Google Voice, VOIP, SIP, MagicJack, Gizmo, XLite, WRTP54G

Google Voice will only allow you to do PSTN to PSTN (public switched telephone network) calls. There is no way to dial out from a computer or directly receive calls on a computer. I am moving to Japan and will need to call back to the US often.

There are a few services that provide PSTN dial in to SIP forwarding. Ipkall and Gizmo offer free dial in to SIP phone numbers. Gizmo makes money on outgoing phone calls. IpKall.. doesn't make money and only have dial in lines in washington.

GV does offer forwarding to PSTN phone numbers or Gizmo SIP accounts. So I can use my GV California number forwarded to Gizmo SIP and answer on my computer. I can't call out though.

A good friend gave me his unused Magic Jack. MJ is a USB to PSTN (RJ11) device plus unlimited service for a year for $40. Having a windows computer running 24/7 to be able to receive phone calls on MJ is annoying. If any computer was going to be running 24/7 at my house it wouldn't be running windows, it would be running Linux. MJ doesn't support Linux. Having a usb dongle always connected is slightly annoying. MJ forces advertising onto the screen when calls are made or received. Annoying.

So I ran some software to export the MJ SIP account information. Gizmo wouldn't allow me to put that SIP info in. Gizmo software only seems to support it's own SIP service.

I put the MJ SIP info into XLite and it didn't work. I changed the settings 20 times. Then it did suddenly work. I closed it and reopened it. No go. Changed the settings 20 times and suddenly it worked again. No settings seemed to work right away. Eventually I figured out that the first connect was failing but changing settings forced a re-attempt. I'll go more into details on that later. I found that the older X-Lite 2.0 didn't have this problem. So I got that setup on Linux and Windows.

Now I can dial out and receive calls on the computer from anywhere yeahhh! Now I want to hook up a wireless phone. I can't use the MJ hardware anymore. There are some old undocumented drivers to get MJ hardware working with XLite but I couldn't get them to work.

So I ordered a WRTP54G-ER Wireless Router w/ Earthlink TrueVoice for $30! Wifi and VOIP SIP in one router with VOIP priority. These things sell for around $200 but noone wants to use EarthLink VOIP. The device is locked to EarthLink. So I will have to hack it and make it use the MJ SIP account information. I've been waiting for 3 weeks for it to show up. More info on that when it shows up.

I seem to do everything the hard way to save a few bucks. I enjoy most of the process but in the end it sometimes ends up not being worth it. This blog helps add some value to my hard work. Maybe someday someone will read it.