[tchall]

Has anyone had any experience pluging the SPA3000 into a digital office phone system(PABX).

I am still trying to get my head around how I would do it, Fxo and Fxs wise... It is really driving me nuts

The Digital office phone system(PABX), has digital and analog ports and i have plugged standard POTS devices into the analog ports before with no problems and they act as phone extensions very similar to the digial office phones, (but wihout all the special feautres) eg normal old phone into the analog ports.

Do you guys think that it is possible with this unit?

What I am trying to achieve is to take SPA3000 and plug it into the PABX and allocate it extension 15 (not a phone line just an extension) and then on extension 15 people could transfer calls to me or call me pressing 15 off-site eg I could be overseas on laptop using software phone?

Ie can we make it auto dial a SIP number on a soft phone ?

Is it also possible with the same setup for me (still being overseas) to call from the laptop, softphone back to the office?

And Is it possible to be on the laptop overseas and get a local PABX dial tone?

Or would I need more than one SPA3000 unit?

Thanks Thomas

[mberlant]

The SPA3000 can do all of the things you mention when you connect its PSTN Line port to an analog "Extension 15" on your PABX. This is precisely what it was designed to do.

There are several active threads here that talk about configuring a 3000 to act as an OPX, but your situation as you described it is much more straightforward and simple to implement.

First of all, you will need two VoIP accounts from the same service provider. It will be much easier on you if you choose a provider like BroadVoice, SIPphone or StanaPhone, who allow you to tinker with the settings on your own equipment (your SPA and your softphone). You can even choose FWD if you are content to make outbound calls via your PABX or Calling Card while traveling. One of these accounts will be programmed into the PSTN Line of your SPA and the other will be programmed into your laptop's softphone.

You'll need to configure the SPA to forward all calls incoming on the PSTN Line to the phone number on your laptop. When a call is transferred to Extension 15 the SPA will answer it and place a hotline call to your laptop. You will recognize the phone number and know that it is an Extension 15 call.

In the other direction you can program the SPA to route you through a PIN validation and then present you with a Dial Tone from Extension 15.

Good luck to you.

Michael

[tchall]

Thank you Michael for your reply,
It is very resssuring to note what you said.

May I ask one further question

With the SPA3000,
is it possible to make a call directly to a softphone,
IP to IP and vise versa,

Thank you

Thomas

[mberlant]

Yes, it is possible, but not very pretty, especially on the softphone end.

The way I understand your situation your laptop will be connecting to the internet in many (several?) different places. Each place it connects will have a different IP address and may require assignment of a different (other than 5060) SIP port. For these reasons you could not program your SPA to dial "1234@xxx.yyy.zzz.www:5060", since you don't know what x, y, z, w, or 5060 will be!

In the "inbound" direction, both SJPhone and X-Lite/X-Pro permit URI and IP dialing. So, if you have a fixed IP address in the office and manually nail up the SIP settings for your SPA (including manually forwarding the assigned SIP Port to your SPA), you should be able to call in from the field like this.

Personally, I find it much easier to register both ends with FWD and let FWD's STUN or Proxy do all of this heavy lifting for me. The SPA only needs to know the softphone's FWD number (which never varies) and likewise for the softphone. If you delist the FWD numbers from the FWD White Pages you will significantly reduce the likelihood of someone calling your SPA by accident.