weird phonegnome questions

[teh_chris]

i am looking to make some changes to my current telephone setup and after reading some about some of phonegnome's features, i am quite interested, but i have a few questions that are pretty weird.

my current setup is a lingo ATA and a vosky internet phone wizard hardwired into the phone lines at my house. in other words, i disconnected the demarc at my house from the phone company, and i have the ATA plugged into the IPW, and the IPW plugged into the phone jack in the wall. the end result is that both VOIP calls and skype calls ring all the phones in the house. the setup is cool, but it could be better.

i would like to get away from lingo and the IPW for a few reasons, which i will try to explain briefly:

lingo is great for basic phone stuff, but it's service is not well documented and therefore not very phreaker friendly. i would like to go with a provider that lets you bring your own device and is more asterisk/SIP friendly. i don't have my heart set on a provider or an ATA yet.

also, having skype running on a PC is fine, but using the IPW means that machine has to be plugged into a box that runs windows AND is near the VOIP gear AND is on all the time. that's pretty reasonable for most people, but not for a linux nerd married to a environmentalist. i have a windows 2003 server that runs all the time in a VMware virtual machine hosted on a linux box (no physical USB ports) and an XP machine that runs the gaming/PVR madness that takes place in another room (not in the right room). it would be nice to run skype on one of these instead of on a dedicated physical machine.

so my weird questions are:

1) can i just use my current/future ATA in place of the POTS line with the phone gnome box?

2) if so, where does the gnome box go in the mix so that it works with all the phones in the house?

3) does the gnome treat all VOIP providers/ATAs equally or is it easier to use with certain ones?

4) the PhoneGnome GnomeLink software requires windows and skype, but does the box require physical access to the PhoneGnome box?

if the windows host does not have to be physically connected to the PhoneGnome box, AND the phone gnome box will work with lingo and the service and device that i replace lingo with, then i will definitely add phonegnome to my arsenal.

[PhoneGnome]

Originally Posted by teh_chris

1) can i just use my current/future ATA in place of the POTS line with the phone gnome box?

Sure. Generally so. We don't know of any ATAs that don't work.

The service must be an emulation of a basic residential service, where dialing plans are normal household dialing.

Originally Posted by teh_chris

2) if so, where does the gnome box go in the mix so that it works with all the phones in the house?

PhoneGnome always insinuates between the "output" of the existing home phone service (wall jack, phone box, or ATA) and phone(s), as shown here:

So however you're driving the wall jacks now, that's where PhoneGnome should be "inserted".

Originally Posted by teh_chris

3) does the gnome treat all VOIP providers/ATAs equally or is it easier to use with certain ones?

Not quite sure what you mean here. We're pretty agnostic regarding what is connected to the LINE port of PhoneGnome. It must be a service that behaves like a basic residential phone line. You can elect to route calls to that service via the jack/hardwired connection, or to a SIP based service directly via the net, as defaults (i.e. automatically based on the number called, so it's seamless), and even on a call-by-call basis.

Originally Posted by teh_chris

4) the PhoneGnome GnomeLink software requires windows and skype, but does the box require physical access to the PhoneGnome box?

The windows machine running Skype and GnomeLink doesn't need to phyisically connect to the PhoneGnome box in any way. It needs a (broadband) Internet connection of course.

[teh_chris]

thanks for the reply, brah.

Originally Posted by PhoneGnome

The service must be an emulation of a basic residential service, where dialing plans are normal household dialing.

so, the extent of my current setup is "pick up phone and dial numbers", is that close enough to normal?

Originally Posted by PhoneGnome

The windows machine running Skype and GnomeLink doesn't need to phyisically connect to the PhoneGnome box in any way. It needs a (broadband) Internet connection of course.

that is freakin' sweet. if it works, i can get rid of one more machine

update: i just ordered my new ATA and the gnome box they should be here on friday :-)