Technical Question: Multiple VoIP Devices: One Phone Number

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 10, 2005 Posts: 4

Here's the scenario:

I have a Linksys PAP2 at my house. I have the XTen soft phone loaded on my HP iPaq PocketPC. I can get my soft phone number to work fine. However, what I really want is the number for my house to ring both on my PAP2-connected phones and my PocketPC. It seems to me that all this would take would be to allow multiple devices to log in to a single account simultaneously over SIP (provided Vonage gives one the login ID and password that the PAP2 uses to connect to their gateway).

So is this a technial limitation or is it a revenue-driven decision? The customer service rep I spoke with about this couldn't explain why, he just said that it was a technical thing that they've been trying to solve. So what's to solve?

Thanks!

Josh

Posts: 59 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 16, 2004 Posts: 59

Most SIP servers don't work the way you suggest -- they work more like IM clients -- i.e. if you log into your account from a second device, it takes precedence over your earlier registration. Furthermore, each device registers periodically so if both were online it would vary which was the active registered device at any one point, so incoming calls would get distributed between the two devices in a seemingly random fashion.

Of course you can do what you want by signing up for a second account, and then simply configuring your primary account to simultaneous ring the second number.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 10, 2005 Posts: 4

sajer wrote:

Most SIP servers don't work the way you suggest...

Seems like a software problem then. All it needs to do is maintain a list of which devices are connected to the account at any one time and send a "ring" command to all of those devices. But for pounding on the vendor of the SIP gateway, it seems like a relatively simple answer, no? Am I missing something?

Josh