Voice over IP phone (Installation help)

[Pigeons]

The company I work for is going to try and set me up to work from home.

Some "pre-setup" voice over IP phones just came in that I will be setting up with my computer at home (cable connection).

Has anyone ever used one before? Is there a certain way to set them up? The damn phone has my extension on it but has no directions what-so-ever showing how to connect it all. They say you can forward calls from it to your cell phone if you step out and they also say that its free to anywhere in the US and like 3-4 cents a minute to calls across seas (China, for example). Is this true? The only reason why I'm asking here is because it's a test phase for this company. They have never done this before, so me and the IT guy are going to try and get it running.

Any information/help would be greatly appreciated.

I made a mspaint image and took a picture of the phone GUESSING how to set it up and to give you a better visual of what phone I am using. When I said 'pre-setup' earlier in this post; I was told that once it is initialized you can simply transfer just like you are at the office. Now, the secretary is the one that called them and set this up, so she might have told them to have it setup in some off-the-wall way due to her not being very computer savvy.

Anyhoo, here are the pics:





Basically all of the wires are the fat ended ethernet type cords. I can't think of the correct name, but there are no smaller phone cord ends needed. Just three ethernet cable\wires.


Short version:
3 ethernet cables
Adapter thingy
Phone

How does this get setup?

[Ihmhi]

If your modem was supplied by your ISP, they usually have a phone jack on the back. Just plug it in there and it should work; at least that is how it works with Optimum Online.

Oh, and those "fat cables" are called either "Ethernet Cables" or "Cat-5" cable.

[Pigeons]

Motorola Modem supplied by Charter cable has no phone jack. Just 1 ethernet jack.

[Innoc]

Unless VOIP is all your modem is doing you're going to need a router to allow multiple devices to simultaneously access your internet connection. You're also going to have to set up proper port forwarding in the router to allow your phone to receive inbound calls and phone traffic. Surely your company has some form of IT support that can assist in or make this happen for you? Honestly, if you're struggling with this...setting up VOIP without a safety net is going to be a challenge for you. I don't say that to be insulting so please don't take it that way.

[Pigeons]

Not sure what you mean by safety net Innoc. I am completely new to this.

I hooked up my linksys router into the mix and got it to initialize, but it was unable to find an "IP Card" - whatever the crap that is?

I found in network connections that it brings up a new icon called Internet Connection and has the option to put in an ip address and the port, and the option to choose UDHC and TCP. Which again, I have no idea what to choose. It shows the port to use, so I guess I will try to forward them in my router options when I get back home.

Is there security risks or other things I should be aware of? As for our company's IT team, there isn't one that knows how to set these up. I tried to call the support number and they are not open on weekends.. such a shame. Good thing I wasn't having problems at home while on the job!

[Innoc]

What I meant by safety net was your company's IT department...they would be your safety net...to take care of you.

What model linksys do you have? You're going to need to be able to do a couple of things.

1) connect your modem to it's cable connection and power it up.
2) connect your modem, through it's ethernet connection to your routers WAN connection and power the router up
3) Connect your PC to one of the 4 LAN ports on your router with an ethernet cable. Either power it up or, if on, power cycle it.
4) go to START, RUN, type CMD and then press enter. In the command console that comes up type IP config and press enter. If your router is running right and is on the factory defaults you see your PC report back something like this:

Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.101
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

5) If you see something similar to what I quoted in 4 you should be able to use a Web browser to browse to the address listed as your gateway in step 4. Linksys has a built-in web interface through which you can configure the router as see whether it's connecting to the modem.

At this point you will need to test whether you're connecting to the net. Once you're connecting to the net and your PC seems to be working correctly you can then start working on getting your VOIP setup running correctly.

Give a shout back once you see about what I point out above.

[Pigeons]

Seems pretty straight-forward. GREATLY appreciated. I will try it as soon as I get home in the morning.

Can I add you to aim/yahoo messenger?

aim: obese banana
yahoo: obesebanana

[Pigeons]

I'm where you are at now.

The phone is initialized but is still "Finding IP Card" and it shows an ip address and a udp port. It says my ip address is 192.168.1.101 at the top of the phone screen too. It repeatedly continues to search for the ip card.

I went into my router settings and opened port 5567 as it states on the phone itself (UDP PORT). I set it as UDP, but should I keep it as just "UDP" or "both" in my router settings?

I'll pm you some screenies of my settings. And if you could reach me on one of the messengers today or tonight (i may be sleeping during the day), I would paypal you $20 to help me get this working.