Cheap and Dirty Test of POTS Over HSMM-MESH with Grandstream
HT701Jesse Alexander, WB2IFS/3Prince George's County ARES/RACES,
Clinton CERT, [email protected]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Works with interfaces out of the box: no configuration
required!
Any amateur can connect without prior arrangement
No PBX function needed
Pros & Cons
Only works with new basic phonesnot with older POTS phones
Typing in IP address can be tedious
All participating nodes must be in 5-host mode
Security issues with using the interfaces not configured. For
example, anyone can access them with the admin password
Step by step
Connect the nodes first and wait for them to boot
Configure each node from the console for 5-hosted mode as
highlighted above and save configuration
Reboot each node (far node first)
Connect the Grandstream interfaces to the nodes and phones.
Power them up.
On the port forwarding, DHCP, and services page configure the
port forwarding as shown. You may use any hostname you want. Save
the configuration
Starting from either node, call the other using one of the
following methods (see this manual):
*47 then the IP address of the other phone with * as dots, then
# (e.g. *47 192*168*0*22#)
*** then 47 when the interface asks for a menu option. When the
dial-tone returns type the IP address as described in b) above
Network Architecture
Far Node:WB2IFS-106
Near Node:WB2IFS-115
Management console
Grandstream HT-701interface
Grandstream HT-701interface
wired phone
wired phone
Near & Far node configuration
Near side node configuration
Far side node configuration
Far side node configuration
Remarks/Observations
Phones used must be the now Cheap-oh POTS wired phones available
from Sprallmart, Radioshack, etc. The interfaces don't provide
enough current to ring old phones (Ringer Equivalence).
The passwords of the interfaces must be changed because anyone
in the mesh can access the interface's web configuration tool.
I suspect that 5-digit dialing is available but you may need a
PBX to do that (Raspberry PI running Asterisk software can do that,
I've heard.)
Resources
Grandstream HT701
manual:http://www.manualslib.com/manual/607874/Grandstream-Networks-Ht701.html?page=19
Jesse N. Alexander, WB2IFS/3
