Roundup: VoIP

Posted by stephen on Monday, 19th June, 2006 @ 01:23

On to VoIP. Asterisk is now configured and calls to my sipgate number connect to my normal DECT phones via my Cisco ATA 186 box. Outgoing calls are also working and I've credited my sipgate account for this, and I don't even need to dial 9 before the numbers any more as I was doing when I first started (as long as I use the full area code). My NTL phone line is now set to divert all calls to the new number and the new number is being dished out to those that need it.

There's only two niggles with it at the moment. First off, for some reason anyone calling didn't receive a ringing tone while my phone was been called, so had no idea if they'd dialled properly or if something was amiss. I've fixed it by putting a little message at the point Asterisk picks up the call ("please wait while we try to connect you"), and for some reason this is followed by the normal ringing tone.

The other niggle I've noticed today is the odd short pause during conversations, which I think is due to network performance (and not at my end as there was no real Internet traffic here and I've configured my router to always leave some bandwidth spare). We'll see how that goes, but I feel confident that I'll be able to ditch the NTL phone service too eventually. Next up I must try and setup voice mail.

Oh, and one more VoIP thing. I discovered my Nokia N80 might include a SIP stack, but doesn't come with a VoIP application to make use of it. Therefore my plan to use the mobile as a home phone didn't really get anywhere. There's a couple of third party VoIP apps for Series 60 out there, but both seemed tied to specific providers so weren't much good to me.