On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Christopher Allsop <[email protected]> wrote: > Could you set up a dialup modem that you could dial into? I'm sure there > are some cheap dialup internet connection plans. A cellular connection may > actually end up more expensive as you would still need a data plan of some > kind and the cost of cellular data is still on the high side.
Dean, Dave's suggestion is cool, but I'm with Christopher on this. It's low tech enough to be fairly reliable and you can connect with no pre-planning in a pinch. I'd consider both since the speed benefits of Dave's method are obvious. My luck with the Bell portable Internet has been hit and miss depending on location. With some fiddling, it generally works in the city. The first thing I thought was that it would be easy to have Asterisk route you to an extension that had the modem but if you reboot and Asterisk doesn't come up, you can't connect to the modem. So, I'll suggest one of my all time favourite devices. It's called "The Stick". They're usually available on Ebay for less than $100 and they're like one of those ident-a-ring boxes on steroids. (From memory) it has 2 lines in and 3 lines out. It's all programmed by touch tone and a few dip switches. One really nice feature is that you can send touch tones while it's ringing and be directed to a particular port. So, let's say you put your fax line into port 1. Normally, it will ring just fine and the fax will answer on (let's say) ring 3. If on the other hand you dial *3 during the ringing phase, you're connected to the modem. One nice thing about this setup is that the modem doesn't give itself away to war-dialers by picking up and trying to negotiate everytime the phone rings. The downside of the setup I've described is that you could end up blocking their fax line for an hour at time. Honestly though, who sends faxes anymore anyway? I don't have the mad Linux skillz to explain modem setup on the Asterisk box but there. I hope this helps. Good luck. Dave --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
