Hi!
I’m looking to replace my family’s landline phone with a VoIP based hardphone. From my research it seems that I’d need a SIP server and a SIP Trunk provider. But I also happened to find Jami that has a SIP account feature.
- Could I make and recieve calls with Jami over the hardphone similar to a landline phone (minus the ability to call and recieve calls from normal phone numbers) with this setup (SIP server + Jami + hardphone)?
- Does anyone have experience setting up a similar system?
- Am I overcomplicating things and a used smartphone turned into a softphone would be a better choice?
I’ve just recently begun my selfhosting journey so I’m not very well versed in networking, but I am willing to put in the time and effort to learn. So any (constructive) feedback/guidance is greatly appreciated!
EDIT: The solution for me it seems is to just buy a used Android smartphone and connect it to a bluetooth handset. Thanks everyone :)
Are you trying to learn how this works or just need a landline?
If you just need a landline, the ISP will give it to you. It’s voip anyway most of the way. Just plug regular phone into router done. Maybe needs to be a proper voip phone in which case your ISP will give you connection details. Usually that connects to a voip server running in your router.
I worked at a voip provider so I want to mention: this is not a “set it and forget it”. This is something requiring regular maintenance with pretty strict regulations from the providers side. Like email, most consumer ISPs are very wary about people self hosting it.
If you are “pretty new to networking” this is not the project to start with, because it requires solid networking fundamentals.
If you really want to go anyway, well… You need something like kamailio. You set that up, get a voip phone that you have to program to register itself. Plan a couple weekends for this because those docs are not for the faint hearted and you probably have to read the source to understand it.
Forward SIP and RTP from the internet to your server (do you have a static ip?). Then you need to find a provider that gives you a number and is willing to have residential connect to it. Then you hope your ISP is not blocking those ports.
Then you should set up some kind of monitoring system because those providers are pretty flaky and will tell you stuff is working when, in fact, it’s not.
Both. I have only one ISP which maybe offers (there is some contradictory wording on their site) landlines for consumers. And they charge outrageous prices for a service which would be used at most once a day for a couple of minutes.
But if you say it’s tough to pull of for a noobie then I’ll look for other solutions.
It isn’t technically tough to do anymore, but you can only self-hosting the sip endpoint, you need to rely on and pay for upstream trunking.
Also, be aware that 911 or emergency service contact is all over the place. In Canada, VoIP providers do not provide 911 unless they have a pots tie-in somewhere, and there are still tragic issues where 911 calls are routed to dispatchers thousands of km away.
If you have any nontechnical people who expect all the features of a landline using this, don’t do it yourself.