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tr0910
join:2006-01-03
Kansas City, KS

tr0910

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2 ATA's in different locations connected to the same voip account

By mistake I have had 2 ATA's miles apart, both connected to the internet and with identical setup (was Anveo). And both ATA's would ring phones. Can this actually work reliably?
bw5745
join:2014-03-14

bw5745

Member

Some providers can correctly handle multiple ATAs with the same SIP credentials. With Anveo, you are supposed to use sub accounts. This way, you can set exactly how you want the multiple devices to behave.

If you install both devices at the same location, I'd bet that you will see that one or the other will ring by random on an incoming call. The registered ATA will switch back and forth between the two. After one device sends a registration request, it will be taken over later by the other.
tr0910
join:2006-01-03
Kansas City, KS

tr0910

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said by bw5745:

Some providers can correctly handle multiple ATAs with the same SIP credentials

Really, which ones? Thanks for the sub accounts tip.
advocate99
join:2011-03-08

advocate99

Member

Flowroute will support multiple devices registered to the same account, but you cannot do it with more than about 3 devices. If you call them, they'll explain why.

VOIP.ms can, but you have to register each device to a separate sub-account and then set-up a ring group.

I think that FreePBX and Asterisk will support it once they implement pjsip.

arpawocky
Premium Member
join:2014-04-13
Columbus, OH

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said by bw5745:

If you install both devices at the same location, I'd bet that you will see that one or the other will ring by random on an incoming call.

I'm guessing not. Even if the two devices share the same IP, they'll have different (external to the NAT) ports, and will be different contacts. If the provider is trying all the contacts associated with the AOR at once, I'd imagine it would not stop doing so just because the IP addresses happen to be the same.
Stewart
join:2005-07-13

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Pre-pjsip Asterisk simply doesn't support multiple registrations for the same credentials. Each registration overwrites the previous one. An incoming call will be sent to the IP and port of the last successful REGISTER request.

If a provider supports multiple registrations, the response to a successful request will have Contact headers for all currently active, so you can easily tell whether any other devices are registered and where they are. This can be a security issue -- if you've stolen someone's credentials, you can learn his public IP address(es).

Most providers offering "cloned line" use multiple registrations with common credentials, including VOIPo, Phonepower and ViaTalk. Localphone allows two devices and displays both addresses on the portal.

I don't know how Anveo's equipment behaves with conflicting registrations, which are not officially supported.

cybersaga
join:2011-12-19
Selby, ON

cybersaga

Member

said by Stewart:

I don't know how Anveo's equipment behaves with conflicting registrations, which are not officially supported.

Exactly as you described:
said by Stewart:

Each registration overwrites the previous one. An incoming call will be sent to the IP and port of the last successful REGISTER request.

I've tried it before.
mazilo
From Mazilo
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join:2002-05-30
Lilburn, GA

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said by tr0910:

By mistake I have had 2 ATA's miles apart, both connected to the internet and with identical setup (was Anveo). And both ATA's would ring phones. Can this actually work reliably?

If that does not work and if Anveo allows SIP forwarding, then perhaps to SIP forward your Anveo incoming calls to other VoSP, i..e CallCentric(?), etc., that supports a multiple registration and configure the empty line on both your ATA devices to register to the other VoSP to receive incoming calls from Anveo.
bw5745
join:2014-03-14

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As Stewart mentioned, some providers support multiple devices by keeping track of them and ringing them simultaneously. Anveo, Callcentric and voip.ms want you to use sub accounts (a.k.a. Extensions) so that you manage multiple phone numbers and devices in the same account. This allows fancier call distribution methods and device to device calling.

Can you imagine the user interface and customer support nightmare if they tried to support multiple devices with the same SIP credentials? The only way to tell them apart would be the public IP address and outbound port. It is unrealistic to expect the customer to know these values so that they can tell which device they are adjusting.

Even worse, the public IP address can change. If the VoIP provider settings are based on detecting the registered IPs, what should the provider do if the IP changes? Switch to a default configuration? Take a guess about which device just registered? The risk of messing up the settings is high.

With typical NAT routers, the problem is even worse if you have multiple identically configured devices on the same home network. The first device might get public outbound port 5060 but what happens to the others? 5062? 12346? Every router is different and there are no rules on how to do this. If you reboot the router, all your devices could switch around unpredictably with no proper solution since you can't tell what order the devices will try to register.

Using sub accounts with their own SIP credentials solves this problem completely. With Anveo, you can have two devices on the Free features package. You need to pay another $0.80/mth to activate E911. Callcentric and voip.ms do not charge for additional devices registered.

bitseeker
join:2014-03-05

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The SIP protocol supports multiple devices registered to the same account without the use of sub-accounts. However, the vendor must also support it.

Vestalink supports multi-device registration using the same name/password. I'm sure there are others, but don't seem to be common. The use of sub-accounts is more flexible and provides additional security since each device can have a unique login.