HELLO & WELCOME

[martinwinlow]

Holy mollies... and I thought configuring a router was non-user-friendly.

There must be at least a hundred different things one can tweak with this thing... and clearly I have not enough basic understanding of what is needed to get mine working.

My VOiP provider, A&A, appear to be under the impression that the only people who will ever need VOiP (and therefore need to set it up) are tech-wizards as it is like pulling teeth trying to get even basic configuration settings and instructions out of them.

Not really ready for the masses...

[VoipIT]

Andrews & Arnold are one of the best reviewed VoIP ITSP's around and are no more difficult to setup than any other VoIP provider.

Check out their support site if you need help configuring a device (feel free to ask here too):
https://support.aa.net.uk/Category:VoIP_Phones

About the settings posted above by @WelshPaul, well they are not required but are recommended. These devices are pre-set for use within the North American market and so long as you don't mind your phone tones or ringer sounding different then you can safely ignore them.

[martinwinlow]

Thanks for your reply.

A&A have provided 5 'generic settings': Registrar: voiceless.aa.net.uk
Proxy: Leave blank
Domain: voiceless.aa.net.uk
Authentication Username: Your Number in International format, e.g. +441234567890
Password: Your SIP Password

... unfortunately none of the hundreds of settings on the Grandstream HT801 ATA I I have match these. Take SIP Password for example. The Basic and Advanced settings page for my ATA don't mention it at all, it is only on the last 'FSX Port' page that you find 'SIP'... and 'only' *37* times!

Asking a layperson to interpret what A&A provide and apply them to their own particular ATA is simply ridiculously unrealistic. I think it would pay them (and any other forward thinking VOiP provider who wants to cash in on people moving over to VOiP - we all will eventually!) to supply basic functionality settings *for all the most common ATAs* - or even a selection of them. I guess all this answers the question of whether or not I should have bought one of A&A's ATAs!

[WelshPaul]

Hi @martinwinlow, give the following a try:

FXS PORT

• Account Active: Yes
• Primary SIP Server: voiceless.aa.net.uk
• Outbound Proxy: voiceless.aa.net.uk
• NAT Traversal: Keep-Alive
• SIP User ID: Your Number in International format, e.g. +441234567890
• Authenticate ID: Your Number in International format, e.g. +441234567890
• Authenticate Password: Your SIP Password

Hopefully that is all that is required in order to get your Grandstream HT801 registered to your A&A account.

[martinwinlow]

Hi,

Thanks but I didn't see your reply until just now but I have spent the last 4 hours or so to-ing and fro-ing emails with A&A whose last email reads...

"Martin,
We supply Snoms and Gigasets which we'd be happy to help you with, and
usually go out preconfigured, plug & play.
However you chose to provide your own hardware, which you are entirely
entitled to, and we are more than happy to supply the details with which
to set in the configuration.
We don't have direct experience of configuring Grandstreams but plenty
of our VoIP customers use them.
Different manufacturers of hardware and software use different names for
thew same thing.
At a guess 'Primary SIP server' is where to put voiceless.aa.net.uk
'Prefer Primary SIP server' I would guess you set to yes.
'SIP user ID' is your number in international format.
'AUTH ID' same as SIP user ID I'd guess.
'Authentication Password' should be the SIP password on
control.aa.net.uk for your number.
If it's connected that should be enough to get a registration, as I said
we haven't yet seen a registration attempt from your hardware reach us yet."

Having applied those 4 parameters, the line now works nominally and shows 'registered' in the ATA's Status page (contrary to A&A's statement).

I reiterate, how any ordinary soul would figure out how to get their HT801 (or probably any other ATA) working without any help is a total mystery.

[VoipIT]

Andrews & Arnold support clearly isn't as good as I thought it was if it took four hours to resolve such a simple support request. Poor spelling, grammar and the fact they use of the word "guess" in multiple examples doesn't fill one with confidence!

I reiterate, how any ordinary soul would figure out how to get their HT801 (or probably any other ATA) working without any help is a total mystery.

Most VoIP providers sell pre-configured devices that only require the user connect them to a power source and internet connection in order to make and receive calls and thus they don't need to figure anything out. Sure these cost a little more but you're paying to have a professional do all the hard work for you! The option to use your own hardware is great for users who require custom configurations and advanced features.