gonesouth

Hi,

I have an old Nortel Meridian system -824KSU - and I would like to pass (forward) incoming calls to a wifi phone so that I can still receive calls while around the property.

It looks to me like I need to set up a softswitch which will connect to my existing system as an extension, yet have the wifi phone connecting to it as an IP phone extension on the softswitch.

Can someone help me by telling me what software and equipment I would need.

Additional info:

We are a motel with 18 rooms running a Nortel 8x24 PBX- max 24 digital extensions and up to 8 analog trunks. We use three trunks, two connected to the Bell Aliant network and one connected to a Vonage VOIP link used to offer free long distance to the guests. We have a Nortel Startalk Mini for voice mail and answering services.

We also have a wifi network offering free internet to the guests which reaches most areas of the property.

I am hoping to be able to use a wifi phone to receive incoming calls by setting the nortel to forward incoming calls to the extension that connects to the softswitch, and have the softswitch send all incoming calls to the wifi phone.

I have several old pc's I can use to run the softswitch with anywhere from 1000 to 1800 Mhz speeds and probably 1 Gb of RAM. They could be dedicated to the switch.... I can run Windows or Linux.

Questions I have -
1. Can I use a modem for the incoming phone line or do i need a 'phone interface type' card?
2. Is there an Open Source system that would be relatively easy to set up for this use?
3. Does anybody have any experience with low cost wifi phones that they have configured as an extension on a softswitch type application?

Thanks for your time and interest.

Jim