Using Obi110 as PSTN ONLY gateway to Obi100

[gregyoung]

Hi -

I'm completely new to VOIP, though very comfortable with computer and computer networking technology.  I've been searching for the answer to this in the FAQs and forums but nothing seems clear to me.

We live in a rural area of San Diego with a large property with several buildings and are only able to get a weak AT&T DSL line for internet, plus POTS.  We do not wish to use any of our limited DSL bandwidth for phone service - NO VOIP - so I bought an Obi 110 and 100 with the intention of using the 110 as a PSTN gateway to at least one Obi100.  I've got the PSTN line plugged into the 110 line in, no service providers configured on either the 110 or the 100, and the default SP1 set to PSTN.  How do I configure the 110 to act as a gateway for that PSTN service to the 100?  What service provider setup do I need on the 100?  Any other tricks to make this work?  Router port forwarding or configuration?

Thank you so much!

Greg

[Rick]

What is your goal here?  Trying to have incoming calls from VoIP lines but have them come in on PSTN?

Seems to me that any VoIP call has to come in over the DSL to get to the OBi.

[Shale]

I think gregyoung wants to receive analog calls on the OBi110 and have them to also ring on phones hooked to one or more OBI100s. He wants to be able to dial analog calls from an OBi100 and have them go out on the PSTN from the OBi110.

Gregyoung does not want to involve a SIP provider, but he does want to use SIP directly between the OBi units that are on his LAN.

I think there was a UK user recently doing something similar, but my search for greenhouse and "green house" did not turn up the thread I thought I remembered.

[Rick]

I guess I fail to see what the OBi's are accomplishing in that setup that a wireless phone system cannot accomplish, unless the goal is to go between multiple buildings that are wired together with ethernet - in which case they could be wired with phone line.

[ianobi]

Shale,
I think I was involved in that UK thread - which I also can no longer find! He had cat5 cable between the house and his garden shed, so I came to the same conclusion as Rick and advised a small PBX system.

gregyoung,
If you have ethernet between the buildings, then this post by RonR gives some details of how to achieve sharing a PSTN line between different OBi devices:
http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=2016.msg12745#msg12745

There are other examples of master/slave type setups. It depends on exactly what is needed.

[gregyoung]

Shale,
I think I was involved in that UK thread - which I also can no longer find! He had cat5 cable between the house and his garden shed, so I came to the same conclusion as Rick and advised a small PBX system.

gregyoung,
If you have ethernet between the buildings, then this post by RonR gives some details of how to achieve sharing a PSTN line between different OBi devices:
http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=2016.msg12745#msg12745

Yes, What is described in that thread appears to be what I am trying to do.  We have Cat5e in and between the buildings, do not wish to use any internet provider and the internet bandwidth it would require, do not want to trench and punch through more wires, distances are too great to reliably use DECT cordless phones, and we do not wish to build and maintain an Asterix PBX. We just want to forward PSTN in and out through the Ethernet from building to building.  IOW, we want what will feel like regular old dial tone sent through the LAN from the Obi110 to one or two Obi100's.

I already registered the two units at Obitalk.  I assume from reading the other post I will need to delete them and restore the units to factory default before proceeding.

As I said I'm new to telephone tech so the instructions in the other thread are pretty arcane to me.  Are there differences between UK and US (AT&T) settings that I will need to allow for?  He was using 110's as "remotes."  Can I use 100's?

[ianobi]

Here's a setup that makes the two OBi phones act as extensions of the same PSTN number - actually was designed as a PBX extension, but is the same setup. It uses an OBi110 for the "main" and any OBi for the "extension". If you pick up the "extension handset" you get PSTN dial tone.

http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=2459.msg33156#msg33156

I already registered the two units at Obitalk.  I assume from reading the other post I will need to delete them and restore the units to factory default before proceeding.

I would not worry about this - RonR had a thing about doing it all locally. Just use the OBiTALK portal to make any changes: Make the changes via the OBi Expert Configuration pages. From your OBi Dashboard, click on your OBi number and follow the prompts to get there. To change a value uncheck both boxes to the right of the value and leave them unchecked. After changing the values on one page, press submit at the bottom of the page and wait a few minutes for the OBi to reboot.

Are there differences between UK and US (AT&T) settings that I will need to allow for?

If you are in San Diego, then you should be fine. OBi devices come with North American settings as default.

[Rick]

Just to clarify - if you have Cat5e running between the buildings BUT have no need for internet between the buildings, the Cat5e can be used for phone wiring, therefore no additional cables would need to be run.  You could have a wireless base or a corded phone in each building.

My entire house is wired in Cat5e instead of phone wiring.  I replaced several of the runs with Cat6 when I wanted internet and phone in certain rooms, which is now made obsolete by the OBi with a wireless base.

[Shale]

Running 100 MHz base-T Ethernet uses only 2 of the 4 pairs in a cable, so you could add an analog pair or two. In some PSTN phone systems you can dial your own number or a special number, and then hang up. The phone rings so that the person in the other building knows to pick up. The phone system does not provide dial tone when you "answer", so the two extensions can talk.

Using the OBis makes it simpler to phone between buildings and does not require added wiring to access the pairs that Ethernet does not use. It also offers the chance to add a digital line also. A SIP or GV call takes about 100 Kb/s of bandwidth each way during a call.

[gregyoung]

Hi all -

The link ianobi posted was just what I wanted - staying entirely on the LAN.  All working well here now...

To answer Rick's question about using a pair from the Cat5e for just the PSTN, we are indeed running internet and ethernet between all the buildings: a router, three wifi access points including a high power external antenna, one 4 port and two 16 port Gigabit switches.  So there's no pair to spare.  And our DSL internet uplink is only 256 KBps, so losing 100kb of that to a phone call is just the wrong call when the PSTN is there, paid for, and reliable.

My next experiment will be to add a wifi to ethernet bridge or wifi extender with ethernet out and see if another Obi will work on that.  It oughta...

I did receive instructions from Obihai to a support question asking about this, but it would have required going through their servers.  Not what we want.

Thanks and I'm looking forward to learning more here.

[ianobi]

gregyoung,

Looks like an interesting project! Progress reports would be welcome here   

I'm glad you are up and running with the "PBX Extension" solution. Although it does exactly what the title says, I do think that the remote OBi is very underused - a bit too dumb! For example, it would be nice if there was a least intercom between the two OBis.

If you are going to end up with 3 or 4 OBi devices on the same LAN, then some sort of simplified version of this might be in order:

http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=4944.msg31966#msg31966

If only PSTN and intercom is needed, then it could be much simplified. I may have a go at that if I get time in the next few days.