voip.ms discussion

[Mango]

Ahhhh. I see; good thought. Good luck with that. I'm tinkering with an example for my own use; I'll post it if I get it working.

[FunkyTown]

That would be great Mango. I'll also post mine if I can get it working. :-)

[gazork]

After a month of complications with Bell. They are promising to deliver me a cellpipe modem. I also use a PAP2 ATA. My present modem is a 2Wire and I have had intermittent choppiness and dropped calls, dead lines - all in all not a happy experience.
My download is 12MB at present and upload .6 - they think this may be the bottleneck. I'm on Montreat2 server.

I hoping that this cellpipe is going to bring me long life and happiness. Anyone have experience with this combo? or have any ideas how to optimize it?

[FunkyTown]

After years of being with Videotron and no issues with my voip quality, I switched to Bell Internet for 3 to 4 months earlier this year. I had on-going issues with Bell. Their support guys told me to call VoIP.ms because there was no problem on their end. I had Videotron hooked back up and all of the problems are gone. My phone is now working 100% glitch free. I did have the 2-Wire modem when I was with Bell. Perhaps that is what was causing the issues. My overall speed was good, but there was a lot of jitter and cutting in and out on voice calls. It was unacceptable. I hope this new modem fixes your trouble.

[gazork]

Thank you FunkyTown. I had never heard of Videotron - mind you I was in Africa from 1980 till 2003. Anyway I see that they are available in my area and if Bell doesn't work - I'll check them out further. Their rates look slightly better too. I see that they are cable.

[FunkyTown]

Yes Videotron offers high speed Internet. Rogers offers it too.

[Mango]

I got stuck with my script. I wanted to build something to change the POP of my DID if a POP should become unreachable. But my DID is routed to a SIP URI, and even though I don't want to change the routing, it is a required field, and SIP URI is not a valid routing header for the API. Argh.

[FunkyTown]

Oh so should the pop go down and you reroute, you'll have to choose a phone number.

Is there a way to set it in a ring group and use the ring group instead?

[Mango]

Nope; only account, voicemail, or PSTN forward.

Edited to add: Holy cow, this has already been fixed! I did NOT expect their developers to be working on a Saturday!

m.

[FunkyTown]

Yes it seems like they may have rushed through that portion of it. I would open a support ticket about it. They might add the functionality.

[Drover]

New voip.ms user here. I read this entire 90-some page thread and it was quite helpful. My thanks to those who contributed to it.

I have a couple of questions for you expert-types out there. First, I have read about it and researched it and I'm still not quite sure exactly what exactly is the purpose of sub-accounts. It seems to be more for people who have multiple phone numbers?

Two, does anyone know if there's a way to determine the order in which CallerID filters are applied? I've noticed the filtering rules are listed in numeric order with no apparent way to re-order them, and some of the rules I'm looking to set up are potentially conflicting. For instance, my in-laws live in theoretical area code 789 and they're the only people from that area code who call us. So I set up a ring group consisting of our home number (the one and only DID I have at the moment), my wife's cell phone, and her office number, and then I created a CallerID filter for 789* to route calls to that ring group. Meanwhile, I want all other calls to ring our home phone and my cell phone, so I set up a CallerID filter XXXXXXXXXX and routed it to a ring group consisting of our home number and my cell phone number. The issue is, when my in-laws call their CallerID will satisfy both conditions, so will their calls be routed to both ring groups or is the system "smart enough" to apply it only to the filter created for their area code? Or does it apply them in the order they appear in the list of rules?

Third, when routing a call to more than one number simultaneously, is there a way to ensure that only the voip.ms's voicemail will pick up if the call is not answered besides making sure voip.ms has the shortest ring duration before being routed to voicemail? I know at least one other VoIP provider has the option to not automatically connect the call if one of the simul-ring numbers picks up; instead you are given a menu option to either pick up the call or let it keep ringing the other number(s). Does voip.ms have anything like that?

Thanks for your help.

[FunkyTown]

Let's see:

- Your default calls do not need a special caller id rule. The only rules you need to put in there are the exceptions. Callers outside of that will follow whatever provisioning you set onto the DID.

- I don't believe there is a priority path. If you setup exceptions in your caller I'd rules the first one that the caller matches will be invoked. Due to this, you should avoid using XXXXXXXXXX or * as those are not exceptions - those are everyone!

- Sub accounts are used to create a separate registration for multiple phones or lines as well as to separate phone numbers. Let's say you had a phone in your kid's room. You might want to use port 2 on the back of your ATA for your kid's room so that they cannot barge in on your phone calls. You can setup port/line 2 of your ATA by provisioning a sub account. The sub account will give you additional registration credentials separate from your main line. You can still hook your DID to both the main and sub acct if you wish. That way both lines will ring when a call comes in. Whoever answers first gets it. The other line is free to use to dial out. You'll get a dialtone and that line cannot barge in on the other because it's not an extension. It's a separate VoIP line.

- VoIP.ms has something on their list of features indicating they are working on something where you would need to dial a code before you'll get your call on a ring group. That will stop voicemail other than your VoIP voicemail from getting the call. However this is currently not setup. So the only thing you can do at the moment is set the failover at VoIP.ms to occur a second before your cell phone voicemail kicks in. If your cell answers after 20 seconds then set the failover to 19. Now when you power off your cell it may go to voicemail right away. At this time you can setup a time condition. If you know your cell is on Mon to Fri from 9 am to 5 pm and off after that, you can remove the cell from the ring group after 5 using the time conditioning.

Keep in mind that time conditioning rules can override caller id rules.

[Mango]

Originally Posted by Drover

Two, does anyone know if there's a way to determine the order in which CallerID filters are applied?

There is not; if this is important to you, you could submit it as a feature request. They are very good about implementing feature requests.

m.

[Drover]

Thanks for your responses.

Funkytown, you say my default calls don't need a special CallerID rule. But unless I'm missing something, they do if I want them to simultaneously ring my cell phone. Best I can see, the only way I can make that happen is to create a rule for all calls and hope the rules for other calls are implemented before the "all calls" rule is implemented. If in fact the rules are implented in the order they are listed, that turns out to be OK because the "XXXXXXXXXX" rule is the last one. But if the order in which they apear is what determines which rule is implemented, then IMO the user should have control over the order. I'll talk to someone in support to find out for sure how rules are implented, and if necessary, submit a feature request like Mango suggests.

Also, do you know how long they've been working on "dial a code to pick up a ring group call" thingy or whenabouts they might be rolling it out?

Thanks again for your help.

[Mango]

Actually, you can route a DID directly to a ring group, with no Caller ID Filtering. Does that help straighten things out?