Four-Line Phone System?

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 09, 2007 Posts: 4

This seems simple enough.

I use Vonage with my small business. Currently, my Vonage router - one line 1 - is going to my phone which is an AT&T 945 Four-Line Small Business Phone System.

This is what I need... when somebody calls the phone now, line 1 lights up. If they are hold with another customer, they can put them on hold and the call forwards. Of course.

What I would like is for the incoming call - if line 1 was to be tied up - to bounce over to line 2 on my 4-line phone.

I know normally the phone company has to program this but I wasn't sure how this worked with Vonage.

Thanks!

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 09, 2007 Posts: 4

Somebody please help me. I've called the Customer Support number a few times today and nobody can give me a straight answer. They keep talking about call hunt and call forwarding, but to me there is a difference between call forwarding a line when busy to another number and having a 4-line phone system like a business office would use.

If Vonage can't handle this, I'd just like to know.

Posts: 46 · Full Forum Member Joined: Aug 07, 2007 Posts: 46

You will need to have 4 physical lines on the same account to be able to do this (that would mean two adapters). Then just set up call hunt to ring the other three numbers until it finds one that isn't busy. But I don't think you can do that with only one line, at least not with Vonage features. A PBX system might allow you to do so, but I doubt customer service would help with that.

Posts: 187 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Feb 14, 2007 Posts: 187

PBX would also require 4 incoming lines/DID trunks.

What do you mean by:

"when somebody calls the phone now, line 1 lights up. If they are hold with another customer, they can put them on hold and the call forwards. Of course."

is this what happens now? or what you'd like to have happen?

on most systems, the call forwards immediately, not when the first caller is put on hold. Unless you're talking about "call waiting" where you can flip between two calls on one line - but that doesn't involve any forwarding.

what do you have connected to lines 2-4 on your system?

Mark

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 09, 2007 Posts: 4

Let me try and explain my situation better.

I currently use Vonage for my small business. It's been great but we're growing and I'm starting to wonder if it's time for a change?

O.K., so we own and operate two different websites which sell completely different products. They are nothing alike and that is why I want two different lines, two different support departments, etc.

So course, on my Vonage router, line one is set up for one phone number for one site and line two is dedicated to another phone number for another site.

Right now, if line one is busy, I know, I can have incoming calls forwarded to line two's phone number or vice-versa. BUT that causes confusion... since the phone who answer calls for one site, generally know nothing about the other site.

Basically, my situation is this... one of my sites is getting very busy lately and I need a third line. At first, I didn't want a third line since it was truly just a back-up, but at this point, a third line is what I need.

So, I ask, is it possible to get a third telephone line with Vonage?

That is what I think I need...

Somebody mentioned getting an adapter and I just purchased one at Target. Don't understand how this is going to change anything. From what I have now, my internet connection goes to my DSL modem and then from my modem to my Vonage router which of course, has two phone slots (line 1 & 2) on it. With this adapter, from what I see, the internet connection goes to my DSL modem and then to my adapter which again, has the exact same two phone slots (line 1 & line 2). What is the difference. Not matter what, I'm still only getting 2 lines to work with?

There was also mentioning of buying TWO routers but I have no clue how that would work. I already have one Vonage router and one Vonage adapter and again I ask, can I make a third line out of this?

If I'm wasting my time, I just want to know. Thanks!

Posts: 187 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Feb 14, 2007 Posts: 187

You can get as many lines as you want to pay for, and you have the bandwidth on your Internet connection to support. They don't have to be on the same adapter. In fact, you could have each of your existing lines on it's own adapter with the second line on each adapter unused (although I don't know why you'd want to do that).

A third line does indeed require an additional adapter. I don't know of any Vonage adapters that provide more than two analog lines.

Sounds like your existing "adapter" is actually an adapter-router combo. Not sure what your newly-purchased unit is - an adapter-only or another combo.

There are a number of ways to connect things, but basically you will get a third Vonage line. It will appear on one of the analog ports on your new adapter. You'll connect it to line 3 of your phone system just like the others are connected to lines 1&2 of the phone system.

From your Vonage login on the web site, set up call-forward-busy on line 1 to go to line3. You'll probably just want call-forward-no-answer to go to voicemail.

Instruct your staff to answer lines 1&3 "hello, company A" and line 2 as "hello, company B" as always.

As for physically connecting the adapters, you can cascade the second one by connecting it's wan port to a lan port on the existing one. Then you need to make sure you don't have IP address conflicts. Any QoS provided by your existing unit probably won't apply to the new unit's lines.

The ideal configuration in my opinion would be to get a new router with good QoS capabilities (or a non-QoS router and separate HBB1 or DI-102 A0S/traffic shaping unit). Then use both of your adapters (cobos?) as adapter-only units - connect each of their wan ports to it's own lan port on the new router. Don't connect anything to lan ports on the Vonage units.

If you need more Internet (lan) ports for computer than the new router has, get a simple ethernet switch and plug one of it's ports into a lan port on the new router. The plug the computers into the switch's ports.

Mark