Druid is different from many other IP telephony solutions you might have worked with. Below are few of the
differences that make Druid a great platform. (#druid on irc.freenode.net)

1. Extensions and phones are not the same thing. Extensions are attached or detached from an IP handset.

2. Phones are auto provisioned. You just have to plug your IP handset into a network port, and it is automatically detected by Druid using CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) or Zeroconf and will show up as a detached phone (A detached phone is a phone without an extension). Just plug and play!

3. Druid has its own tagged VLAN (Virtual Lan) and DHCP server which does not affect your existing network in anyway. All phones are automatically placed into this VLAN. Druid also supports RIP, which if supported by your router, allows the phone to access the outside network.

4. Every extension automatically has an IMAP mail account that stores your voicemail, an instant messenger (Jabber) account, a (IAX/SIP) softphone account and a web-portal that is also accessible through a mobile phone.

5. Each attached extension (one associated with an IP handset) can also login using a softphone (SIP and IAX). When the extension is called both the deskphone and the softphone are rung. You do *NOT* need to create a separate extension for your softphone. You also do not need to configure your IP handset with this information neither.

6. The web based user portal can be accessed though a normal browser or a mobile browser and is an extremely useful component of Druid. You can use it to see your voicemail, schedule routing of calls to your extension, and see your call details among other things.

7. You can bridge your calls to any mobile phone though the web-portal. When mobile bridging is enabled, any calls to your extension ring your mobile phone, deskphone and your softphone. Your mobile phone is like your desk phone; you can record, park, and transfer calls even when you are out.

8. When using IMAP, IM, Softphone, Voicemail, Web-Portal, Mobile-Portal your username is your extension number and your password is your unified extension PIN.

9. The web-interface is Ajax powered and all communication between your browser and Druid is done using light weight JSON, making it fast and responsive.

10. Druid is based on a lightweight CentOS installation, with a full graphical easy-to-use installer. Druid can be upgraded using a single command 'yum upgrade'.