Vonage and Asterix Home Configuration?

Posts: 22 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 12, 2005 Posts: 22

I currently have a high-speed broadband connection at home and I would like to be able to do the following using VOIP;

1. Make and recieve calls from my home analog phone (scbscribe the the provincial unlimited Vonage package)
2. Have the ability to forward calls if unanswered at home to either my cell phone, or to a softphone (vonage softphone account? what options?)
3. Have the ability to use a regular pstn phone or cell phone to make long distance calls using my inbound number first (forwarding using Asterix?)

I already have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router that I use as a fw/wap/qos. I was thinking about buying the Linksys PAP2 phone adapter and wiring the house cabling into the adapter (gets the house analog phones working on the vonage account). I have been reading up on Asterix (and Astereix@home). I would like to setup an Asterix pbx to perform the forwarding/voicemail/other features.

Can I also use the Asterix software to route calls through my primary vonage unlimited provincial calling account (in reference to #3 above)? Can Astserix connect to the Vonage SIP service like the PAP2 adapter does? Why, or would I want to connect Asterix directly to the PAP2?

Thanks

JT - SuperVOIP newb - but learning fast

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 10:34 pm Post subject:

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by #3, but everything you've mentioned seems doable with regular Vonage service, no installation of Asterix needed.

Posts: 19 · Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:24 pm Post subject:

VonageTPA wrote:

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by #3, but everything you've mentioned seems doable with regular Vonage service, no installation of Asterix needed.

agreed

Posts: 646 · Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:50 pm Post subject:

Vonage won't let you make a direct SIP connection from Asterix unless it's to a softphone account. If that matters to you, then you should probably seek out a different provider that offers bring-your-own-device service.

Posts: 22 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 12, 2005 Posts: 22

Let me clarify #3,

What I want to accomplish is to be capable of using a standard PSTN phone anywhere in the local calling area, like at my parents house, friends house,work, etc. And be able to route calls through my Vonage account to take advantage of the long distance features. I am thinking that this could be accomplished by dialing into a pbx type system (this is where asterisx comes in) and getting an outside line on the Vonage softphone account....

Possible? Practical?

I guess in addition to this, I am also think of this senario;

I am away from home on business and someone calls into my Vonage account. Instead of getting forwarded to voicemail I setup the call routing to forward to the pbx, the pbx is then able to forward the call to my extension (softphone on my laptop) in the remote location?

Thoughts?

Thanks...

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:43 pm Post subject:

So you want to set up a dial-in line for the Vonage box? It *could* be done, but there's a few small issues to deal with. You're going to need a phone system capable of forwarding incoming calls to an outgoing line. Some support this, others won't... some systems will require that you dial at least something when you connect to outside line, which can be accomplished by dialing something meaningless, such at *70 to disable call waiting, etc. I'm not familiar with Asterix, but you're going to need 2 analog (incoming) phone line cards. I'm not sure what their model #'s are for them, nor the cost. You might want to consider picking up an old PBX instead. No computer to mess with, uses less electricity, no additional voice degredation if you use an analog system, whereas Astrix would be converting the signal from analog to digital, then back to analog, then back to digital when it hits the Vonage box. One of the older Panasonic KX-TA phone systems would work quite well for this and the used ones are very inexpensive. The trouble is tracking down a used one.

For the second scenero you gave, Vonage can do that without any extra hardware/software/programming.

Posts: 1422 · Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:54 pm Post subject:

VonageTPA wrote:

I'm not familiar with Asterix, but you're going to need 2 analog (incoming) phone line cards. I'm not sure what their model #'s are for them, nor the cost.

I am not familiar with Asterisk either, but I don't see the need for two lines. You call in, select an option for transfer from the phone tree. The PBX queries you for the transfer code and then uses Vonage's feature to transfer your call to the destination. I am making the assumption here that the PBX is capable of issuing a flash and then dialing the transfer codes during a call.

I agree that unless you have a specific need for Asterisk (internal SoftPhones, communication with another system) that you would be better off picking up a small PBX with this ability. However, using Vonage's transfer eliminates the extra analog/digital transformations that having Asterisk actually route the call would induce.

VonageTPA wrote:

For the second scenero you gave, Vonage can do that without any extra hardware/software/programming.

I concur.

Posts: 22 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 12, 2005 Posts: 22

Yeah that makes it a little more clear...

Sorry for all the newb questions, I am relatively new to the VOIP world and there are lots of cool capabilities that I'm reading about

I guess what I was thinking originally was that softphones are needlessly cool (especially on my PDA over wireless) and by using asterisk (software VOIP PBX) I could somehow use it to provide the softphone capability without subscribing to Vonage's softphone service.

Anyway thanks for the help on these issues.

JT

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:38 pm Post subject:

I was thinking one line in, one line out... I've not seen too many small PBXs with buffers in them that would allow you to use one line like that. If you're using the PBX & 2 lines to transfer, you can have it answer the first line, require the user to dial an extension (password) so that the whole world isn't using it, and then it'd connect to the extension, which is forwarded to outside line #2, the vonage box, and you'd get the Vonage dialtone.

The issue I see with the single line deal is that you need to find a way to get the PBX to answer, listen, make note of the number dialed by the person calling in, wait, flash, #90 + number, flash. That's quite a few steps to attempt using a traditional small PBX call forwarding, etc. If you know of one, I'm all ears... as I wouldn't mind doing something like this myself. On the larger systems (AT&T/Lucent/Avaya Definity, etc) this can be done pretty easily, but I don't know who'd want a 4' tall PBX sitting in their house, or where they'd put it....They are fun toys (2400 extensions, 400 trunk lines), but still a bit large for home use.

Now, one alternative...is if the callers don't need to dial all that many numbers... they could use different extensions programmed w/different numbers and do it that way. Limiting, but still allows one line to be used for everything.

Alternative idea #2... What happens in you have a call on the line, hit FLASH, dial the #90, then hit FLASH again? does it cancel the call transfer or does it give the incoming call a dial tone? I know the aforementioned Definity system would give a dialtone.