VoIP in Home

xwesleyxwillisx

Anyone on these great boards know anything about VoIP? I'm trying to find the cheapest service provider. Vonage is obviously in the limelight right now but I don't want to pay $25 a month. This is really not about replacing a traditional telephone line but a little project I had in mind.

So here's the deal... I want to install a few VoIP phones in my house to see what the service is like and just get a crash course in how it works. I'd love to get my hands on a Cisco 7900 series, but I dunno if it is worth nearly $300 for a 7940G . If I install the phones, do I need anything else besides my broadband service (cable), a VoIP provider, and cables to run to them? I'm not looking to turn some old phones into VoIP devices so I don't think I need any adapters.

Also, if I do decide to play with a 7940... I'm guessing it would need to be configured to connect to there network with SIP or some other protocol? Would this be easy or difficult to do? Would I need to open the appropriate ports on my firewall? Perhaps if I contacted the service provider, they could provide me with a working config?

And lastly, would any other VoIP phones need this same kind of configuration?

Thanks in advance if anyone can help

rossonieri#1

the simplest VoIP maybe you can try to dial other computer in your home network by phone dialer - plug the mic and speaker and dial IP address.