, then entered my own account details into it (hey, I had to make sure it was working before I gave it away!), made test VoIP calls (in and out), made PSTN calls in and out, and it worked. Completely set up in less than an hour, including changing the tones and ringing.

The Linksys SPA2100 was also very cost effective at $NZ138 (approx £46).

Conclusion

I have worked in the telecommunications field for over two decades (including a few years in international) and I have high expectations from a phone. The Linksys SPA2100 gave me more features than I expected at a higher quality than I expected. There is nothing that I feel is missing from it, although some people might like an FXO (central office) port, but then those people would not have bought this model. I specifically did not want an FXO port as I like to consciously choose whether to make a VoIP call or a PSTN call – I don’t want to make a call assuming it’s free only to find out it’s been routed via the PSTN at exorbitant rates. Also, I have it running through a small PABX, so the only difference to me is which access code I dial (one for each of my PSTN line, SPA port 1, and SPA port2).

Enjoy Linksys SPA2100 ATA with VoIP !