POTS line - VOIP gateway?

Battery!

Battery!

Battery!

Associate
Joined
28 Feb 2014
Posts
1,048
So I'm wondering if its difficult to use my normal phone line and run an internal VOIP system that can route calls out.

Hopefully with a client on a smart phone to be able to receive/make calls?

VOIP is not my area but i would like some advice from anyone that is an expert.
 
You can do this but it isn't that simple - or wasn't the last time I did it. I needed -

-> An device for the POTS line to convert to digital (SIP)
-> A server running the VOIP system (FreePBX)

Both needed configuring to communicate to each other to allow calls to flow.

Not sure if you can get a simple box that does everything these days or not, suspect you probably can.
 
Audiocodes are another manufacturer to look at for the abalogue->sip boxes, we use them to send faxes from traditional faxes machines via our sip enabled Swyx pbx, never had any issue with their products
 
I've got an old computer I've been using as a project with a PCI (proves its old!) PSTN card, the computer itself is running Elastix, which wasn't the easiest to configure, but it seems to be the easiest of the lot. That was setup with several Cisco IP phones (can't remember model numbers).

I've sort of given up on this for a while as it was difficult to find something I could use with DECT phones, as I wanted some cordless ability. Ultimately I ended up buying a set of Gigaset DECT phones that seem to work well, and have a good range and I've just stuck with using the standard BT line for now.

Subscribed though as I'm interested in what I could do in the future...
 
I looked at doing something similar and decided for the relatively small cost involved (£2 per inbound number, £1 per additional extension) it wasn't worth doing it in house so I used Voipfone.

If you just want a client on a smartphone to be able to make and recieve calls over voip then £2 a month plus a suitable app is probably cheaper than buying/running your own hardware, they also have an app with geo-divert and various other functions that is quite handy.

For fixed telephony if you're wanting to use existing DECT set-up's then Linksys/Cisco SPA112 is what I used, it's inexpensive and works really well, for fixed handsets I went with SNOM 300's but got given a load of CISCO stuff recently that I plan to have a play about with.
 
I love messing around with this sort of stuff, so there's no real financial gain for me, and if I added up the cost of the hardware, I would weep. No one calls me anyway..

Even though I have a telephone line for fibre broadband, I use Sipgate as a VOIP provider.

They give you a local landline number and provide an excellent interface for cheap calls, caller id, sms through your web account, voicemail etc.

I initially linked this to a Linksys PAP2 box that gave an analogue telephone the VOIP capability.

I've now taken this one step further with an Elastix Provider, still using Sipgate and I have VOIP phones throughout the house that connect to my Elastix server. So you can dial room to room like a hotel or use any phone to dial to the outside world. You have music on hold. Transferring of calls. A welcome message to incoming calls. And the email of voicemail attachments.

You can get SIP apps for mobiles that allows you to connect to the setup, but I haven't done that yet.
 
I do this at home.

I've got an obihai technology Obi110. This is the interface to my land line, it converts my landline to a SIP trunk.

I've then got a raspberry pi running freepbx. For phones I've got a Cisco SPA504G, a Gigaset DE310, a Gigaset N300 IP Dect base station and a gigaset dect handset to go with it. I can also use a softphone on my andriod smartphone.

I have freepbx set up make and receive calls with both the obi110 and another sip connection from sipgate. I've set it up so I can choose which connection to make calls on by adding a prefix to the dialled number. I can also do all the usual pbx things of calling between phones, transfering calls, call groups etc. It also emails me voicemails as attachments which is very handy.

Its not simple to setup. It took a bit of googling to get all the settings but once going its great. Its been running for about 2 to 3 years now without having to touch it.
 
Battery! said:
So I'm wondering if its difficult to use my normal phone line and run an internal VOIP system that can route calls out.

Hopefully with a client on a smart phone to be able to receive/make calls?

VOIP is not my area but i would like some advice from anyone that is an expert.
Click to expand...

What is the use-case for all this? That might help a little, essentially the full answer is to run an PBX server (e.g. Asterisk) and a PSTN gateway bit of hardware..

If this is for home use, then someone did mention it above, but I have a Fritzbox setup at home, this is a wireless router with VOIP capability, it allows normal telephones (in and out) to be connected, as well as any or their own DECT handsets. you set the rules for what goes out which path (POTS or VOIP) and all internal devices can dial each other for internal use. In addition it can sync all phones contacts to Google and other providers automatically as well as smartphone apps to allow any mobile to be an additional phone, it also has answering machine and other standard features.

Of course your use case may be completely different.
 
I've just noticed that RasPBX is a possibility, does anyone have any experience with this as I've got a couple of Pi's kicking around not in use, if so how does it cope with processing power, etc?
 
Jamauk said:
I've just noticed that RasPBX is a possibility, does anyone have any experience with this as I've got a couple of Pi's kicking around not in use, if so how does it cope with processing power, etc?
Click to expand...

In the home its absolutely fine. Its got enough power for about 6 or 7 simultaneous call.
 
Jamauk said:
I've just noticed that RasPBX is a possibility, does anyone have any experience with this as I've got a couple of Pi's kicking around not in use, if so how does it cope with processing power, etc?
Click to expand...

http://www.raspberry-asterisk.org/faq/#performance

What is the performance of Asterisk running on the Raspberry Pi?

In a typical setup with RasPBX, 10 concurrent calls are possible. This is also the case for conferences, meaning 10 participants can join a conference. More than 10 calls do work, but audio quality decreases considerably with every additional call. See also:
http://sourceforge.net/p/raspbx/discussion/general/thread/4975db40/#eb2a

Looking at the dates i'd expect that to be on a B+, a Pi2 could conceivably do a lot more.
 
Last edited:
Thanks, I'll certainly be looking into this.

I've already got 5 Gigaset E630 phones I'd like to use in this setup, and also a couple of DECT repeaters to help increase the range. I'll probably have to change the base station, but that isn't too much of an issue/cost for just that.
 
As an update to this and a bit of a thread revival, I've finally configured Elastix 2.5.0 with an old Compaq computer I had lying around, sporting a 1.5Ghz AMD Athlon processor, 500MB RAM, and a 500GB HDD. It's got an FXO card installed to connect it to the BT POTS line, and I've also connected it to a Sipgate SIP line for when the other line is busy (and also for the hell of it!).

I'm using 5x Cisco 7940 IP Phones, and 5x Gigaset R300H cordless handsets. The Gigaset phones run through a Gigaset N300IP. I can make internal calls by dialing 2XX on any of the phones. Any other number dialled the PBX works it out and sends it via one of the external lines. In total there's 12 extensions currently in use (5x Gigaset, 5x Cisco & 2 softphones on iPad & iPhone), which is a bit excessive for home use, but it was more about the project and learning new stuff.

First here's a pic of a couple of the phones used. Note the Cisco phone sporting the OcUK logo!:
phone.jpg


The Cisco phones were by far one of the hardest parts to this, as they require a TFTP server to tell them where to get data such as the firmware and extension config info from. This also meant that I had to add custom DHCP option 150 to my Linksys Tomato router to point the phones to the TFTP server. Configuring other settings such as the logo, directories, and messages wasn't easy for me as I was and still am learning.

Here's a screenshot of the Elastix web GUI that nearly all the settings can be configured from:
elastix.jpg


Configuring the FXO card in the server was quite a challenging task, as Elastix is setup for a US POTS line, which meant that the phones wouldn't ring until approx. 9 rings, and no caller ID was being displayed. After a lot of Googling and research on other builds I found a way to change this, as it's not something that can be changed through the web GUI. Instead I had to use Putty to connect to the server and edit one of the config files, and that has fixed those issues.

Connecting the Gigaset N300IP was really easy, all I had to do was setup the extension information for each phone so that the N300IP would pass the call through to the phone.

See pic:
gigaset.jpg


Next I'm looking at setting up a Linksys SPA3102 to connect an old phone to this setup, the useful thing with the SPA3102 is that if the power is off, or it can't connect to the server it will automatically pass through to the POTS line, so it keeps a phone still useable.

Hopefully I've covered everything, but if there's anything I've missed, or any questions on this please ask...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom