Re: Re: Are you interested in VoIP ?

["UKHA" <ukha@xxxxxxx>]

Mark,

I don't actually have what is called a hardphone, I use sjphone termed a
softphone
but I can answer your questions. This is purely from a SIP point of view,
h323 is a
current 'standard' - but that's standard in the way that the likes of Cisco
etc
have bastardised it, effectively locking customers into thier solutions.

>I see that someone has already answered "Yes, I have an IP
phone"...
>
>If this is you, can I ask a couple of dumb questions?
>
>1: What do I need to phone a "normal" phone from an IP phone?

You need a SIP<>PSTN gateway. There are a number of linux based
gateways in development. Essentailly what the gateway will do is answer
the phone but still send a ring tone to the caller, check where the
incomming
call should be routed to, ring the associated ip phone address.

Whole solutions can be built around this involving media servers for music
on hold,
voice mail, IVR, fax routing etc..

>
>2: How much does it cost?

IP phones range is price from manufacturer to manufacturer. drop me an
email
off list if you are interested...

http://www.novanet.co.in/ilj.htm
is a $299 piece of hardware used by many of the linux
solutions in development.

iirc the cheapest one box solution at the moment is around 1k, however
there are
some companies that offer pstn breakout where you pay for the call from the
closest
pstn exit point.

Other issues involve the traversal of SIP over NAT. If your firewall is not
SIP aware then
you need to open a few ports and use port redirection. This means that you
could only
have 1 phone (soft or hard) internally able to receive/send calls
externally (tho internal ones
could happily call each other. The alternative is to get a SIP aware
firewall. The cheapest
solution for that I have seen is about 115 gbp http://www.intertex.se/products/default.asp?iMenuID=110&iItemID=54

If you want any more info let me know, I'm no expert but I have learned an
awful lot over this
last week...

Andy



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