[mpp]

Originally Posted by mpp

Thanks for your input asethi. I don't know whether you are aware or not but the PhoneGnome is based on the Sipura SPA 3000. It would be unfair to compare the SPA 2000 to the SPA 3000 in features.

Point taken on the hard to get the SPA 2000 configured initially. If I understand you correctly you are saying that getting into VoIP is going to be a much better experience if you start with the PhoneGnome than it is to handle the need to set up the SPA 2000 unit from scratch.

So being a PhoneGnome user I'd love to ask you a couple of questions if I may:
- Since PhoneGnome seems to marry your PSTN phone number what happens if you change it?
- for that matter ... can you change your phone number whenever you want without having implications on PhoneGnome?
- Since PhoneGnome seems to do most functions in conjunction with their website ... if the company or website ceases ... will PhoneGnome still be able to operate
- if you are on a PSTN call and a VOIP call comes in for you or vice versa... can PhoneGnome handle that

I look forward to your response.

Hi mpp,

Here are the answers according to me (perhaps someone from the PhoneGnome tech support team can confirm these)

If one changes their PSTN phone number, that will be when they move to a different location I presume, one will then have to reconfigure the phonegnome to work with the new PSTN number.

If the PhoneGnome website is down, the phonegnome should still work. Only thing that will not function is your ability to switch the service providers via the web site. I use the web site to change my service providers and to place calls with one click dialing. If there is no need to change the service provider before a call, I do not need to login to the website.

When I am on a call (PSTN or VOIP) and I have another call coming, I can switch to the incoming call by putting the current call on hold. This is possible due to teh Call waiting feature supported by PhoneGnome.

I like the ease of use that PhoneGnome offers. Changing of providers before a call and to have a different provider for long distance and international calls is very useful.[/quote]

Thanks for answering back asethi.

I see ... so if you set the PhoneGnome up to a differnet POTS line then all the services that you had configured to it would need to be set up on the new line. So theoretically if you had a place in Florida that you stayed at for a couple of months a year you could just bring your PhoneGnome with you and plug it into your Florida POTS number. For this number you would need to configure all the services that you had on your home phone. So if this is possible why would someone want to use the SoftGnome software to access the unit at home ... never mind ... I guess you could use this set up if you are going away for a week or less and need to dial long distance.

So if the website is down you can still use the providers that you had initially set up but you cannot change them until the web site is back up and operational? The 1 click dialing ... is this only possible to do while using the web site or can you do that on the phone you are dialing out on?
So the only use of the web site is to help you configure the PhoneGnome or change the current configuration?

Wow ... so it does have the smarts to be able to switch from POTS to VoIP and vice versa with call waiting ... great feature.

Let me ask you this. If you have two providers set up to dial out to a specific country can you, at the time you place the call, choose one over the other without changing your set up on the web?

Look forward to your response.

[asethi]

Thanks for answering back asethi.

I see ... so if you set the PhoneGnome up to a differnet POTS line then all the services that you had configured to it would need to be set up on the new line. So theoretically if you had a place in Florida that you stayed at for a couple of months a year you could just bring your PhoneGnome with you and plug it into your Florida POTS number. For this number you would need to configure all the services that you had on your home phone. So if this is possible why would someone want to use the SoftGnome software to access the unit at home ... never mind ... I guess you could use this set up if you are going away for a week or less and need to dial long distance.

So if the website is down you can still use the providers that you had initially set up but you cannot change them until the web site is back up and operational? The 1 click dialing ... is this only possible to do while using the web site or can you do that on the phone you are dialing out on?
So the only use of the web site is to help you configure the PhoneGnome or change the current configuration?

Wow ... so it does have the smarts to be able to switch from POTS to VoIP and vice versa with call waiting ... great feature.

Let me ask you this. If you have two providers set up to dial out to a specific country can you, at the time you place the call, choose one over the other without changing your set up on the web?

Look forward to your response.



Hi mpp,

I have not had a chance to move my PhoneGnome from one phone to another, so it is difficult to comment on this. But you are right if one is moving tempoarily then SoftGnome is the way to go.

The one click dialling is available from the web only. When dialling from phone, you have to dial the complete number or use the phone memory to store the most often dialled numbers.

One can set up multiple providers but can only use two at a time - one for long distance and another for international. You can set up these to be the same also. However, if you use one provider for Australia and another provider for India (which I do) then before making a call to the other country one has to go to the web site and select the required provider for the country you want to dial. There is no way to auto select a provider depending on the country you are dialling.

Hope you find this helpful.

[mpp]

Originally Posted by asethi

Hi mpp,

I have not had a chance to move my PhoneGnome from one phone to another, so it is difficult to comment on this. But you are right if one is moving tempoarily then SoftGnome is the way to go.

The one click dialling is available from the web only. When dialling from phone, you have to dial the complete number or use the phone memory to store the most often dialled numbers.

One can set up multiple providers but can only use two at a time - one for long distance and another for international. You can set up these to be the same also. However, if you use one provider for Australia and another provider for India (which I do) then before making a call to the other country one has to go to the web site and select the required provider for the country you want to dial. There is no way to auto select a provider depending on the country you are dialling.

Hope you find this helpful.

Hi Asethi.

Thanks for clarifying the previous questions. According to DracoFelis the SPA3000 has room to store many long distance providers and you have the option of selecting which one by dialing a control number before your call. There seems to be a difference here in the operation between the SPA3000 native mode and the modification made to become PhoneGnome.

How long have you been using PhoneGnome and how have your experiences been contacting tech support?

Look forward to your reply.

[asethi]

Hi mpp,

I have been using the PhoneGnome from January 2006 first week. I have not had the need to call the Tech Support since it just worked out of the box. Only time I had to call was when I was not able to configure one of the service providers and I made a call to their 800 Sales number and the Sales staff helped me with that. AS far as I know, PhoneGnome tech support is available via email.
It is very easy to setup the PhoneGnome and the setup parameters like username, password, proxy server name, domain name etc. are provided by the service providers at the time of sign-up. :P

[DracoFelis]

Originally Posted by mpp

Thanks for clarifying the previous questions. According to DracoFelis the SPA3000 has room to store many long distance providers

Built into the SPA3000 itself is support for:

1) A single (default) "Line 1" VoIP provider (both inbound calls, and outbound calling).

2) 4 additional "outbound only" providers (via the SPA3000's "gateway" slots).

3) A jack to interconnect with a PSTN line (both inbound calling, and outbound calls). The PSTN jack can also be used for anything that mimics a PSTN line (such as another VoIP adapter), if you don't want to hook the SPA3000 up to a real telco line.

Now the above is what is built into the box itself. In addition, you can use "tricks" to ALSO add the following to a SPA3000:

A) If your "Line 1" VoIP provider allows inbound SIP URI calls, OR you can use this trick ( http://faq.sipbroker.com/tiki-index....%20or%20Sipura ) to accept inbound calls, you can add any number of inbound calling providers which will allow you to forward the calls to a SIP URI. This is a cute "trick" to hook up many inbound phone numbers (or VoIP accounts), so that you can be called by them!

B) You can add pretty much any number of "outbound providers" that don't require you to enter a userid and password (i.e. "open proxies"), by just playing tricks with your "dial plan". The easiest way to handle this, is just to modify your dial plan to use the free SIP Broker service (and then use SIP Broker to dial to other open VoIP proxies).

C) If you can get the SPA3000's "extended dial plan" to work (and in my testing I've had luck with overriding the passwords, but not the userids), you can also add pretty much as many outbound VoIP providers (that require a userid and password) as you like, again by just modifying your "dial plan".

NOTE: You can often combine the "inbound calling" and "outbound calling" tricks with the same provider (to completely support that provider, even when some other provider is taking up your default "line 1" spot). For example, I have "Free World Dialup" forward to a SIP URI (to ring my phone), but I use a "gateway" slot to call out via FWD. This allows me to support FWD for both inbound and outbound calling (while still having a different provider as my main "Line 1" provider).

Originally Posted by mpp

and you have the option of selecting which one by dialing a control number before your call.

That's where the SPA3000's "dial plan" comes in. By properly setting up the adapter's "dial plan", you can choose what happens when certain patterns of digits are dialed on the phone. This gives you a huge amount of control over how you want given calls to go out.

For example, I have my SPA3000 setup to send all 1-800/888/877/866-xxxxxxx numbers via FWD (since FWD doesn't charge anything to complete outbound "toll free" calls). For all other normal USA calls, I send them out via my USA "unlimited" provider. However, if I dial an extra 1 in front of the number (making it a 12 digit call), the initial 1 is stripped off and the resulting 11-digit number is sent via my "backup" PAYGO account (giving me a trivial way to force the call out via my PAYGO account when I want to, by just dialng one more digit when calling). I also automatically send all calls starting with *xxx (the *-key and three digits) via the SIP Broker service (to make it easy to call other VoIP users for free). And I even have the SPA-3000 setup to detect when I dial a 7-digit number, and automatically put a 1 and my area code in front of that number, before sending the resulting 11-digit number to my unlimited VoIP provider (i.e. I have rolled my own 7-digit dialing support, for a VoIP provider that only supports 11-digit dialing)!

And the above are only some of the "tricks" I have stuffed into my SPA3000's "dial plan". While there are limits to what you can do with the "dial plan" (probably the biggest one is that the dial plan pattern can't be more than about 2000 characters long), it is still very amazing how much you can customize your dialing out options via the SPA-3000's "dial plan".

NOTE: If you hook up your SPA3000 to a real telco line, it is pretty easy to modify your dial plan to automatically send 911 calls out via your normal telco line. This means that you can easily get the E911 on your real telco line (when using the phone hooked up to your SPA-3000), no matter what 911 support exists (or doesn't exist) on your VoIP accounts! Or, if you don't wish to hook the SPA-3000 up to a real telco line, and you also don't have VoIP accounts that support 911, you can do what I do and tell the SPA-3000's dial plan to call your local 11-digit "emergency number" (for your area), whenever you dial 911 from the phone (thereby doing a "roll your own" of basic 911 service)!

Originally Posted by mpp

There seems to be a difference here in the operation between the SPA3000 native mode and the modification made to become PhoneGnome.

So it would seem. As far as the rest of us can figure out, while the PhoneGnome uses the same HARDWARE as a SPA3000, it actually uses different (custom) FIRMWARE. So you can't just use a PhoneGnome as an SPA-3000, or visa-versa.

However, since the hardware is the same, it shoud (in theory at least) be possible for PhoneGnome to offer an option to "upgrade" a SPA3000 into a "PhoneGnome" (or to "downgrade" a PhoneGnome into a plain SPA-3000). And there was even some talk in the forums about PhoneGnome offering such an "upgrade option" for an SPA-3000 (for a fee). But so far, no such "firmware upgrade" option has come on the market. So at least for the present, you can't simply change firmware to convert a SPA-3000 into a PhoneGnome (or to convert a PhoneGnome into a normal SPA-3000).

[PhoneBoy]

Moved this thread to the PhoneGnome group. Should have been here in the first place.

[mpp]

Originally Posted by asethi

Hi mpp,

I have been using the PhoneGnome from January 2006 first week. I have not had the need to call the Tech Support since it just worked out of the box. Only time I had to call was when I was not able to configure one of the service providers and I made a call to their 800 Sales number and the Sales staff helped me with that. AS far as I know, PhoneGnome tech support is available via email.
It is very easy to setup the PhoneGnome and the setup parameters like username, password, proxy server name, domain name etc. are provided by the service providers at the time of sign-up. :P

Hi Sethi,

Good to know that you have not had to phone Tech Support ... this means that it does as they say ... you plug and play. I'm curious ... what router are you using the PhoneGnome with. I have a D-Link DI 713P and it hangs so often I have given up on it.

Does the PhoneGnome give you all the fancy features on your PSTN line such as Call Display, call waiting, call forwarding etc without you having to subscribe to these features through the PSTN phone company?

Look forward to your response.

[mpp]

Originally Posted by DracoFelis

Built into the SPA3000 itself is support for:

1) A single (default) "Line 1" VoIP provider (both inbound calls, and outbound calling).

2) 4 additional "outbound only" providers (via the SPA3000's "gateway" slots).

3) A jack to interconnect with a PSTN line (both inbound calling, and outbound calls). The PSTN jack can also be used for anything that mimics a PSTN line (such as another VoIP adapter), if you don't want to hook the SPA3000 up to a real telco line.

Now the above is what is built into the box itself. In addition, you can use "tricks" to ALSO add the following to a SPA3000:

A) If your "Line 1" VoIP provider allows inbound SIP URI calls, OR you can use this trick ( http://faq.sipbroker.com/tiki-index....%20or%20Sipura ) to accept inbound calls, you can add any number of inbound calling providers which will allow you to forward the calls to a SIP URI. This is a cute "trick" to hook up many inbound phone numbers (or VoIP accounts), so that you can be called by them!

B) You can add pretty much any number of "outbound providers" that don't require you to enter a userid and password (i.e. "open proxies"), by just playing tricks with your "dial plan". The easiest way to handle this, is just to modify your dial plan to use the free SIP Broker service (and then use SIP Broker to dial to other open VoIP proxies).

C) If you can get the SPA3000's "extended dial plan" to work (and in my testing I've had luck with overriding the passwords, but not the userids), you can also add pretty much as many outbound VoIP providers (that require a userid and password) as you like, again by just modifying your "dial plan".

NOTE: You can often combine the "inbound calling" and "outbound calling" tricks with the same provider (to completely support that provider, even when some other provider is taking up your default "line 1" spot). For example, I have "Free World Dialup" forward to a SIP URI (to ring my phone), but I use a "gateway" slot to call out via FWD. This allows me to support FWD for both inbound and outbound calling (while still having a different provider as my main "Line 1" provider).

That's where the SPA3000's "dial plan" comes in. By properly setting up the adapter's "dial plan", you can choose what happens when certain patterns of digits are dialed on the phone. This gives you a huge amount of control over how you want given calls to go out.

For example, I have my SPA3000 setup to send all 1-800/888/877/866-xxxxxxx numbers via FWD (since FWD doesn't charge anything to complete outbound "toll free" calls). For all other normal USA calls, I send them out via my USA "unlimited" provider. However, if I dial an extra 1 in front of the number (making it a 12 digit call), the initial 1 is stripped off and the resulting 11-digit number is sent via my "backup" PAYGO account (giving me a trivial way to force the call out via my PAYGO account when I want to, by just dialng one more digit when calling). I also automatically send all calls starting with *xxx (the *-key and three digits) via the SIP Broker service (to make it easy to call other VoIP users for free). And I even have the SPA-3000 setup to detect when I dial a 7-digit number, and automatically put a 1 and my area code in front of that number, before sending the resulting 11-digit number to my unlimited VoIP provider (i.e. I have rolled my own 7-digit dialing support, for a VoIP provider that only supports 11-digit dialing)!

And the above are only some of the "tricks" I have stuffed into my SPA3000's "dial plan". While there are limits to what you can do with the "dial plan" (probably the biggest one is that the dial plan pattern can't be more than about 2000 characters long), it is still very amazing how much you can customize your dialing out options via the SPA-3000's "dial plan".

NOTE: If you hook up your SPA3000 to a real telco line, it is pretty easy to modify your dial plan to automatically send 911 calls out via your normal telco line. This means that you can easily get the E911 on your real telco line (when using the phone hooked up to your SPA-3000), no matter what 911 support exists (or doesn't exist) on your VoIP accounts! Or, if you don't wish to hook the SPA-3000 up to a real telco line, and you also don't have VoIP accounts that support 911, you can do what I do and tell the SPA-3000's dial plan to call your local 11-digit "emergency number" (for your area), whenever you dial 911 from the phone (thereby doing a "roll your own" of basic 911 service)!

So it would seem. As far as the rest of us can figure out, while the PhoneGnome uses the same HARDWARE as a SPA3000, it actually uses different (custom) FIRMWARE. So you can't just use a PhoneGnome as an SPA-3000, or visa-versa.

However, since the hardware is the same, it shoud (in theory at least) be possible for PhoneGnome to offer an option to "upgrade" a SPA3000 into a "PhoneGnome" (or to "downgrade" a PhoneGnome into a plain SPA-3000). And there was even some talk in the forums about PhoneGnome offering such an "upgrade option" for an SPA-3000 (for a fee). But so far, no such "firmware upgrade" option has come on the market. So at least for the present, you can't simply change firmware to convert a SPA-3000 into a PhoneGnome (or to convert a PhoneGnome into a normal SPA-3000).

Thanks for the detailed information DracoFelis. You certainly make a strong case for the SPA3000 over the PhoneGnome. I appreciate the siplicity of Plug and Play but the power and control of setting up the SPA3000 almost any way you want is very compelling.

On another note ... what router do you have setup with your SPA3000? I have a D-Link DI-730P and it hangs so often I do not even use it anymore. I am currently looking for a wired router as I understand they are less susceptable to hanging. I am currently favouring the D-Link 604 as they seem to have a lot of users with good things to say about them.
If you have any suggestions on this I would appreciate them.

On your SPA3000 do you get all the features that a PSTN line would offer as options such as Call Forward, Call Display, Follow Me ... etc on both the VoIP line and the PSTN line or maybe one of them ... or is it none?

Look forward to hearing back from you.

[mpp]

Originally Posted by PhoneBoy

Moved this thread to the PhoneGnome group. Should have been here in the first place.

Thanks PhoneBoy for correcting that. Would you care to expand on your previous post here that mentioned that you have both the PhoneGnome and the SPA3000 and that you use these in different ways?

Look forward to hearing back from you.

[PhoneBoy]

I mostly use SPA-3000s to take either PSTN lines or locked ATAs from other service providers and making them available for use on an IP telephone like the SPA941.

I use my PhoneGnome on a normal PSTN line where I want some of PhoneGnome's "Features" (e.g. VoiceMail, outbound SIP calling), but would prefer to keep accessible via a non-IP handset.