HELLO & WELCOME

[Telco59]

For 7 years we have been running a VoIP PBX onsite, but recently we decided to go fully hosted and as our VoIP provider had a Hosted product we decided to use this. Unfortunately, our Asterisk based on premises server allowed basic Preference Indicators and our VoIP provider doesn't, causing my Director to ask me to find a provider that does, as Presence is a 'Must have'.

Can anyone suggest a good provider that supports Presence. I know that presence is really part of the Instant Messaging world, but I can't seem to get that accross to the powers that be.

Any help would be most appreciated.

[WelshPaul]

Preference indicators? Is that another term for Busy Lamp Feature (BLF)? In other words a monitored extension turns red when in a call. If so what IP phones are you using? Snom, Cisco etc.

Reason I ask is that certain VoIP providers only support BLF on certain IP phone brands.

[Telco59]

Hi WelshPaul, thanks for the response.

We were able to use our Counterpath Eyebeam and Bria softphones to monitor extension state using SIP NOTIFY messages. The result being that if we opened an extensions contacts list the current state of all monitored extensions (Bust, Free, Do Not Disturb).

At a pinch, I suppose BLF would suffice, as it at least detects Busy, Free, Ringing. How that would integrate with our mix of Softphones and Desktop phones I'm not sure.

We currently use Eyebeam 1.5 and Bria 4 Softphones and Linksys SPA922 and Cisco 303 Desktop phones.

[WelshPaul]

All of the VoIP providers I have messed around with in the past only offer a basic BLF feature. Like I mentioned in my previous post, providers only support BLF on certain IP phone brands! An example would be Voipfone: Voipfone's BLF doesn't work with Linksys/Cisco IP phones. See: WelshPaul @ Voipfone Busy Lamps Field (BLF) and Cisco / Obihai Hardware

Voicehost's PBX offering does support BLF on the Linksys/Cisco IP phones: https://www.voicehost.co.uk/help/cisco- ... ction-keys and I would recommend them. I have to say, I have not used a softphone in agesssssssssssssssssssss! So i'm unsure as to how well Eyebeam 1.5 and Bria 4 works with Voicehost, I did find this: https://www.voicehost.co.uk/help/x-lite ... hone-setup so Bria 4 should be supported.

Set up a couple of extensions and give them a try! Will only cost you £2 to find out.

[Telco59]

Thanks for the assistance. I tried Voipfone in the meantime, and Bria works fine as a phone, but presence messages are blocked. Wireshark shows the SUBSCRIBE messages getting 403 Forbidden or 406 Not Acceptable responses. I suspect that Voiphost will be the same but its worth a try.

We may have to go back to hosting our own PBX to get the features that we require.

[Telco59]

Ok. Just a final update, in case anyone is wondering did I ever find my solution.

I am sticking with my current provider, as the service is stable and the only facility missing is the presence indicators, which no one else seems to offer either (discounting skype of course).

So a bit of lateral thinking got me a solution. Update to Counterpath Bia 4 softphones, which allow SIP and XMPP acounts to be configured. Create a SIP account for the extension and a matching XMPP account after registering with an online XMPP service.

Set both accounts as active and add them to the extension entry in the Bria contacts list.

When you open the contacts list, all of the SIP extension states are displayed and the XMPP service deals with the presence that the VoIP providers block. Job done.

Thanks for the advice and insight into VoIP providers.