[kwlug-disc] voip questions

[John Van Ostrand]

----- Original Message -----
> From doing a little research, it seems that using Asterisk in a VM is
> fine. Just stick with ATA's like the Linksys SPA1001 (
> http://www.voipvoip.com/linksys-spa-1001/ ) for your analog phones.
> You can, with a bit of wiring, hook this up to all the analog phones
> in your house, but it may not have the power required to power more
> than 2 phones per line. 

The REN value that Lori wrote about previously is the "ringer equivalence number". It is a measure of how much power is supplied over the phone line in order to ring a phone. A REN value of 1 represents a conventional Bell phone, the one with a mechanical ringer. I grew up with one as a kid, but today you'll rarely see them, except in old movies.  As you can imagine a mechanical bell requires some power to perform, more than the electrical speaker/buzzer in modern phones. You will find that your modern phone may have a REN load as low as one tenth of that old mechanical phone, meaning that a REN factor of 3 which is Sipura's default, could support lots of modern phones.

-- 
John Van Ostrand 
CTO, co-CEO 
Net Direct Inc. 
564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 
Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 
Fx: 519-883-8533 

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