asterisk users - Oct 2004 - using broadvoice and vonage hardware with Asterisk

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Greetings, I've just about got Asterisk up and running and am
wondering the following.  Currently, I subscribe to both Vonage and
Broadvoice and as such, I've got a Sipura and Cisco ATA186.  Although
I'm sure this is expressly prohibited somewhere in my service
agreements, can I reprogram these devices to access my own asterisk
server rather than their respective providers?  I understand that
Vonage started password protecting some of its ata186s, but am hoping
the Sipura provided by Broadvoice might be easier to reconfigure.  

Any info greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance,

Steve

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On Sun, 3 Oct 2004, Steven M. Sawczyn wrote:
> Greetings, I've just about got Asterisk up and running and am wondering
> the following.  Currently, I subscribe to both Vonage and Broadvoice and
> as such, I've got a Sipura and Cisco ATA186.  Although I'm sure
this is
> expressly prohibited somewhere in my service agreements, can I reprogram
> these devices to access my own asterisk server rather than their
> respective providers?  I understand that Vonage started password
> protecting some of its ata186s, but am hoping the Sipura provided by
> Broadvoice might be easier to reconfigure.
Ahhh.. vonage. Their boxes have gained the notoriety of being useful for
little more than lightweight doorstops once service with vonage has been
discontinued. Last I heard, they had begun using a 64-bit encryption on
the config files, and the key is changed every time the 186 gets updated.
In theory you could make some change to your vonage config which prompts
an update to your 186 and intercept the updated config file, but then
you've got to get ahold of the Cisco config file generation utility and
brute-force the key. I attempted this scheme, but quickly decided it
wasn't worth the time. Might as well use the ata186 as the doorstop Vonage
intended and buy a sipura or other instead. (comments about the
irresponsibility of this business practice supressed)

Oh.. one other thing which might work, which I was in the process of
attempting when my ata186 unceremoniously self-destructed in a popping
fizzing and malodorous manner. If you configure your network so that the
ata186's dhcp, dns and other requests get certain replies, then you could
make the ata186 think it's talking to Vonage when in fact packets are
being directed to your asterisk box (you'll probably have to do most of
this in order to intercept the config file anyway). Because you don't know
the secret it'll use to log in, you may be able to use autocreatepeer=yes
so that asterisk will accept whatever the ata186 attempts with. But as I
say, mine self-destructed moments before I tried that step so I don't know
whether it'll work or not.

As for the broadvoice adapter.. seems like they told me that they used the
spa2000, which is a two-port device, and that their config only locked one
port (the other port is supposed to be available for your use). These
folks are much more sensible to work with, so you'd probably have good
results simply by calling them and asking them to convert your account to
BYOD and to unlock your sipura so that you can point it at your asterisk
box. Of course, you'd still be liable for the account disconnect charge if
at some point you close your account and fail to return their adapter.

Greg

> Greetings, I've just about got Asterisk up and running and am wondering
> the following.  Currently, I subscribe to both Vonage and Broadvoice and
> as such, I've got a Sipura and Cisco ATA186.  Although I'm sure
this is
> expressly prohibited somewhere in my service agreements, can I reprogram
> these devices to access my own asterisk server rather than their
> respective providers?  I understand that Vonage started password
> protecting some of its ata186s, but am hoping the Sipura provided by
> Broadvoice might be easier to reconfigure.
I believe that you should be able to reset any 186 to factory settings:
Pick up phone, press function button, enter 322873738#, and confirm
the reset with *.  Then, you can use the Web interface and/or IVR to
configure the ATA for use with Asterisk.

However, there is no easy way to configure Asterisk to use your Vonage
hardphone account, because the required credentials are transmitted
in encrypted form to the ATA, and reset to factory settings will wipe
them out.

--Stewart