Morning all,
I apologize if this has been mentioned before, searching through the forum didn’t yield the answer I was after.
Does Mikrotik ever plan to release a RB with a built-in ATA? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_telephone_adapter)
Then SIP registrations can happen on the Mikrotik itself.
RouterOS is optimized as a ROUTER and is best used as such. You’re better off buying a proper ATA and keeping all telephony functions separate. Keep in mind, if they were to add ATA functionality, they’d have to also add RJ-11 ports to have compatibility with most analog phones.
I use a Raspberry Pi running the IncrediblePBX setup, and an actual IP phone sitting on my desk. I don’t have any RJ-11 ports as everything runs over my network and I don’t have to worry about additional dedicated niche hardware (the ATA). At this time, I run everything out a SIP trunk, but if my Internet goes down, I have no phone service. I’ll be adding an FXO device at some point, like an AudioCodes gateway, to hook up actual copper trunk lines to serve as an emergency outbound route for when my ISP goes down.
Or make it a MiniPCI (or USB) device with its own external RJ11 connector. Either way, I’d love to see it.
We have several MTUs in our network, which we reach via APs in the hallways. Now we’re about to introduce VoIP service. Unless we can find a device that integrates an ATA and a Wifi radio (for backhaul to our AP), we’re going to have to install two devices in every apartment: an RB951, and an ATA. Next to our cable internet competitor’s slick all-in-one device, our two boxes with two power supplies and a patch cable between them come across as decidedly less professional.
We’ve been evaluating the Cambium R200, but it just doesn’t have the flexibility of ROS to simply bridge the radio and Ethernet ports. Any other product suggestions?
idea not really good. but some of qualcomm chips - support ATA/SATA interface natively(eg used in say rb3011 and in ccr1036 chips for example)so technically its possible, but make not much sense.
i prefer have SD(even microSD)slot or A-type USB-slot(or both)instead in most cases.
He was asking about VoIP, not hard drives. ATA = Analog Telephone Adaptor.
Wouldn’t it be useful to provide an IP phone instead of ATA (+phone). Prices come down nowadays.
Some may even opt for softphones like CSipSimple running on their smartphones.
And you could provide optionally video telephony as an additional service.
We have subscribers on fixed incomes who want to keep their costs to a minimum. Giving them an RJ11 port to plug in their existing handset or cordless phone base is the least disruptive, and least expensive, solution.
Since 2.3 Android has native support for SIP. Doesn’t even need to install software.
Our subscribers who have smartphones generally see little reason to pay for a landline.
I know there are numerous other ways to solve this problem. I’m asking about this specific solution because it applies to our circumstances in ways that all the others don’t. I appreciate the helpful suggestions for workarounds, but my purpose here is not to get other solutions; I’m just registering my support for the idea of a RouterBoard product with a built-in or add-on ATA interface.
you Right. sorry. sorry bout that.
that kind of ports - are ~ specific for ODM devices, rather than marketed toward generic network guys or ordinary consumers, eg distributed across (major)ISP usually, within direct contract/orders for such kind of CPE.
thats why possibility from MT to implement such w/o such contract/order, eg budget for design and launching production from client - not more possible than say VDSL interfaces in mikrotik gear 
My previous gig was at a CLEC. We drastically cut costs by rolling out RB2011 as the SOHO CPE, and believe me when I say that we wished there was a 2-FXS model Mikrotik. I know exactly where you’re coming from, but unfortunately, Mikrotik is not interested in branching out like that. (and I don’t blame them, personally)
In general, I would try to educate our customer into using more “next-gen” versions of the things they were working with - IP-enabled credit card terminals, for instance. Credit Card over VoIP lines would always end up having a pizza place calling in at 8:30pm on Friday night because the CC terminal couldn’t complete a batch. The other ubiquitous headache was title companies who faxed the entire library of congress 3 times a day… “Ummmm, scanner + email FTW?”
Alarm lines were the other bugbear - we eventually made it company policy to only sell copper POTS lines for alarm lines
We have been trying to get the Cambium R200 to do what we need. I may have convinced them to update the firmware to make it possible, and if they succeed I will be very grateful for their responsiveness. But if it were running RouterOS, we’d already have dozens of them in production–and I’d have total visibility into the device and the full RouterOS tool set to work with. Instead, I’m limited to whatever their developers anticipated.
In general, I would try to educate our customer into using more “next-gen” versions of the things they were working with - IP-enabled credit card terminals, for instance. Credit Card over VoIP lines would always end up having a pizza place calling in at 8:30pm on Friday night because the CC terminal couldn’t complete a batch. The other ubiquitous headache was title companies who faxed the entire library of congress 3 times a day… “Ummmm, scanner + email FTW?”
Sure–but when it comes to the elderly on fixed incomes, they just want the same handset on the same table, with as few extra boxes and wires as possible.
They should start abbreviating Land Lines as LoL.
Funny thing is - a true land line has certain key advantages over cell phones / VoIP, but modern land lines pretty much start on an RJ-11 port on some device mounted to the outside of your house, so those advantages are lost.
And people wonder why I still have a 1A2 key system in my house with POTS lines going into it. Although you lose the line status lights, and hold function, it still works in a power failure.
For those who don’t know what a 1A2 key system is, think about the business multi-line phones from the 1960s and 1970s that have a 25 pair cable to the phone that is as big as your finger (not the modern ones that have a single or two pair cable).
OK, I generally have one VoIP MagicJack phone as one of the lines going into the 1A2, but the permanent lines are POTS lines…
Just because it comes in your house on an analog copper pair doesn’t mean it’s a true POTS line.
I worked for a phone company. We had devices that were deployable at pedestals (located at a neighborhood or apt complex, for instance) and they were SIP upstream and ran an analog POTS line to an individual unit. Think of it as a carrier-grade ATA. These are quite common now. Most circuit-switched gear (GR303 concentrators, channel banks, and class 5 PSTN switches like the venerable Lucent 5ESS) is getting decommissioned as fast as possible.
My parents have AT&T U-verse, which is DSL delivered over a copper pair - but the dial tone is actually done by the device sitting behind their TV set. If the power goes out, then their phone line lasts only as long as the UPS battery does. The copper pair that delivers the DSL signal? I was there as a kid when the South Central Bell technician trenched the copper from the NID on the side of the house back to the little green junction box on the property line… it was a regular old phone line for all those years, and now it’s just a DSL pair.
Good point - especially these days. In my case, I had contacts with the local phone company when I bought my house that was able to verify right down to the foot exactly how much wire of which gauge there was between me and the CO. I am about 22,000 feet (7,000 meters for the rest of the world) from the CO. A big part of why my DSL is so crappy! They put in fiber (FIOS for those that know that marketing name) to within about a half mile of my house several years ago, but stopped deployment when the economy tanked a few years ago.
This is getting way off topic, so I should shut up now 
Yup, almost everything these days is either H.323 or SIP. If you have an actual POTS line at your home, chances are it’s hitting a TDP/SIP gateway of some type at the CO, and then flying across the provider’s fiber backbone. I spent several years deploying and managing an enterprise-wide VoIP solution for a federal agency - is actually the largest privately owned VoIP deployment (or at least was back in 2009, roughly 100k phones across 1500+ offices). We used multiple DS3 circuits coming into AudioCodes Mediant 3000 gateways at various service delivery points across the country, but at some point they’re supposed to switch those over to SIP trunks. The bottom line is that everything today is now VoIP at some point between the caller and destination, even if both ends of the call actually have analog POTS lines.