Graves On SOHO VoIP

Just a few days ago VoIP Supply announced a new desk phone that’s capable of both SIP and IAX2. Not much has been forthcoming in the way of IAX2 capable end-points, even though the protocol has wound its way through a lengthy standards process. Digium has dropped the little IAXy (aka S101i)  ATA device a while back. Last year Zeeek tried the Allnet 7960 which is IAX2 capable but lacking in some ways. So it seems that to date there just haven’t been any truly business class IAX2 phones to be had.

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A few days ago on the Asterisk Users Mailing List Tzafrir Cohen of Xorcom fame started an interesting thread about the possibility of a community developed IP Phone.

A common wisdom here is that one should use a proper hardware phone rather that an extra software on the user’s PC. Why is that such a big issue?

One thing that bothers me with the current crop of hardware SIP phones is that they are hopelessly proprietary.

So what would it take to build a fully-adaptable phone?

I am 100% behind the assertion that most users want a hard phone on their desk. Soft phones, even good ones, seem to be exclusively the domain of those who travel and vertical niches like call centers.

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Originally published at www.smallnetbuilder.com on August 13, 2008

When I was asked several months ago about reviewing a pair of new Polycom desk phones, I simply could not believe my good fortune. It was a little like being asked if I’d like to have a Tesla roadster for a few weeks. But of course my good man! Where do I sign?

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VoIP Supply’s Garrett Smith has tipped us off to a new Wifi SIP handset. Apparently it’s making him rethink his stance on VoWifi hardware. As we are of like mind on this topic this raises my curiosity. Perhaps even enough to actually preorder one of these little beasties. Availability is projected as end of October.

A short while I go I wrote a lament about how the better IP phones with large LCD displays are woefully underused. Specifically, they provide XHTML browsers that allow the phone to interact with online data sources.

Poking around online I found a company in Colorado that develops apps to leverage these features. Further, they make available a public example that you can access for your Polycom phone.

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Sometimes the apparently simple, little things take longer than you’d expect. In my recent travels I’ve had some trouble when trying to VPN connect back to my home office. This generally happens for one of two reasons;

1. The ISP at the remote location is blocking related ports
2. The network at the remote location is on the same subnet range as my home office network

The first cause is something that I simply cannot control, but the second is something that I decided to address today. I moved my entire network onto a new subnet.

The process is simple enough. Make the required changes in the m0n0wall router and reboot just about everything. As much as possible I leave network devices with DHCP enabled and the reserve IP addresses in the routers DHCP server. Even so some things need hand tweaking.

For example, my wife tried to make a call only to find no dial tone on the house phone. It turns out that the Sipura SPA-2002 that we use with that phone had a hard coded DNS server entry. Oops. Gotta change that manually then dial tone returns.

Just to be safe I rebooted a lot of things and confirmed that they were back on the network and working correctly. I expect that we have more on-LAN devices than most homes. The process took a couple of hours.

OK, VOIP over Wifi and VOIP via mobiles (cell phone networks) is getting a lot of attention lately, be it Skype, Truphone, Gizmo, iSkoot or whatever. Martin Sauter has a nice post about just how easy it is to capture, decode and hear VOIP call on a wifi LAN.

Is this news? No. It’s not. This has been known for some time. Like all things on networks some attention needs to be paid to matters of security. If you’re in the wild world (ie. not on your own LAN) then its difficult to be certain that the call is secure. You can use VPN technology or TLS/SRTP if your provider supports this. I look forward to TLS/SRTP support in Asterisk, which is underway and to be in v1.6.

While we’re on the topic, if you’re at all concerned about VOIP security you should be paying some attention to the Voice Over IP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) This is a great resource for voice security information.

This afternoon I finally took some time to update the firmware in the snom m3 phone system. The phones arrived early in January loaded with v1.01, but in the eight weeks since then snom has released v1.07.

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