Hi there,

since many people own a flatrate, where you can surf as much as you want for a fixed price, but next to the computer there's a phone-line which wants to be payed for each call (at least here in Germany) I thought a bit of using an IP-Phone. Well, I confess, everything what has an RJ45-Jack is beautiful for me :-). What do you think of an IP-Phone, simply plugging in your hub or switch and dialling your friends. Or you could dial from the USA to Germany for free! Yes, if you call me, I need an IP phone, too. But think of the costs, the cheapest Phone is at only 100$ (If you see cheaper ones, tell me please!). Do you have in the USA flatrates for the telephone, too?

Please discuss if I am only an IP-geek who has his eyes only at the networkcable than on the consumer needs...

Here's an IP-Phone

Rolf

I've been playing with the Grandstream Budgetone phones, they're cheap, feel cheap, but they work very well.

So far none of the free services I've seen allow SIP-PSTN connections except to toll free numbers in the US. The service I'm currently using is Free World Dialup, and they even will supply you with a good software client if you don't have a SIP phone.

There's also SIPPhone run by the same people as Lindows, but their service doesn't work behind an IPTables NAT, so I took the phones I got from them and re-programmed them to use FWD.

My FWD phone # is 54125.

And Jeff Pulver, the guy behind Free World Dial, just announced the Wisip WiFi SIP phone....

but wisp is $250, thats a great deal of phone calls to only be able call someone else with an ip-phone.
I have been using Vonage ( www.vonage.com ) which uses a Cisco ATA186 to plug into the broadband connection then uses a regular phone. It works great.
They have just dropped thier pricing as well.

Of course, its about as much use as an IP phone if you don't live in the US

I've had an Actiontec card for a while that you can plug any phone into. I think the card was around $40, they also have an external USB model.

Then as the provider, net2phone. Believe it's two cents a minute in the states.

Most Phones are not capable of makink a call directly to another IP-Address. They need a provider or at minimum a gateway like the gatekeeper.

What I want is dialling an IP like 44*130*21*80. Any reports from people doing this?

Rolf

In reply to:

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What I want is dialling an IP like 44*130*21*80. Any reports from people doing this?

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Do it all the time on my Symbol WLAN phone. It's H323, but it should work OK in SIP as well. Mostly it's just an user interface issue.

Don't you need any server between two phones? Then you're da man! Could you please tell me where to get it and what's the price?

Rolf

The Grandstream phones I mentioned in my first post also does direct IP dialing too. There's an offer over at Free World Dialup selling them for $65+shipping.

8-) Wow, and I thought $100 was cheap...

Thank you! How do you dial the IP-Numbers?
As Tecom says you need a "number" and then the ip, e.g. 100@44.130.21.80, dialled: 100*44*130*21*80.

Do you know if it supports SIP?

Rolf

The phones support SIP, I had purchaced them from SIPPhone.com but their service doesn't work with IPTables NATs, so I had to move over to FWD, And they can dial direct IP addresses, you just pick up the phone, and hit MENU then the IP address padding with leading zeros as needed, and if you need a leading part that's alpha, the manual gives instructions on how to encode it. For your example it would be 100*044130021080.

>but their service doesn't work with IPTables NATs, so I had to move over to FWD

Hmm, I thought of direct IP-Dialling, without any Provider between the phones, maybe in a local net without Internetconnection. And I have a router for which I can forward some ports to an internal IP (should be no problem for SIP). But, unluckily, I hadn't the chance for testing...
As I'm aware, SIP should use only few and fixed ports (just the opposite to H.323,which is very unhandy in this case). So one device should call another device by hitting it's IP and connecting it directly at the SIP-Port (something in the 5000-Range, I think).
Are connections to Netmeeting possible? The H.323-capable phones should be good for this.
Is there someone who is willing to call me via Internet with such a phone at a fixed time for a short test?

Rolf

With SIP you only need a small range of ports forwared to the phone(SIP 5080, RTP 5004, and a few up in the high range for the voice channels).

There is no direct interface that I've found from H.323 to SIP, but there is Asterisk PBX which handles SIP natively, and a module that'll interface H.323 to Asterisk making a SIP<->H.323 gateway possible.

Asterisk PBX Software
http://www.asterisk.org/

H.323 module for Asterisk.
http://www.inaccessnetworks.com/projects/asterisk-oh323

If you want to test a direct IP call from a SIP phone, I can help out there, just PM or email me direct.

Now I got my Budgetone from http://www.nikotel.com. The first tests were successfully (dialling an IP). But I'd like to get more testcalls, so if you want to call me. I'm there at SIP:1@voice.rowi.net. Please be aware that the IP behind voice.rowi.net changes every 24h due to my provider.

Oh, please have a look at http://voice.rowi.net first to ensure if it isn't 3 AM here in Germany ;-)

Rolf