The m9 supported the pbxnsip software already for a longer time; so supporting snom ONE was a simple task. For a certain time, both server types were available; however over time they were merged into the snom ONE server type.
Having two products from the same company implies that the
interoperability works slightly better than with other vendors. For a DECT
handset, the potential for doing this is not as high as for a desktop phone, but
there are optimizations that should make the usage of the m9 as easy as
possible.
For of all and probably most important, the plug and play mechanisms
of the snom ONE are supported in the snom m9. The m9 supports the multicast
discovery of the snom ONE, and both devices trust the snom Root CA, so that a certificate-based
client and server authentication and secure provisioning is possible. In other
words: Enter the MAC address of the m9 in to the extensions where handsets
should be deployed, plug the m9 in and you should be all set. There is only one
little glitch left, which is the assignment of the mobile parts to the extensions;
but most people should be able to figure this out when looking at the display
of the handset.
The provisioning makes sure that the connection between m9
and snom ONE is as secure as possible. Both TLS and SRTP are being used by
default. The encryption on the wire is probably better than the encryption on
the air (DECT). The snom ONE also provisions the PIN for registering the
handset to the base; this is a common pitfall when the PIN is not four digits as
the DECT base supports only four digits.
Because the m9 also sends RTCP-XR reports, the voice quality
reporting per each call should help monitoring the connection quality on the
wire. However as the connection in the air is digital, signal strength has not
been taken into account and this would IMHO be difficult to achieve. A weak
signal does not mean that the user experiences degraded voice quality. The
quality degradation is actually quite abrupt; to have a fair evaluation about
the bit error rate the handset would have to send quality reports back to the
base; which I believe is not a feature in DECT.
On the feature side, there is not too much to provision. The
handsets don’t have any buttons that could be programmed. M9 users have to use
star codes to get things done. The only exception to this is calling the
mailbox. Establishing a conference is done locally on the base, so that one
does not count.
