Quote:
Originally Posted by shezad
This might sound stupid, but what does PSTN number mean ?
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Public Switched Telephone Network
i.e. this is your plain old telephone company phone line...
Quote:
Originally Posted by shezad
Im also trying to understand ENUM system.
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You can think of ENUM as a sort of automated "phone book", with a couple of key differences:
1) While I normal phone book uses your name/address as the thing you are looking up by, in the case of ENUM it uses your existing telco "phone number" as the thing you look up by.
2) And whereas a normal phone book returns a phone number, ENUM returns a VoIP address (sort of like an email address, except used for "Internet Phone" instead of email).
The practical effect of those two differences, is that someone who already knows your existing "phone number", can easily tell what your VoIP address (way to reach you via a free "Internet Phone" call is). And since ENUM is automated, various equipment/services (including Voxalot) can be setup to check for the free ENUM call path first, before calling via the normal method that you have to pay for.
But, you must remember, that ENUM is JUST A PHONE BOOK (albeit a very useful one). If you haven't setup some other way (for example, a VoIP adapter hooked up to Voxalot) for people to reach you via your published VoIP address, than ENUM won't magically let others call you "for free". All ENUM does, is allow you to "publish" to the world that you have setup an alternate ('free to the caller") way to be reached. It is then
your responsibility to make sure that the alternate way (be it a Voxalot account, or any other means of accomplishing the same task) of calling you actually works. Because ENUM only allows "free incoming calls" when combined with a proper inbound VoIP setup (such as Voxalot). Without such a setup, ENUM actually gets in the way, and makes it harder for someone to call you (as you would then be telling others to call you by a method that isn't working properly)! But when combined with a proper VoIP setup, ENUM "publishing" gives others (who know your phone number) the info as to what "alternative way of contacting you" can be used, if you want to call "for free" (instead of paying the telephone company, for a normal call)...