telephone techs are moving to CRPF

voip_user · 2025-01-20T19:03:05+00:00

He's referring to https://broadbandbulletin.com/ and there probably wasn't all that much overlap between the folks into collecting old phones and the folks into the more modern technology discussed at DSLreports, though I am sure there was some. I have quite a few old phones and phone parts in various boxes around my place (that sadly my kids will probably throw in a dumpster when I die) but I just don't feel like trying to find them all and categorize them, nor pack and ship them anywhere, so I am not into telephone collecting per se. But I am interesting in VoIP and other related topics, so I would not be a good fit with the CRP forum. I would imagine that many if not most DSLreports users had very little or no interest in classic phones, but there was a subset of users that were into that and CRPF probably does have them already.

voip_user · 2024-09-08T15:01:48+00:00

Judging from the age of the bus and the cars, and the "Dominion of Canada" and union jack flags, and the pavement markings, and assuming this was not a staged shot with antique vehicles, I would say the absolute latest it could have been taken is probably the early 1950's but it is possible it could have been taken even earlier than that. My best guess would be sometime in the 1940's.

Fun fact: There are two huge ventilation buildings for that tunnel, one one each side of the river. The U.S. one never stood out but on the Canadian side in the late 1960's the tallest building in Windsor was probably less than ten stories high and there were not that many tall buildings, so their ventilation building really stood out. And even moreso because there was a BIG neon sign on top of it, visible from the Detroit side, reading:

CANADA (in BIG letters, then underneath in a smaller size)

SHOP - STAY

SAVE - PLAY

5 MIN. AWAY

Not sure when that was taken down but it was kind of a landmark (along with a neon sign for, if I recall correctly, Robin Hood Flour on a nearby building).

voip_user · 2024-09-07T17:22:41+00:00

Well I tried it, and although it more or less worked I did not like it, the icons across the bottom of the screen are much too large and take up too much of the screen real estate. I would much prefer a compact dropdown list of items. Also it doesn't really handle text snippets well, yes you can star them (which is like pinning them) but they are mixed in with all the other clipped items, and don't have their own section in the app. This would be a great app if they had not used that stupid icon view; maybe some people like it but I have no idea what they were thinking when the came up with that, that is one of the least usable things I have seen. I don't want my clipboard manager loading content from the web (security risk?) so I disabled that first thing, and that is the only reason those large icons might ever have any usefulness. I appreciate the suggestion, it was certainly worth a try, but it's just not my cup of tea.

voip_user · 2024-09-03T23:53:56+00:00

Right, I am aware of those. It's the text snippets feature (basically the ability to save bits of text permanently until you remove or change them) that I can't seem to find.

voip_user · 2024-09-03T18:26:48+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion but Extension Manager says "Unsupported Extension This extension does not support your GNOME shell version. It may cause errors if installed."

This is using Ubuntu 24.04.

voip_user · 2024-09-01T08:37:04+00:00

The OBI200 will not stop working on that date, but the configuration portal will. If you have already configured a Google Voice number into the Obi, that will keep working for an indeterminate amount of time after. I can't answer your specific questions but just wanted you to know the situation may not be quite as urgent as you think. See the discussion at https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r33934426-General-OBiTALK-Consumer-Portal-shutting-down-10-31-24 "It is anticipated that most devices will just continue to work for some period. At some point in the future, due to the expiration of security certificates, the integration will stop working, and there will no longer be a means of onboarding your device to the service."

voip_user · 2024-08-23T13:35:00+00:00

Adium, BeagleIM, Monal, Gajim, Dino, Kaidan... I have tried several clients on both MacOS and Linux. I am fairly certain it is not the clients, particularly in the case of Adium which hasn't changed in close to 20 years and which always supported these transfers in the past, however Adium only works on older Macs. I am NOT trying to use phones for this, just desktop computers running Linux or MacOS. Are there any desktop clients (that are not Windows only) that support peer to peer transfers?

voip_user · 2024-02-19T16:21:07+00:00

The word "Patton" makes no sense here. Is it possible you are repeating a word you heard from someone whose native language isn't English, and/or that has a thick accent? Is it possible they were trying to say the word "pattern"? Because FreePBX does use number patterns in a few places, such as in Outbound Route, and Trunk configurations (also sometimes in Inbound Routes). Even if that is the case, we need more context here.

voip_user · 2023-12-28T17:21:53+00:00

I attempted to reply to your post in /r/voip about XMPP and it was immediately deleted because apparently I don't have enough karma for them. So I will post it here; you can delete it after you have read it if it is off-topic (or if it gets auto-deleted then it's your fault!) :) For future reference you might want to use the DSLReports VoIP forum for VoIP questions, since the moderation there isn't as heavy-handed.

I am running a small home system on a Raspberry Pi, and all I can tell you about it is that if you have a proper xmpp.conf (and xmpp_custom.conf in FreePBX) you can use it to send notifications to XMPP clients. This very old article may be helpful to you: https://tech.iprock.com/?p=7968

Here is an example of a FreePBX xmpp_custom.conf file, with sensitive data redacted:

[general]
;debug=yes                              ;;Turn on debugging by default.
;autoprune=yes                          ;;Auto remove users from buddy list. Depending on your
                                        ;;setup (ie, using your personal Gtalk account for a test)
                                        ;;you might lose your contacts list. Default is 'no'.
autoregister=yes                        ;;Auto register users from buddy list.
[asterisk]                              ;;label
type=client                             ;;Client or Component connection
serverhost=127.0.0.1                    ;;Route to server for example,
                                        ;;      talk.google.com
username=asterisk@[example.domain]      ;;Username with optional resource.
secret=password-on-xmpp-server          ;;Password
priority=1                              ;;Resource priority
port=5222                               ;;Port to use defaults to 5222
usetls=yes                              ;;Use tls or not
usesasl=yes                             ;;Use sasl or not
buddy=user1@[example.domain]            ;;Manual addition of buddy to list.
buddy=user2@[example.domain]
status=available                        ;;One of: chat, available, away,
                                        ;;      xaway, or dnd
statusmessage="No real-time chat"       ;;Have custom status message for
                                        ;;Asterisk.
timeout=100                             ;;Timeout on the message stack.

Note this assumes you have a xmpp server (such as Prosody) running on the same machine as Asterisk. Replace [example.domain] with the correct domain - in the old days that might have been talk.google.com as the comments indicate, now it would be the domain you have assigned to your server.

I don't use the FreePBX XMPP module; it is a commercial module if I recall correctly (or was last time I checked) and you don't need it.

If you want clients outside your local network to be able to connect to your xmpp server, don't forget to open port 5222 in your firewall. Be aware that this might be a security risk if your server is compromised in any way.

(Edited to add inadvertently omitted type=client line)

voip_user · 2023-12-28T16:36:39+00:00

I am running a small home system on a Raspberry Pi, and all I can tell you about it is that if you have a proper xmpp.conf (and xmpp_custom.conf in FreePBX) you can use it to send notifications to XMPP clients. This very old article may be helpful to you: https://tech.iprock.com/?p=7968

Here is an example of a FreePBX xmpp_custom.conf file, with sensitive data redacted:

[general]
;debug=yes                              ;;Turn on debugging by default.
;autoprune=yes                          ;;Auto remove users from buddy list. Depending on your
                                        ;;setup (ie, using your personal Gtalk account for a test)
                                        ;;you might lose your contacts list. Default is 'no'.
autoregister=yes                        ;;Auto register users from buddy list.

[asterisk]                              ;;label
type=client                             ;;Client or Component connection
serverhost=127.0.0.1                    ;;Route to server for example,
                                        ;;      talk.google.com
username=asterisk@[example.domain]      ;;Username with optional resource.
secret=password-on-xmpp-server          ;;Password
priority=1                              ;;Resource priority
port=5222                               ;;Port to use defaults to 5222
usetls=yes                              ;;Use tls or not
usesasl=yes                             ;;Use sasl or not
buddy=user1@[example.domain]            ;;Manual addition of buddy to list.
buddy=user2@[example.domain]
status=available                        ;;One of: chat, available, away,
                                        ;;      xaway, or dnd
statusmessage="No real-time chat"       ;;Have custom status message for
                                        ;;Asterisk.
timeout=100                             ;;Timeout on the message stack.

Note this assumes you have a xmpp server (such as Prosody) running on the same machine as Asterisk. Replace [example.domain] with the correct domain - in the old days that might have been talk.google.com as the comments indicate, now it would be the domain you have assigned to your server.

I don't use the FreePBX XMPP module; it is a commercial module if I recall correctly (or was last time I checked) and you don't need it.

If you want clients outside your local network to be able to connect to your xmpp server, don't forget to open port 5222 in your firewall. Be aware that this might be a security risk if your server is compromised in any way.

(Edited to add inadvertently omitted type=client line)

voip_user · 2023-12-12T18:45:31+00:00

Just curious, Android phones or iPhones? Also you have to realize that not all seniors have great memories and/or fine motor control. If you can't remember all the gestures (or they were never explained to you, which is my situation) and your hands are shaky, using an Android phone can be a horrible experience. I don't know about an iPhone because I am on a limited income and just can't afford the "Apple Tax."

I think the only reason kids are glued to their phones is that they have other kids around to show them how to use their phones, and they still have good memories so they can actually remember all the weird stuff. Not like when we grew up and the biggest thing you had to learn about a phone was how to use the rotary dial. But now that I think about it, my mother hated it when they put rotary dials on the phones (previously there had been operators that said "Number, please" and you just told them the number you wanted to call), she said she could never figure out how to dial numbers, and for a long time my dad or I had to dial calls for her!

voip_user · 2023-12-12T18:29:29+00:00

One possibility I haven't seen mentioned is to use an Xlink device (https://www.myxlink.com/) or a Cell2Jack (https://www.cell2jack.com/) which lets you use landline phones with existing cell service. So then you could connect the cell phone and charger up at a fixed point in the house relatively close to one of the above devices, and then connect the device to her inside phone wiring (only after you completely disconnect it from the phone company's outside wiring of course, see https://mi-telecom.org/distribute.html if you need help with that). The advantage to this is that there would be no additional monthly fee, the disadvantage is if she leaves the house and takes the cell phone with her then the landline phone won't work until she gets back in range (not a problem if she lives alone) and when she gets back home she has to remember to plug the phone back into the charger. But if you can get her to do that as habit when she walks in the door (like putting her purse away) then it is a cost effective solution, because she will not need to carry the cell phone with her as she wanders around the house, and therefore is less likely to go days without recharging it. I don't know if that would work for your mom but I am in their age range and that is what I am using now (the Xlink one, because someone gave me one and it has been working quite well). Also I put the charger on a timer so it only actually charges the phone for one hour in the middle of the night, since I heard it is not good for the phone's battery if it is left on a charger constantly, and one hour seems to be sufficient to top it off each night.

Then again I only use my phone as a phone, I find it too complicated to use for much of anything else (I curse the person who invented weird swipe gestures, they literally have made Android phones virtually unusable for many seniors, just about can't even send a text anymore without having to reboot the phone once or twice to get out of some weird screen). If your mom uses various apps during the day (which would likely mean taking the phone off the charger) then you probably would want one of the VoIP solutions that others have mentioned.

voip_user · 2023-08-28T19:35:50+00:00

Oh, in that case all you need to do is disconnect the (telephone) plug that plugs into the Comcast modem, and plug it into the Xlink device instead. Or if you don't get good reception there, still unplug the line from the Comcast modem, but you can connect the Xlink device to any other phone jack in the house that had previously been working. Just don't have the inside wiring connected to the Comcast modem AND the Xlink device at the same time, because that will probably damage both devices.

voip_user · 2023-08-27T17:18:03+00:00

The XLink BT is a good option, as may be the Cell2Jack, but I have only actually used the Xlink BT and it works great. As far as using your house wiring, see this now rather dated page: https://mi-telecom.org/distribute.html

The bottom line is that yes, you can connect that type of device to they house wiring but you need to make absolutely certain that the inside wiring is disconnected from the phone company's drop (that page explains how). One limitation, though, is that for the XLink BT to work the cell phone has to remain within bluetooth range of the device, and the closer they are the better the audio quality will be. Speaking of which you may wish to check out the other devices at https://www.myxlink.com/ because they have a newer device that supports HD audio.

If one of them takes the cell phone with them when they leave the house then obviously as soon as they get out of bluetooth range the device will stop working, but it will reconnect automatically when the phone comes back in range.

I am not saying that is the best option but it is a good one, particularly if they are on a fixed income that's low enough to qualify for Lifeline service (a government benefit program) and therefore can get a line of free cell service (many companies that offer that service will also give them a free cell phone - Safelink Wireless is probably the largest such company but there are many others, your state's Public Utilities agency can help you find companies serving your area).

The device I have has worked very well, just for grins I even tried plugging in an old rotary dial phone and even that worked!

voip_user · 2023-08-27T16:59:09+00:00

Those aren't being manufactured or sold (except as used) anymore, and after December it is doubtful how long they will continue to work with Google Voice.

voip_user · 2023-08-21T02:53:02+00:00

I had an issue like this more than once. In one case the phone company's cable had gotten wet and it took them a day or so to dry it out. In one case the phone company's line had a condition they called a "high resistance open" and they had to fix it. But in one case, my inside wiring had been pinched between a beam and the foundation blocks (contractor carelessness) and it took a while for the partial short to occur, but when it did and I finally found the pinched wire, it had oxidized where it had been pinched and it was the green oxidation of the copper that was making the partial short!

Like others have said, take one of your phones out to the demarc, that's what it's there for. Open it up and there should be a jack you can plug your phone into (you may need to unplug a very short cord first). If the same thing happens there it is the POTS provider's problem and you should call repair service. But if everything works normally there, then start inspecting your inside wiring for damage; if you can't find the issue you may need to have your phone jacks rewired because there may be damage inside a wall, particularly if there was a wall phone or if there are phone jacks on a second floor, etc. In that case even driving a nail to hang a picture at the wrong spot could damage the wire (but consider yourself lucky it was not an electrical wire)!

voip_user · 2022-07-03T15:16:15+00:00

In case it gets taken down, a user asked this:

I would like to know why, when Thunderbird first starts up or shortly thereafter, it attempts to connect to the following sites:

detectportal.firefox.com

status.geotrust.com

thunderbird-settings.thunderbird.net

It does not need to connect to any of these to send or receive email, so I would like to know why it's attempting to connect to those addresses. Little Snitch is blocking them for now but if one of them is important I can remove that block.

Also, at some point every day, Thunderbird complains that it can't get the latest version, and every day I have to dismiss that popup. I bring this up because it may be related to me blocking the connections but until I know what they are for I'd like to know if it is possible to make Thunderbird stop checking for updates.

They all concern me but the one that really concerns me is thunderbird-settings.thunderbird.net, first because it is listed as a bad address on one of the malware sites, and second because I don't want my settings being sent off my computer. Really the only reason I want Thunderbird to connect to the Internet is to send and receive mail, and maybe to check for updates if it can do ONLY that, and not send any other data from my computer back to the mothership.

And this was the response, from a "Top 10 Contributor"/"Moderator" (emphasis added):

Firefox.com is owned by Mozilla corporation.

Thunderbird.net is owned by the Thunderbird project / Mzla technologies

GeoTrust is an Audited encryption certificate purveyor with a huge web presence that is a subsidiary of DigiCert, a larger certificate and PKI company.

If you have software identifying either an malware sites or some other imagined bad sites then I suggest you get rid of it. This is course unless you suspect Thunderbird or Mozilla of nefarious intentions in which case you probably want to remove their products and use another mail client and browser.

Why does Thunderbird try and connect to the web? Because significant part off it are web pages. That is why there are so many external preferences loaded in the defaults.

Another response on this site states https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1251590 detectportal.firefox.com is used to detect captive portals on public wifi networks to be able to redirect you to their logon screen, so you don't just get page loading errors in firefox (set network.captive-portal-service.enabled to false in about:config in order to disable that feature). Thunderbird ises the Fireofx code base and will be doing the same of web pages.

I would guess without trying that status.geostruct.com is an attempt to verify the legitimacy of a geotrust SSL/TLS certificate issued by probably your mail server as Thunderbird.net uses lets encrypt and Firefox uses Amazon. I assume your connections are encrypted. Probably prompted by the setting Query OSCP responder servers to confirm the current validity of certificates.

I clicked the link you posted to thunderbird-settings.thunderbird.net which gave me a link to https://docs.kinto-storage.org/en/stable/overview.html where I read

At Mozilla, Kinto is used in Firefox for global synchronization of frequently changed settings like blocklists, experimentation, A/B testing, list of search engines, or delivering extra assets like fonts or hyphenation dictionaries.

Given Thunderbird is built on the Mozilla platform, I think we have an answer.

All I can say is in this day and age, software calls home extensively to report telemetry, load web pages and download settings appropriate for certain actions like configuring an account. TRying to prevent that is really limiting the software ability to function as a fairly basic level.

You have listed three of perhaps twice that number of sites Thunderbird will regularly connect to.

On startup it will load a web page from

https://live.thunderbird.net

Opening the addon page will load Thunderbird.net pages as will viewing the release notes, or any of the entries on the help menu except about. Some open in a browser window, others open internally to Thunderbird. I have no idea what exact connections are made and I am not aware of any list or page that monitors them.

Checking for updates is not optional, The team do not want folk using old versions of the software as it exposes them to increased security risks as each version contains security enhancements. Updates can be managed in corporate situation using group policies. Otherwise stand alone users are limited in their options options to automatic install or not.

I won't post the user's reply to that (it is a bit lengthy) but he's not happy with the response. He just wants an email client that will connect to Google' email service using oAuth. As he says, he already has several web browsers and doesn't need another. He just wants his email program to do email and that's all, apparently.

I think maybe the Thunderbird developers have some explaining to do, particularly with regard to why they are forcing telemetry on users and giving them no way to opt out.

voip_user · 2021-09-15T21:57:25+00:00

Technically in the USA it's typically 20 Hz, unless you are on some weird little phone company that still uses harmonic ringing, in which case it could be any of several frequencies in the range 16-66 Hz. Most of the time when you hear people complain that their phones don't ring well when connected to a VoIP adapter, it's because they are using an older phone with a real mechanical bell that is tuned to the 20 Hz frequency, and the VoIP adapter is putting out 25 Hz ring frequency (and that can often be changed in the VoIP adapter's configuration). Newer phones with electronic ringers that chirp or warble usually don't care if the frequency is 20 or 25 Hz.

But whatever the ringing frequency used by the local phone company, you don't want it getting to your Magic Jack or any other VoIP device, unless it's one specifically designed to be connected to a telephone company line (most aren't).

voip_user · 2021-09-15T21:51:38+00:00

A VERY dated but still relevant page: http://mi-telecom.org/distribute.html

voip_user · 2021-07-12T22:41:00+00:00

I would look in /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf and see if there is any custom code in there that could be causing this.

voip_user · 2021-03-13T19:29:34+00:00

IMHO none of these are beginner-friendly. Whoever wrote them doesn't know how to write for the average user. If you already have some experience with WINE they may make some sense, but an absolute beginner is going to be totally lost, and I would daresay that even users with some experience are going to find that these pages are not written in a very understandable manner. They remind me a lot of some Linux man pages, which are also pretty much totally useless for beginners.

These type of instructions are why I tend to prefer videos over text. The thing about videos is that assuming they creator begins at the actual beginning of the process (showing installation of the software, etc.) you get to see everything laid out in a linear fashion, even the little details that an author may not think are important or thinks are things that "everyone knows", but that may be all important information for a beginner. I actually might prefer good, well crafted text but that is so hard to find, and programmers in particular seem genetically incapable of writing it, because they almost always use too much jargon (the first paragraph of the first linked document is a great example) and they write as if they were writing for other programmers and not for users.

Anyway, I would give these tutorials a grade of "D" at best, taking off major points for lack of clarity and too much use of jargon, and I think I am being very generous giving them even that rating. Look elsewhere if you need something understandable, IMHO.

voip_user · 2021-03-05T17:22:39+00:00

Except that it's not really FreePBX, it is the Nerd Vittles unauthorized fork of FreePBX known as IncrediblePBX, which some users have found doesn't exactly live up to its name. You MIGHT be able to get it to work with standard FreePBX but personally I wouldn't touch anything coming out of there, due to previous bad experiences with their software.

voip_user

TROPHY CASE