SIP – James Batchelor

Zen Digital Voice – Connecting to SIP

If like me you still have a requirement for a landline, or at least a landline number. Zen Internet offers a “digital voice” package as an accompaniment to its broadband service.

Traditionally this service is provided via its supplied Fritzbox router, utilising its FXS port to supply telephony to analogue devices.

As the service is SIP based, it is possible to connect direct via SIP phones or Asterisk which is ideal should the Fritzbox not be suitable for your requirements. While this is permitted by Zen, it is unsupported.

Here are a couple of examples of getting connected to Zen DV without the use of the Fritzbox.

Provisioning a Cisco 7940/7960

2021 is here and so returns (In the UK at least) one of my favourite shows to Netflix, The Office (US). Since starting working in VoIP its hard not to notice what phones turn up in TV shows, here the Cisco 7960, was prolific for showing up in shows around this era.

So why not, nearly 16 years after the show started, try and get one of these working on an Asterisk PBX? At work we had a number of similar 7940 models that hadn’t be used for years, so why not give it a try…

Yealink Remote Factory Reset

When a phone is no longer required on your service, there is always trepidation on what will happen to it, the hope is that’s its unplugged, stuffed in a drawer and never sees the light of day again. But in reality, there’s a good chance that it will end up on the likes of eBay and Gumtree, and since a phone is already provisioned with your server details, the next person to get their hands on it could have unauthorised access to the system.

The simple step to prevent unauthorised access is to delete / change the secret to the extension, if your will to put up with the constant failed registration attempts. But what about the personal data on the phone? BLFs, local directories and the like.

Yealink devices since firmware version 81 have had the ability to factory reset via a SIP notify command, meaning should a phone still be online, a factory reset can be handled remotely and without end user intervention.