How to setup "Call Forwarding"
 

Hi everybody,

Talk of innovation and Voxalot got it right....at least for users like me. This certainly is a great idea!

I was am unable to find any tutorial on how to go about setting up call forwarding. Forum also does not have any relevant discussion. Can anyone provide some basics on how to set this up or point to any tutorial?

I would appreciate the feedback. Thanks,

Punjabi

The only aspect of VoXaLot's Call Forwarding that I have experience using so far is the default rule (by itself) to forward all incoming calls to another destination. An example would be having all your VoXaLot incoming calls forwarded to your Gizmo Project (Sipphone) provider using the following default rule:

sip:1747xxxxxxx@sipphone.com (xxxxxxx is the remainder of your phone number at Sipphone)

It's possible, however, to forward only calls that match a particular CallerID pattern. To accomplish this, you would use what's known as a Regular Expression pattern match string to select which calls to forward. You can have up to nine matching patterns, each with its own destination.

If you're not familiar with composing Regular Expressions, there is a good tutorial at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression.

Ron

Ron,

Thanks for providing the feedback. I appreciate it very much.

Is it possible to forward the calls to Voxalot the calls that you receive at the provider. For e.g., if I have VBuzzer setup as one of the providers on Voxalot website, is it possible to forward the inbound VBuzzer calls to Voxalot through the "Call forwarding"? Is "call forwarding" only strictly for Voxalot calls?

Punjabi

I hope I understood your question correctly...

If your desire is to forward calls from another provider to your VoXaLot number, you can do so as long as the other provider supports URI forwarding. Simply forward calls to sip:xxxxxx@voxalot.com (where xxxxxx is your VoXaLot number). You don't need to have anything set up on VoXaLot for this to work (i.e. no Provider, Dial Plan, or Call Forward entries need to be made).

I have an IPKall DID, a FreeDigits DID, and a Free World Dialup number. I have set up forwarding on all of them to my VoXaLot number and don't need to have an ATA or softphone registered with them. Calls to any of these numbers ring my VoXaLot phone.

Ron

Hi, simple question:

when you talk about setting up uri foward for a voip provider do you mean setting up the forward on the provider's website? How does one do that? Apart from IPkall I don't know of any provider that lets you forward calls to other uri's. Am I wrong? What am I missing?

Let's say that I want to forward my Stanaphone New York number to Voxalot. How would I do that?

Yes, the forwarding must be set up at your VoIP provider's end.

Most providers allow you to forward incoming calls to a PSTN number. Some also allow forwarding to a SIP URI.

Stanaphone and Gizmo Project (Sipphone) are two examples that only allow forwarding to a PSTN number. I have both and it's a big disappointment that I can't receive incoming calls from them on my VoXaLot number.

There was discussion in another thread that VoXaLot might someday support directly registering with some or all of our providers in the same way an ATA or softphone does. That would totally solve this problem and VoXaLot could become the centralized access point to all of your providers with no loose ends. I certainly hope this becomes a reality.

Ron

I don't do it myself (as all the VoIP accounts I forward, allow SIP URI forwarding), but I think the following "work around" should work for the present:

1) Get a free USA PSTN number from http://www.ipkall.com

2) Forward your new IPKall number to the SIP URI of your VoXaLot account

3) Forward your Stanaphone and Gizmo accounts to your IPKall PSTN number. This should work (in theory at least), because IPKall is a "real PSTN number" (and you mentioned those two services offer PSTN number forwarding).

4) Wait a few hours for all the forwarding changes to kick in (IPKall number forwarding changes don't happen instantly, so be patient). After all the forwarding is working, your Stanaphone and Gizmo accounts should forward to your IPKall PSTN number, which should forward to your VoXaLot account, which should ring your VoIP adapter.

good idea, but if you do that Stanaphone will charge their fees, seeing as they are placing a PSTN call. This could be an unwanted thing, I guess...

Ron,

Thanks again. Actually, I am aware of the fact that you are able to forward some of the providers if they allow it at their end, e.g., Free World Dialup. But I was under the impression that as you can make outbound calls using the providers that you have setup in Voxalot, you may as well receive inbound calls from those very providers. But I guess I was expecting too much too soon :-) The problem is that not all the providers allow SIP URI forwarding and there is currently no way to get calls from those providers other than being registered and online with them.

If something like that can be done, it would have been truly revolutionary. It could have been like having an "adapter on the web" although as of today, Voxalot is acting as a adapter at least partially.

Also, for the record, Gizmo Project DOES allow you to forward incoming calls to a SIP URI. I have verified this to be working. You just have to input the SIP URI under their "call forwarding" option, hit save, and there you go. There are some threads on their forum to discuss that.

Thanks,

Punjabi

Gizmo Project's web site has no place to enter call forwarding and Sipphone's web site says it will NOT work with URI's. When I originally checked the Gizmo Project forums, the concensus was that forwarding to a URI was not possible. Thanks to your referral, I found the new thread and sure enough, if you ignore all the indications to the contrary (including it not displaying properly even after you enter it), it DOES work. This is great as I really wanted incoming Gizmo Project/Sipphone calls to ring my VoXaLot number.

Ron

DracoFelis,

I was aware of the approach you outlined to accomplish forwarding of Gizmo Project and Stanaphone calls via IPKall, but as manula pointed out, this turns free incoming DID calls and free in-network calls into paid-for calls (OK, I admit it, I'm a tight-wad :) ). I'm glad you brought it to our attention as it will likely be benefical to others.

The good news, as pointed out by punjabi, is that Gizmo Project does in fact support URI forwarding if you ignore all the indications to the contrary.

Ron

It seems there are some bugs in the Gizmo Project's SIP URI forwarding and their tech support acknowledges them. I hope Gizmo Project is able to fix them. They don't seem to officially support it or advertise it for that matter. And yes, unfortunately unlike FWD, call forwarding can only be enabled from their software client. I wish they supported setting call forwarding from their website as well.

But hey, it works! Gizmo has potential but it has a lot to do in terms of their software client as well customer support before it can appeal to the critical mass or become a serious Skype competitor.

Hi Ron,

Sorry to back track you. I have set Freedigits DID, IPKall DID and FWD forwarding all call to sip:8xxxxx@voxalot.com but non of them works. How did you get yours working?

When I use VOIPbuster to call the DID of Freedigits and IPKall, it indicate ringing, then ended by the other party? (my ATA with Voxalot Account did not ring at all)

FWD only works when I call to my ATA at 8xxxxx@xxx.dyndns.org but forwarding fail to work even when I set to my ATA address.

Let me know if there is anything that I may have miss out. Your help will be most appreciated.

Thanks.

In general, your "sip:8xxxxx@voxalot.com" forwarding looks correct. On FreeDigits, they don't want the 'sip:' at the front. On IPKall, they want it as two fields (8xxxxx and voxalot.com) and no 'sip:' anywhere. IPKall can take an hour or more to recognize the change. FWD should be "sip:8xxxxx@voxalot.com", but FWD has been having a lot of problems for a long time now with changes on the 'Extra Features' page not taking effect (ever).

I don't understand the following statement:

"FWD only works when I call to my ATA at 8xxxxx@xxx.dyndns.org but forwarding fail to work even when I set to my ATA address."

Ron

I mean to say that I setup my sip device (Analog Telephone Adaptor) with a public address using dyndns.org that accept call to 8xxxxx@mydomain.dyndns.org

I was able to received call from FWD when I dial the above URI but fail to receive any call when set permanent forwarding to above URI.

Anyway, I my IPKall was set 2 weeks ago the same way you set yours, but it does not seems to call my voxalot numbers. IPKall DID works well connecting to my FWD account.

Any advice? Thanks for you prompt reply.

Hi Ron,

I tried Freedigits DID forwarding to sip URI of my voxalot numbers (Call rejected). I also tried forwarding to sip URI of my FWD numbers (works).

When calling to another voxalot user I have to use 8829993 before the 6 digits user id to reach the other party. I thought just the 6 digits user id should works?

Does voxalot rejects peering from other Sip Providers? Calling to voxalot user via URI does not seems to work at all. I don't think call forwarding will work if I cannot even call via URI.

Is it possible that only some user like me are affected, because the server we registered to, does not accept peering from some sip providers?

ThaiConnection,

I'm not aware of any problems with forwarding to VoXaLot from any provider which supports SIP URI forwarding. It has worked fine from day one for me with FWD, IPKall, FreeDigits, and now Gizmo Project. The general format is "sip:<voxalot_number>@voxalot.com" (along with the variations previously described). Your ATA that is registered with VoXaLot should then receive those incoming calls.

Using the DracoFelis approach to forward calls directy to your ATA using "sip:<voxalot_number>@mydomain.dyndns.org" *should* work, but requires that your router have port forwarding in place place and be working properly. Since there's no need to wrestle with this approach, I highly recommend letting VoXaLot do all the work.

You should be able to call another VoXaLot user by simply using his 6-digit VoXaLot number, providing you're calling out on your ATA that is registered with VoXaLot.

It's starting to sound like you don't have your ATA set up properly with VoXaLot. The UserID should be your VoXaLot number. The password should be your VoXaLot password. The Proxy/Host should be voxalot.com. You should be able to dial 500 and reach your voicemail. Dialing 600 should get an echo test.

Ron

Hi Ron,

As I suspected, User Id starting with 8xxxxx@voxalot.com is not functioning properly. When calling with Softphones, it shows "incomplete address" or "call terminated by other party"

I registered 2 user ids starting with 3xxxxx@voxalot.com, and change 2 of my ata's user id to 3xxxxx (nothing else is change), then everything is working the way you say it should :- 6 digits call to other voxalot user works and call forwarding from freedigits or IPKall works.

However, calls to 8xxxxx@voxalot.com, using only 6 digits still fails and forwarding from other sip provider also fails.

Kindly let me know if the problem can be fixed, so that I can use back the 8xxxxx@voxalot.com

Thanks.

Hi,

Can you please PM the 8xxxxx and 3xxxxx numbers to me so we can take a look?

Hi Martin,

I PM to you the 8xxxxx and 3xxxxx numbers. Did you received them?

For the mean time I think I have to register some 3xxxxx numbers for use first.

Hi, yes I did. I thought I would register a test number in the 8 range myself and I have no problems. Maybe the next test is for you to use the 8xxxxx number and I call you.

Hi Martin,

Thanks, 8xxxxx number range are working fine now. You guys are great.