Reading Note

Read this blog from bottom to top to make any sense of it!

Configure SPA3102

It looks tricky but believe me that it is very easy. The fruits of success will be tremendous.

Legend:

1. For the sake of illustration lets identify my Cellphone as 905Cell

2. Lets identify my home phone line as 905Home (in my case it is a Vonage line with a World Plan)

3. Lets identify my SIP based soft phone line as 905Soft 

Instructions

1. Connect a computer to the SPA3102 ethernet port just so you can access the admin web interface of SPA3102

2. Launch 192.168.0.1

3. Login as "user" with a blank password (I think.. if not then try "user" as the password also)

4. Lets change a couple of basic settings first

Navigate to Admin Login -> Advanced -> Router ->LAN Setup

Change "Auto Net Service ..." to 10.0.0.0-10.255.255.255,192.168.10.0-192.168.255.255,172.16.0.0-172.31.255.255
Change "LAN IP Address" to 192.168.10.1

(What you have done here is changed the embedded network router on SPA3102 to use a different range of IPs than your home network just so you don't have any conflicts. I don't use the router embedded on the SPA3102 and this does not matter much to me)

Navigate to Admin Login -> Advanced Voice -> System
Change the default password for "user" to whatever you like. A must do for security.

Save settings and Restart your router. Remember now that your router web admin is at 192.168.10.1 as changed above (assuming you are connected to the ethernet port of SPA3102) 

5. Lets configure SPA3102 so it can connect to the Softphone account 905Soft
Admin Login -> Advanced  ->Voice ->Line 1

Change values as shown:
Note:
In my case of a Vonage Soft Phone the User Id and password were available on the features page of my Vonage.com account online.

Change your line 1 dial plan as below

Note: plethora of info on dial plans is available via Google- suggested search "SPA3102 Dial Plan"

Note: [2-9]11! prevents 911 and other n11 numbers from being dialled. I actually had a family member accidentally dial 911 while they were using my Service!

6. Let's now configure the connection from SPA3102 to the Home Phone line 905Home (in my case Vonage with the World Plan)

Admin Login -> Advanced  ->Voice ->PSTN

7. Now lets work the magic so calls coming in on 905Soft will forward to 905Home

Admin Login -> Advanced  ->Voice -> User 1

  8. Finally: optionally, you can change the dial tone so that SPA3102 gives you a nice unique dial-tone versus a default tone that sounds like a busy tone. This is the tone someone calling into 905Soft will get. I actually wired in the Australian Dial Tone here in the field "Outside Dial Tone"

Admin Login -> Advanced  ->Voice -> Regional

 9. So what are you waiting for? Dial the number for 905Soft from your cellphone, hear the Australian dial-tone, then dial the number you want to call and you are all set! Remember that you can download a dialer like Dialer-X for your Android cellphone to automate this 2-step dialing.

Enjoy your personal GV!

What you need

New gear to add

1. A Soft Phone account that uses the SIP protocol.

You can get a free or inexpensive soft phone service from one of many providers. Learn more about free SIP phased softphone service at http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/2008/06/free-sip-account-provider-list-free-sip.html. In my case I added a paid Vonage Soft Phone line for $9.99 per month

2. Buy a voice gateway Linksys SPA3102 for about $70. See http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10027/index.html

Note that it is also sold as Cisco SPA3102 and Sipura SPA3102
(I bought mine at the College St, Toronto location of Canada Computers)

Lets look at the use-cases

Legend:

1. For the sake of illustration lets identify my Cellphone as 905Cell

2. Lets identify my home phone line as 905Home (in my case it is a Vonage line with a World Plan)

3. Lets identify my SIP based soft phone line as 905Soft 

Use-case 0:

905Home is my home phone and I use it to dial all over the world


Use-case 1:

1. 905Cell calls 905Soft
2. 905Soft gives me a dial-tone 
3. I dial any number I want as I would from my home phone line
4. Behind the scenes 905Soft switches my call to 905Home (described in "How" later. Hint: use Linksys SPA3102 device

Use-Case 1 for family :

My entire family all over N America can run use-case 1 from their own phones 

You want to get really fancy?
Search for and download a dialer app on your Android or Iphone device which automates calling 905VS and dials the actual destination number. Just like GV, right?
I recommend Dialer-X for Android.

What am I talking about?

2 Step dialing like achieved by Google Voice

I just moved to Canada from the US and was sorely disappointed by the fact that there is no Google Voice (GV) here. And then my backside went on fire when I learned the cost of cellphone access in Canada. (Unrelated- see my facebook rant on cost of cellphone access in Canada http://www.facebook.com/pages/Canadian-Consumers-for-cheaper-cellphone-plans/150258738318696)

So I decided to create my own personal Google Voice like service in Canada and extended it to work for all of my family across Canada and USA so they dial almost the entire world for free.


What I started with:

1. I live in Toronto and have a Vonage line with a Toronto number and a World Plan for 29.99 /month

2. I also have a Rogers cellphone plan with which I get a bunch of minutes within Ontario

What I wanted to do was:

Objective: 
Create a personal GV like Service so I could dial any global number from my cellphone for free:

Detail:
From my Rogers cell, proxy all my outgoing calls via my home Vonage line so I could call all over the world for free.
Said another way, from my cellphone, I wanted to call my Vonage line and then have the Vonage line dial out any number for me.

Just like GV, right?