I thought I'd write this article because of all the trouble I had to go through getting Sipgate to work properly with my Cisco ATA 186. For those of you not in the know Sipgate is a service that enables you to subscribe for a free phone number over the Internet with no line rental. A Cisco ATA 186 is a clever little box you plug into your broadband connection which you then plug a normal phone into. When people call you on the phone number you get from SipGate this phone plugged into the Cisco ATA rings.....in theory. Ok its a loverly service when it works but to get it configured can (especially with my device because I am not using a standard Sipgate supported device) be a pain in the proverbial.

Anyway lets get started.

My Cisco ATA is setup with a static IP address on my internal network and I am using the firmware version Version: v3.1.0 atasip (Build 040211A) don't ask me how I got onto this version I haven't got a clue all I know is I got hold of a download from a friend in the past. Right Sipgates site shows you how to configure the Cisco ATA for use with their service. You can see this sample configuration by clicking here. Remember to get to the setup page of your ATA go to http://<ip_address_of_your_ATA>/dev. After you have copied these settings from SipGate change the SIPPort from 5060 to 5061 and change the Media Port from 5004 to 5005. In addition to this turn the OutBoundProxy on by typing 1 in this box. I found these little tweaks actually helped my ATA to work properly with my BT Home Hub as I suspected the original ports were being used by the Hub phone.

Once you have followed SipGates configuration for your ATA you will need to setup some rules on your firewall. I use a BT Home Hub and you can access these settings from the start configuration page of the Home Hub by clicking on Advanced and then clicking on Continue To Advance and then selecting Application Sharing from here you will be given the option to create new firewall rules. If you have changed firewall rules and setting in the past its pretty straight forward on how to create new rules an assign them to a device which in this case will be the IP address of your Cisco ATAT 186. The rules are as follows.

The above rules are all forwarded to the IP address of my ATA.

Anyway I started it up and it all worked beautifully. If you have any questions please drop me a line and I'll do my best to help you out.