What is my SIP Address?

Posts: 53 · Full Forum Member Joined: Feb 22, 2007 Posts: 53

The issue of Vonage and SIP--now to find your SIP address, whether it can be used to contact your Vonage number etc--is often discussed on the Vonage forum at DSL reports. You will find that forum, along with a wealth of information that addresses your question, at

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/vonage

Posts: 153 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 11, 2007 Posts: 153

Eddy wrote:

If you make people call you at your Vonage SIP I *think* you'll get billed for it because the call gets routed from the Vonage SIP server.

But Vonage absolutely does not accept calls from outside of Vonage to your or any other Vonage SIP under any circumstances.

Quote:

I did try to have a friend call me from his PC at my_number@my-ip.com:10000 and it worked. I'm glad that Vonage didn't block this feature because it doesn't affect their service profitability IMO.

How well this works and what port to use is going to be different for each of the many different kinds of Vonage adapters and/or routers that might be between the Vonage adapter and your internet connection. I'm not surprised that people are seeing one-way transmission in some cases. This, too, is going to vary depending on the network setup at each end due to SIP and NAT not working well together unless there are cooperating STUN servers and media gateways (which Vonage has at their site for you to use when going through them).

There actually is a profitability issue here, too. Vonage calls from non-Vonage customers arriving via your assigned telephone number result in money for Vonage, paid to them by the telco delivering the call, through a complicated mechanism called "settlements" or "reciprocal compensation". That's precisely how some of the "free" services that will give out incoming numbers at no charge make their money. They pick states such as Iowa and Washington State where the settlements are high and offer you service with numbers from these locations. Your friends call you from their flat-rate cellphones or other Voip providers, and the little ITSP rakes in the settlement money while delivering the call to you via Voip.

Posts: 53 · Full Forum Member Joined: Feb 22, 2007 Posts: 53

At one point, a few years back, Vonage had an agreement with Free World Dialup, a free SIP provider, where FWD subscribers could call Vonage numbers and vice-versa. But that, according to FWD, was terminated unilaterally by Vonage. FWD still maintains agreements with a number of Voip providers, as far as I know.