[ale] SIP service recommendations (WAS: File System for Newbs)

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Tue, 28 Jul 2009, Richard Bronosky wrote:

> Do you use iCall with freeSWITCH? If not, what SIP service do you
> use? This should probably be a new thread... resubjecting.

The setup I have is a slight bit on the complex side.  I was a SunRocket 
customer some time back, and not long after I purchased a whole year of 
service, they folded.  Never did get my money back (and neither did a friend 
of mine who also got the whole-year deal the same time that I did---on my 
recommendation, ugh).

So, what we did was this:

   * Repurposed the SunRocket gizmo ATA devices.  This involved changing the
     passwords on them and disabling provisioning services on the things so
     that they didn't reset to their SR-provided settings.

   * Got an inbound account and ported our numbers from SR to BroadVoice.

   * Got an outbound account through Diamondcard.us.

Now, from there, I've done a few things.  At first I ran plain Asterisk, and 
then I added FreePBX to that and used that for a while.  However, there were 
many subtle stability problems that did not have any clear cause.  Sometimes 
calls would not go through, or come in, or whatever.  So, I switched in March 
to FreeSWITCH, which has been doing wonderful, with one bug that I've actually 
turned into a feature.  More on that in a minute.

The total cost of our monthly service breaks down to:

  * Inbound: $15/mo, for 2 DID numbers (mine, and my friend's, old SunRocket
    numbers).
  * Outbound: Based on usage.  Typically less than $1/mo.  Querying all of my
    outbound calls since June 1, we've spent $3.233 on outbound calling
    from then to just now.  (We use our cell phones more than anything else,
    obviously.)

The setup is that I have an IP phone on my desk that handles 4 line 
appearances (3 enabled) and answers to two extensions, and (at present) a 
single line (extension) off of the ATA which is connected directly to the 
FreeSWITCH server via 100Mbit Ethernet.  My friend in Toledo has a SunRocket 
gizmo ATA that handles his extension and talks to my FreeSWITCH server over 
the Internet.

Now, to the bug-as-feature:  When my Internet connection disappears, 
FreeSWITCH is unable to register with BroadVoice and freaks out with a 
segmentation fault.  This causes my phone on my desk to not register to 
FreeSWITCH, and its buttons turn yellow.  I have a script that sleeps for one 
minute and tries again; I nearly always see the buttons turn yellow, so this 
segmentation fault (which I believe has been fixed in the most recent release 
of FreeSWITCH) serves as a network alarm for me.  Primitive, yet effective.  I 
don't plan on upgrading.  :)

> I am considering Gizmo5, but I can't figure out if SIP rates are the
> same as "Call out from your desktop rate"
> (http://gizmo5.com/pc/network/callout-rates/). But now I see
> http://carriers.icall.com/services.php which looks good until I see
> "minimum deposit" on http://carriers.icall.com/faqs.php

I haven't used Gizmo nor iCall, so I don't know how reliable they are.  As far 
as BroadVoice goes, I have been mostly happy with them.  We've been using them 
since SunRocket went belly-up just over 2 years ago.  In that time, we've only 
had 3 outages from BroadVoice; one immediately after we switched, which could 
be attributed to the instant massive growth they "suffered" as a result of 
SunRocket closing its doors, one about a year ago that lasted three days and I 
received a service credit for, and one about two weeks ago that lasted about a 
day, and I didn't bother persuing anything on that one.

As far as Diamondcard.us goes, they have _never_ been down when I've tried to 
use them.  There may have been outages that I'm not aware of, but AFAIK they 
have been 100% up for us.

The reason that we went with two providers is two-fold:  #1 we did not need 
BroadVoice's unlimited service; we would have spent much more money than we 
have in the past two years for something we hardly use.  Secondly, if inbound 
dies, outbound isn't affected, and vice-versa.  After SunRocket went away, I 
wasn't about to trust another seemingly-reputable VoIP company with 100% of my 
service.

I would have liked to have found a solution where my phone numbers could 
fail-over to another provider, but I don't think that the plain phone system 
is versatile enough to support such things yet; it probably won't be until the 
PSTN is 100% digital and uses something like DNS to find where to route phone 
numbers and is easily controllable by the end-user of the telephone number. 
That's fine, though; I'm pretty much happy with the solution that I have.

> I just want a cheap backup for when I can't get cell service at my home!

That's pretty much what we have.  I have some extensions to the setup, where I 
can call numbers on the Internet and the like, and I'd like to (when I have 
the time) enhance it a bit more to be able to "dial into" various things.  Oh, 
and we can call internationally for _really_ inexpensively.  Much less costly 
than on the cell phones, which was one of the major reasons that I decided to 
use Diamondcard for outbound service.  I used to have a password-lock on 
international dialing, but wound up changing it to just a 30 second message 
that warns that the call may cost more than expected.

 	--- Mike