After my Digium AIXy 101 suddenly died I was left to find another ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) for my home PBX. After doing some research I settled on the cheapest solution, the Grandstream HandyTone 286. Its a terrific little device which required very little effort to setup.

The web interface leaves a lot to be desired, but giving the price-point I believe its an outstanding value. The device was easy to locate in my routers DHCP and ARP tables. After upgrading I’ve found the calls sound better and connect faster.

The only pitfall is the device only uses SIP rather then my preferred method of IAX2. IAX2 has the benefit of transversing NAT / PAT without much trouble. SIP on the other hand is a major pain. Luckily the SIP server was on the same LAN so this was not an issue for me. The device does support STUN to allow proxying of SIP connections if you need to traverse NAT.

I would recommend this device to anyone looking to connect analog phones to a PBX using SIP. I have not tried the rest of their line of HandyTone products but look forward to giving them a chance.