ANI or CLID

ANI

ANI ALWAYS will have a number associated to it, but ICLID can be blocked, or not have valid or even accurate data. ANI will.

ANI of course. CLID is a joke but you can get the best of both. There are many toll free service providers that pass real-time ANI as CLID to the called number.

ANI cannot be spoofed. CLID can. CLID will show the "real" number when a cell phone calls. ANI will not necessarily show the real number.

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T> ANI of course. CLID is a joke but you can get the best of both. There

ANI was my first choice too, for exactly those reasons. That was till someone from behind a PBX called me. Then all I got was the number of the trunk-line calling me. I couldn't tell who from the rather large company was calling, and I couldn't hit the "dial-return" button on my phone and have it do anything meaningful. I think my initial euphoria at having ANI is quickly wearing off. Well, I'm still waiting for my first prank phone call from a home phone where the perp blocks CLID. ;-) That will be amusing. Other than that, I wonder if CLID wouldn't be more useful after all.

In case anyone is hot to trot to get ANI, teliax appears to be sending it in their SIP INVITE packets. Normal SIP phones and ATA's connected to CLID devices will merrily display that ANI.

-wolfgang

ANI shows the billing number (as used to bill long distance). CLID is supposed to show the calling number. Which is why a call from behind a PBX shows the company's main number for ANI. And if a call is forwarded, ANI shows the forwarding phone, CLID shows the original caller.

My public number is a 800# that forwards the ANI as ICLID, which is why I give it out. I need to know who's calling to determine if I am even going to think about answering it. It also allows my answering machine to play a specialized greeting for the caller.

If I get 000-000-0000, Unavailable, Out of Area, (private calls are already blocked) or something my answering machine just picks it up and hangs up. No valid data, no valid reason for me to answer. Its also a pretty good indication of some automated dialer sequencing thru and dialed my real number v. the 800#.

I'll take ANI any day v. ICLID if given the choice.

That answer part of my question, which plan is this on or is it on all their plans?

Also which HARDWARE are they offering? Their web site won't give much details when looking around on the hardware. I like the pay as you go plan as it could be very useful for some things depending on the hardware.

Comments on their service reliability, voice quality?

Any chance they support T.38 Fax?

Is their hardware devices LOCKED to their service only? Example, if their hardware supports 2 lines, can line x be Teliax, and line y be FWD, or is locked up tight?

What type of CDR is available for download or via their web site?

Can they support multiple virtual numbers to an account? Support Distinctive Ring for some of these numbers?

What do you see when people call from behind PBX's? Do you also get the trunk line number? Do you ever get the name along with number?

I'm on the monthly BYO, prepay, plan. $5/mo for the DID and 2 cents/min for the outgoing minutes. They have a good selection of local DID for my area. In fact I managed to get one in the same central office that serves my analog (POTS) line. That last point was important for me, since some of my cheapskate local friends showed great reluctance to call a VOIP number that wasn't local.

They let you bring your own hardware. I use asterisk with a grandstream budgetone and a sipura spa-841. If you only need one phone you can ignore the asterisk and just get a real voip phone.

The service seems fine. It tends to go down at 2 in the morning (PST) for about an hour. I assume they are doing maintenance and they have only one sip server. They are clearly a very small company, so I would always keep a second company around to be a backup for the outgoing calls.

They support g711u (aka PCMU) which is all I really cared about. My network connection from the San Francisco Bay area to their server in Boulder CO is currently good enough to support g711u.

Hmm. Since they do g711u you will at least have a fighting chance to do fax over that. I don't know of they offer the special fax codec though.

Since you get to supply your own hardware, it won't be locked. You should be able to use a multiline phone like the Sipura SPA-841 to put FWD and teliax on different buttons. I'm not familiar with how the multiline ATA's are setup, but if they have separate account pages that should work too.

They have CDR available in CSV, but it seems to be missing some calls. (The billing looks right, but the CDR they generate for you just doesn't list the calls.)

I have a CDR on my asterisk, so if I ever needed to bill by the call, I could use that.

I'm not sure they offer it, but since they are a small company, maybe you can talk them into it. The server at their end is an asterisk box and I know that the development version of asterisk can send the SIP header to do alternate ringtones on a per-call basis. I don't know how long it will take for that development version of asterisk to be released and stable.

-wolfgang

ANI!!!!!!

DEFINITELY ANI!!! But makes surte it's REAL ANI, not "FLEX ANI"

interesting... please elaborate on the difference between real ANI and Flex ANI for knowledge sake

Matt

I'm not Sean, and his posting was the first time I heard of it, but I did trip over some interesting info about it:

It appears to be a method of indicating that the call is coming from a payphone or prison phone.

Flex ANI Codes:

27 Indicates a dumb phone. The network provides the coin signaling. Common on LEC payphones. 29 Indicates a prison/inmate payphone. These phones may have special restrictions on outgoing calls. 70 Indicates a smart payphone. Coin signaling is handled by the payphone. Most PSPs have smart payphones.

I assume Sean is hinting that flex ani doesn't work so well...

-wolfgang

Flex ANI generally sends the CPN info, not the BTN ANI info. So in effect it's CLID. This could be good or bad depending on what you need. It also send the "II" (Identification Indicator) digits, which identify the type of line calling. Common examples are:

00 "POTS"(plain old telephone service) or home phone 07 Restricted line 27 ACTS payphone 29 Prison phones 62 Cellular phones 70 Cocot Payphone