Bringing ATA to a Different Location / Country

[PainCourt]

Was just curious ...

If I was to bring my ATA to a different city, could I technically call back to my home town for free? For instance, if I was to visit somewhere in the USA, can I bring my ATA, plug it into the internet and use it. If I was to call back to my town, would it be free. What is I brought it overseas?

Can I even do this?????

Thanks!

[Jake]

Yes, as long as the service provider you are connecting with or the actual country you are in do no block the ports used for VOIP. You should be able to plug the ata (or the DellVoice app for that matter) anywhere and use Fongo just as you are now.

[TheHardy]

As Jake stated, that is the beauty of VOIP -- your PHYSICAL location matters little. As long as wherever you are plugging into the INTERNET, and however you are plugging in is NOT somehow BLOCKING certain ports (which VOIP uses) -- and this is common on several overseas countries in resorts/hotels/free WIFI (domestically too for that matter, especially at WIFI hotspots and hotels!), you should be fine ... if you are planning on using personal or business internet connection and not just public WIFI, you should (SHOULD!) be fine just about anywhere you go. Should you encounter trouble, check to make sure that certain ports are not blocked by your ISP, and if they are, see if you can modify your setup to work within those constraints....

[PainCourt]

Thanks for the answer. But what about the calling back home portion. Would that be a local call for me then? Therefore, if I was anywhere in the world and called back to my local town, would the call be for free then?

[TheHardy]

The physical calling area and how your "phone" plugged in into the ATA would work are completely independent of your physical location. You could continue to call OUTBOUND the same and receive calls INBOUND the same, whether you are at HOME (wherever that is), or if you are in Victoria, BC, or if you are in Tokyo Japan ... if it was a FREE call on your ATA, it will still be, and your # will ring the same when ppl call you.

You are thinking, I believe, in CELL PHONE theory, where your local calling area "bubble" moves around and changes depending on your PHYSICAL LOCATION ... ie: if you have a Toronto-based number and you are out visiting Vancouver, your local free calling area would change (as would your LD area) ... with VOIP, this is not the case, quite entirely the OPPOSITE, to be sure.

While I personally have not taken my "FPL" softphone overseas, I have taken my laptop on the road (I work basically as a mover...) throughout almost all of BC and AB, and can verify that I have sat in a hotel room in Terrace, BC (up north) using my Vancouver-based FPL # to call family and friends back in Vancouver, and received a call from a telemarketter to boot! Of course, to call the local pizza joint down the block would have been a chargeable call (as Terrace is not a FREE city), but that is where the company cell phone came in, as that was a local call (Using the "BUBBLE-theory"); a co-worker of mine had their laptop down in the Domincan and used it successfully, but needed to tweak some settings as they were using WIFI at their resort, and encountered blocked ports ...

[PainCourt]

TheHardy ... you mentioned if a port is blocked, you had to do some tweaking. Will an ATA work if the ports are blocked? Can tweaking the settings in the ATA go around this issue?

[TheHardy]

TheHardy ... you mentioned if a port is blocked, you had to do some tweaking. Will an ATA work if the ports are blocked? Can tweaking the settings in the ATA go around this issue?

I would think so --- I was using the Softphone PC application, and I was able to just change my port number in the software and get around the limitation ... I would suspect that there are settings in the ATA that you could do similarly, but then would need to also make sure that the firewall settings match ...

[bridonca]

TheHardy ... you mentioned if a port is blocked, you had to do some tweaking. Will an ATA work if the ports are blocked? Can tweaking the settings in the ATA go around this issue?

If depends on how nasty the firewall is. If all the firewall does is block ports like SIP VOIP port 5060, you can set the ATA to 6060, which Fongo also supports, and no more block. If the firewall is nastier and inspects for VOIP traffic, then there is not much to do but run your traffic through a VPN, and that is not as convenient or as cheap.

[TheHardy]

Assuming a local firewall and not a corporate one, you can also mess with your own firewall settings, or even disable them while using the Fongo software (assuming that you are not multitasking and running other apps which you would need firewall protection against). Surely NOT the most elegant solution, but surely a workable one, assuming that someone is not directly attacking your PC on it's ISP specific IP...

[PainCourt]

Thank You guys!!!!!!

[TheHardy]

Thank You guys!!!!!!

I take it that you are up and running in a foreign land?

[PainCourt]

Not yet, just wanted to be ready the next time I visit the USA.

[TheHardy]

Not yet, just wanted to be ready the next time I visit the USA.

Unless using public wifi in some spots, you should have no problem Stateside ... if you can get onto someone's network (rather than public wifi) you will have Zero serious problems ... some minor hiccups maybe, but nothing that cannot be overcome with a few config tweaks.

Amazingly, I have had LITTLE problem on most hotel/motel public wifi, and the one that I did, I plugged in a Cat-5 to the jack in the room and THAT worked where the WIFI would not ...