[VoIP] Just bought a Western Electric 202

[John Novack]

John R. Covert wrote:
> "Even without a network it will sound better than a cellphone."  Great.  I'm a ulaw stickler here on VoIP; 
Probably true in the case of CDMA phones, which are absolutelt awful
GSM phones are probably the best, but even then the cheap ones aren't much

For the small fortune you paid for that D handset mount, you could have 
gotten much more at any of the phone shows held throughout the year.
>   "Those collectors say you'll burn out the transmitter
> or receiver, but I've never had a problem."  Well, I don't want to
> be the first one with a problem.
>   
Perhaps, perhaps not with the IAXy, but it just isn't correct.
Unfortunately many phones have been sold that way.
> I have a bunch of old 2500 sets around, and I can make a subset
> (which has to be out of sight to keep the wife happy anyway, so it
> will be under the floorboards above the false ceiling in the room
> below it where I just mounted the Bell Chime last night).
>   
Or as Steph has suggested, a mini network can be fitted inside.
I don't know if Odis sells them, but Steve Hiltz and Paul Wiltfong used 
to, and may still.

> As I had mentioned, I needed to buy an IAXy to put dial-pulse
> phones on my Asterisk (the Cisco ATAs only take DTMF).  It
> arrived this morning, and I hooked it up to a 2500 set which
> has now replaced the 2565.  I had to do a lot of dialplan
> work for it; all my other stations are on smart adapters that
> have dialplans built in, and the IAXy does overlapped dialing,
> talking its way through your Asterisk dial plan as you go,
> so the stuff I had done wasn't quite as specific as needed
> to eliminate post-dialling delay.  I haven't had time yet to
> make it accept "#" as a terminator.  That's a royal pain,
> because you have to create entries with the "#" at the end up
> to some ridiculous maximum, as well as without "#" at the
> end so that timing also works.
>   
I have one sitting on my desk that I have yet to fire up
When you get yours working I'd like to see what you have done.
Turns out I am not too sure it is suitable for my application, which 
have 2 cheap routers and dynamic IP in the way. With the lack of any 
ability to put anything other than an IP address in its configuration, 
it probably won't continue to work.
> I think the IAXy is an amazingly underengineered product. 
Not to mention overpriced!
There is an IAX ATA made in china on eBay, but no pulse dial I am told. 
It will take a dyndns address though
>  The
> fact that the MAC address is not printed on the outside of the
> device really annoys me;
Isn't that simply stupid?

I am really sour on Digium products. Their PCI cards, which you can't 
use, don't work  with all motherboards. Sangoma claims they do, plus 
have a 5 year warranty.
> The IAXy echo problem is annoying, too, and I really wonder
> how it will do with the 202.  It isn't terribly bad with the
> 2500 I have on there now.  What's interesting is that pulling
> the handset off (unplugging its modular connector) is enough
> to create an impedance mismatch that starts a bunch of echo.
> Makes me think it really doesn't have much echo cancelling at
> all built in, and just relies on the hybrid doing a good job
> of absorbing everything.
>
>   
Thats also not good news.

Keep us posted.

John Novack