How does vonage work?

1. Yes, it uses SIP. You are provided with an ATA device that acts as a SIP proxy. Calls are routed to their servers.
2. Vonage has media gateways to the PSTN in several areas.
3. No, Vonage only supports analog phones and soft phone clients. Soft phones are only supported if you have an existing account
4. You can plug your ATA device in anywhere there is an Internet connection and your phone will work.

So I could use a cisco 7900 model as well? What settings would I have to adjust in it when I get the softphone account? Also, what packets should I see on the analyzer for my ATA device? RTP packets to the Vonage SIP server? Call setup? Is there keepalvie packets or anything to the ATA device from vonage?

Thanks again!

Yes, you can use an IP phone with a Vonage softphone account. I use a Grandstream Budge Tone 101.

As the previous poster said, however, you will need to have a main account set up (making use of Vonage configured hardware), in order to get a softphone account.

Really? How did you set it up? I thought that the Vonage softphone needed their client, so you could only use a USB phone.

This is how my Grandstream phone is configured:

IP Phone ConfigurationGrandstream IP Phone Configuration

MAC Address: Product Model: BT100 Software Version: Program--1.0.5.3 Bootloader--1.0.0.18 HTML--1.0.0.36 VOC--1.0.0.6 Custom Ring Tone: ring1--1.0.0.0 ring2--1.0.0.0 ring3--0.0.0.0

Admin Password: IP Address: dynamically assigned via DHCP

SIP Server: sphone.vopr.vonage.net:5060 Outbound Proxy: sphone.vopr.vonage.net:5061 SIP User ID: vonage number Authenticate User ID: vonage number Authenticate Password: ***** Name: (optional, e.g., John Doe)

Advanced Options: Preferred Vocoder: (in listed order) choice 1: current setting is "G722" choice 2: current setting is "PCMU" choice 3: current setting is "PCMA" choice 4: current setting is "G723" choice 5: current setting is "G729" choice 6: current setting is "G726-32" choice 7: current setting is "G728" choice 8: current setting is "PCMU"

G723 rate: 6.3kbps encoding rate

iLBC frame size: 20ms iLBC payload type: 98 Silence Suppression: No Voice Frames per TX: 2 Layer 3 QoS: 48 Layer 2 QoS: 802.1Q/VLAN Tag: 0 802.1p priority value: 0

Use DNS SRV: No User ID is phone number: Yes SIP Registration: Yes Unregister On Reboot: No Register Expiration: 60 Early Dial: No Dial Plan Prefix: No Key Entry Timeout: 4 Use # as Dial Key: Yes (if set to Yes, "#" will function as the "(Re-)Dial" key) local SIP port: 5060 local RTP port: 5004 Use random port: Yes NAT Traversal: Yes STUN server is: keep-alive interval: 20 seconds Use NAT IP: TFTP Server: (for remote software upgrade and configuration) Voice Mail UserID: SUBSCRIBE for MWI: No, do not send SUBSCRIBE for Message Waiting Indication Auto Answer: No Offhook Auto-Dial: Enable Call Features: No Disable Call-Waiting: No Send DTMF: in-audio DTMF Payload Type: 101 Send Flash Event: No NTP Server: time.nist.gov Time Zone: Date Display Format: Year-Month-Day Daylight Savings Time: Yes Default Ring Tone: system ring tone Send Anonymous: No

In theory. In practice, you can pull the information you need out of the softphone's software.