Have you been working too hard working from home?
Are people getting in your hair?
Are you concerned if you are in a non-compliant workspace?
I have been WFH before there was even a phrase; I know what can work and what shouldn’t; here are my suggestions
As part of divesting content from The Museum of Telephony, anything identified by moi has been sent back to me as being the rights holder.
Steven M. Clickford
As I am writing this history, it’s 2020, nearly a century after the Spanish Flu; and the midst of the growth of telephony that grew around that time. Also: our country is more divided, not just red and blue, not just Republican or Democrat, not Ford vs Chevy, not Nortel vs. AT&T or Avaya Red vs. Avaya Blue. We are up against a very divided country; and allegedly the U.S. is dealing with what could become the deadliest pandemic since 1918 known as COVID19 or the novel Coronavirus from China. In the technical sense of division; from the mind of an engineer, conflict brings innovation; but from a customer, division confuses them; from a business standpoint since the 1980s, it’s all about making money and being rewarded with cash… but what do they do with it? Sit on it!
What about the middle class? Why is my Cisco phone “Made in China”? What about the people who were proud to work at Ma Bell at the repair plants? What about the Boomers and people like my gram’s age who is very sensitive to reliable telephony?
We have forgotten what made the past so great that brought us the present. Too often Americans (by choice) want to have short attention spans. Americans do not care about “the past” they by choice “want to move forward”. Today many Gen Z (the youngest generation coming to age) want to spend money on “experiences” completely opposite to the Baby Boomers of yester-generation. But like the Boomers, they want things cheap and will laugh at the price of an iPhone; but yet will whine about the “monopoly”.
The so-called “monopoly” by the technologists today is far from what it used to be. AT&T would’ve been shamed if they were hoarding cash or gave a Western Electric exec stock options, since stock options wasn’t really a “financial instrument”. The Bell System was for sure corrupt, at some parts of the company. For whatever reason some other groups felt “secure” that their phones worked, that they had “service” that they “took care” of their customer. The ones who had a grudge was people who were fixated on price, the engineer who didn’t like using a telephone, and wanted to extend the Internet, etc.
AT&T would’ve been better of breaking up the communications equipment; go into their failed attempt in computing, and then keep the all local telephone service. The company was loosing margins on their Long Lines (or long distance services) from the 70s to the Divestiture.
What the 1984-implemented Divestiture caused
The fact is, that after the breakup, the very same thing the market wanted would actually be the beginning of the end of telephony, or standardized telecommunications, the end of customer social norms, and the inmates controlling the asylum (the shareholders and corporate executives.)
I was born 3 years after Divestiture. I didn’t follow much of AT&T’s past, until a few years before the first carnation of The Museum of Telephony. The old AT&T’s reputation was tainted by popular opinions that was probably conflated facts. The Divestiture confused a bunch of customers. Post Diveisture, customers were confused. Like some techies, some looked up to IBM even if they had skeletons in their closet, mine was literally AT&T (the competitive company of course.) I literally saw Ma Bell literally fall to her death. I remember they spun off NCR when 5 years before they bought them out as National Cash Register, the same year IBM divested ROLM. I remember AT&T’s buyout of TCI, then Media One, to then sell them off to Comcast. To then see AT&T basically sell themselves out to SBC, the Baby Bell of the West Coast and Connecticut.
The AT&T after 2005 was basically a Baby Bell inheriting their mother’s name, but still operating in that dirty corporate culture that America so wanted so badly in the 1980s; that they are bitching about today.
Lastly, because of the “cutting edge”, progressive, anti “antiquated” tech mindset, the 1 year refresh cycle (remember the 3 year cycles in the Wintel/Cisco world?); as technology has evolved, there is rarely something, that is a thing, an object that unifies us. Most Millennials can’t tell a story of a item that others shared, except if you’re like me a deep techie. But for the older, non techies, that infamous plastic clad, 500-type rotary dial telephone, brings older generations with stories or “remember-that”?
For the human side of technology, the best unity was before PCs, clearly before mobile phones, and anything that was made prior to 1987, let’s just end that the year I was born was the end of unified technology that multi-generations can relate to.
For many of my audience, I’m an old heart, and don’t subscribe to IT-group-think nor do I care for today’s consumer tech. This narrative was written out of respect of the technology that long came before my existence, because I knew there was a world before I came onto this planet too!
For versions prior to 8x, the “setup” command has been “depreciated”, but yet it’s still seen on the Cisco router. It literally gets bitchy and basically tells you to eff-off and configure it the more complex way.
Also for $85 in the summer of 2018, it did not include the GUI. While I had an image for the GUI, it was for Release 4. And yet all the nerds love to brag doing everything in terminal I also defend GUI because it also helps you for the small things, like changing the time at the end of the Daylight time, if you happened to fudge it up, or you want to change the music on hold, stuff like that. I consider the GUI to be the admin, and the terminal for heavier lifting tasks like the routing, etc.
If you so choose to, you’re going to have to set things up line by line.
If you have not assigned a DHCP pool yet, and the VOIP VLAN is separate to your data VLAN; you’re going have to enter (if you don’t have a DHCP server for the sets)
ip dhcp pool ITS* network 172.18.2.0 255.255.255.0 option 150 ip 172.18.2.2 default router 172.18.2.2 dns-server 172.18.2.16
* I used “ITS” for the sake of legacy uses because this is what would’ve been entered for the name if you had “setup” still in use.
Network means the server will spit out IP addresses along the network it’s bounded on, by the IP address set up on the interface. I used FastEthernet 0/0 because I felt internal/private LAN should be on the lowest port possible. Your option 150, handles the TFTP server, which will need it’s own discussion later.
Now enter telephony service by entering in
CORE1# telephony-service
Now you want to tell the router how many Cisco SCCP phones you want to have, say
CORE1(telephony)# max-ephones 24
For the number of extensions, double it plus a few more (especially if you want to do paging and Key system functionality)
CORE1(telephony)# max-dn 80
you want to remind the telephony service where its assigned on
CORE1(telephony)# ip source-address 172.18.1.2 port 2000
where port 2000 is the default pipe for Cisco’s SCCP
Do you want to change the line of “Cisco Unified CME” (that on the big CallManager it’s known by “Your Current Options” above the softkeys?
CORE1(telephony)# system-message ((')) Merry Halloween (('))
CORE1(telephony)# voicemail 8*97
The voicemail button could in theory dial any pre-defined number, and I just used the most likely default carrier number if you don’t have Unity Express installed.
CORE1(telephony)# moh music-on-hold.au
ensure your music-on-hold.au meets Cisco’s spec and it’s living on the flash drive
Entering IP phones is not done in telephony-service at all. This could be because it could be used for SRST functionality, and they kept that prompt at the low level. You can’t do SRST and CME at the same time.
For more on how the numbers game works in Cisco CME, it’s got it’s own page.
I had done an email interview of the once well known voiceover to millions of voicemail boxes domestically for The Museum of Telephony in 2016. Since I no longer manage TMOT nor did the new management care about this highlight, I’m allowed to retain the rights and have the original piece featured here.
There was as sidenote in 2019: By winter of that year; there was an attempt by your’s truly to reach out to her to do an actual interview (whether it was to be a phoner or video call; she did respond and was willing to do so, March was the start of the planning process; but the decision to drop it was me; as ongoing personal conflicts prevented me from doing it altogether.)
Welcome to AUDIX. For help at anytime, press star-H. Please enter your extension and pound sign.
Default AUDIX Login prompt
In part of the continuing series of the early history of modern day Avaya PBX systems, you humble curator had actually reached out to the “Voice of Voicemail”, Lorraine Nelson. I would like to thank her for her cooperation with the project.
Image courtesy from voicelady.com
This investigative project is mostly the background to the voice behind the legendary voice mail system, that has been branded AUDIX (the acronym known as Audio Information Exchange), Intuity, Modular Messaging and smaller systems like Partner and Merlin Messaging. Technical information or specific dates or years is not part of the narrative because she doesn’t have that information. Regardless, the early days of the enterprise voicemail system has some interesting history in itself.
Despite her claim to fame, she was not the first voice of Audix. According to her, a woman with a Texan drawl (the person’s name is unknown) had done the prompts for at least Release 1. The Bell Labs team wanted the voice to sound more New York, however they didn’t know where to go. Hey I wouldn’t blame them too. In the world of business, if you had a Texan (or heck someone from the West Coast) giving you prompts, would you go asleep or a loose a prospective customer? Especially when a product of AT&T was about to evolve into the competitive marketplace during the time Divestiture?
A man who had once worked on a Bell Labs project of a system with an A/V interface that could bridge such equipment in various rooms or classrooms through a telephony system; was tasked to find the voice. The said project is believed to never gone to market. This manager called a film producer in the Yellow Pages and asked he knew any voice over talent. The film producer had recommended a radio talent to the Bell Labs manager. They spotted a radio news reporter in the Denver market who worked at KADE in Boulder, then KADX going by the name “Lauren Hendricks.”
Despite the illusion of multiple personalities (read below), the woman they found would be Lorraine Nelson.
(On a sidenote: I guess name spoofing wasn’t just isolated to the world of Shadow Traffic or Metro Networks reporters! I never understood concept of a same voice, but different names on different radio stations – thought it was always a slap in the face to the listening audience’s intelligence.)
Editorial aside, this was probably the best move. A native (and now a resident again) of Connecticut, as she told me where she “grew up to speak properly!” who also studied at the University of Colorado with a Communications major – not the telecommunications, but in the radio, TV scope. She met their crieteria – but could she pull it off?
After the discovery and making the decision, she would arrive to a frugal Bell Labs factory, with low end technology with no quiet place to record since this was a manufacturing plant. Not only that, apparently AT&T could’ve paid her a little better for such an enormous task.
How come? What they had was a reel to reel tape deck in a cubicle, and apparently according to her they wanted to mimic (in her words) a “telephoney” sound. Because of this low tech practice in a dark time in the 1980s; people didn’t like the voice, and it felt too quick or abrupt. They gave her another chance to re-record the fragments this time they didn’t over direct her. By this time she interjected her own personality (and from seeing that other video – this would explain the “nicest secretary” vision.) This seemed to help according to Nelson and kept it for Audix 1 and 2 (again released in mid to late 1980s most likely.)
Despite publicized peer reviewed reports on the System 75 in January 1985, with developers touting the design of the human in mind, the Audix team apparently didn’t have the interests of the users in the beginning according to Nelson. She would record nearly a thousand prompts (known formally as “fragments and menus”) into the phone at the factory after the work day ended there and had to go through each one and dial it in to be able to record, enter the fragment number, press a command to playback, and if it didn’t sound well to hit a command to rerecord. She was annoyed at how she would record it without any problems, but the system would cut off part of her speech.
Essentially what she did was no different than a customer getting root or Administrator access to the system and basically change the voice prompts, because in modern voice mail systems if you dislike the voice over you could in theory rewrite their voice. (If only I could get those 100 prompts to rewrite my Asterisk box it would be so awesome!) In the early days, there was no studios, no MP3, WAVE or AIFF PC/Mac based files; this was a simple rewriting over the voice of that Texan woman by logging into a telephone and press buttons to do the overwrites.
Because the AUDIX history (at least in the mid 80s) is hard to find and hardware probably been vanished from Earth (and thank you Avaya for destroying your historical collection!) I could possibly speculate how they would reproduce the new voice on newly produced systems. I can imagine that the new AUDIX became test machine for the new voice in the shop; perhaps take a backup of the new voice and just insert them into the new systems and do it over and over – since afterall she was recorded this first version on the shop floor. (And phone systems, mind you, don’t get reproduced often like PCs, like making thousands a day. A lot of times, these specialized systems would be made specifically for their customers near the time of purchase.)
Reflecting this primitive procedures, one would consider the production or development of this system as a glorified answering machine despite the very high rich, expensive nature of the equipment. First thing I compared this to today’s standards was, if say a friend with a good voice you wanted on your answering machine, and he recorded it on an MP3 send it you and play it off a BlackBerry. (I did this before we moved to a new house and use the service provider’s voicemail.) Or even 25 years ago if you wanted friend to record a quasi professional recording on a micro cassette player for you on those other tape based answering machine.
She would come in for changes over time including additional work for Lucent (by this point) recorded with enhancements to AUDIX, a faster pace, voicing over for two commands per prompts (oh I mean “fragments” and “menus”) and provided the voice for the Partner Messaging and Merlin Messaging (mid to late 90s) as well and even the IP Office in the last decade. And by this time it was more professional and was recorded digitally as well.
She is still strong and active, and still heard by millions (including your humble currator, when his mother occasionally misses a call made by me to her office set.)
Note: Many thanks to Lorraine for her cooperation, answering and the prompt response through email. If only there would be more people that could send meaningful email within a few minutes, it’s a rare exception.
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Over the last decade, I’ve used various dating sites or apps. I’ll be direct and say I have tried virtually all of them. Since then, Match-dot-com has acquired all the major domestic dating sites and apps from OKcupid to Tinder, to Plenty of Fish and even more apps. Once owned by IAC/InterActive Corp, ran by the ex Fox-Czar, Barry Diller, the company today only has about 14% of the market share domestically; but yet the Trust Busters, of the Dept of Justice doesn’t see them as a monopoly.
…the more liberal the female, the more anti-male she is, and the closer she’s south and east of Mass 128; or is in higher education at some institution within that beltway, she’ll be less tolerant to men because the institutions make men look bad…
I am going to tell you what I feel about dating sites; and how gentlemen are always screwed over by out control females.
While an elder girl hits-the-figurative-wall by 30, as her reproductive abilities shrink in multitude for every year that follows to the menopausal stage; she needs to adapt her views to something more realistic, such as finding a 5 out of a 10 guy, or someone who isn’t so perfect looking or perfect in personality. I will refuse to use sexual market value or the coded SMV language, as that would be sexist; but I will say that if a girl does not look as youthful and fit, men won’t like that either.
The rise of feminism, and female liberations along with the infamous #MeToo movement (again there’s absolutely no excuse, full stop, no discussion from Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, the late Roger Ailes, or Les Moonves, Matt Lauer, etc.) HOWEVER these creeps of the male population is likely than a fraction of one percentage point!
Advice for dating sites often suggest men to change their behaviors; and yet females with the Dreamy-Guy-Who-Kn0ws-How-To-Take-Care-of-Me-Without-A-Roadmap; is never told to tone her expectations down. Men are always stupid and are murders out of a Lifetime Movie.
I blame this on the Web, its Graphical User Interface, of checking boxes to getting the dream guy; while this writer, that is believed to be a gentleman was open to any individual female. The ability to attempt to find love for the last generation is really a smoke-in-the-mirrors than some happy fairy tale.
Sadly I have to say I have been abused, and exploited more by women than I would never would think of doing it to them.
I don’t blame the girl or female in question, I blame her parents. Chances are the ones who never respond or always has a grief towards men and make a deal with it on her profiles, had a sister figure that in reality was her mother; and the most hated man in her life was her father, the man who helped create that human being.
I’ll end it with this: Either last year or 2018, I was getting pizza at one of the places on the Hampton strip on Ocean Blvd. The girl had a different skin tone, likely a Latino. I smiled at her, I kinda visually flirted with her. After taking my order to walk back to the beach; I heard the elder man who also was working the counter; that could be old enough to be her father (if he wasn’t) said within earshot “he likes you”.
I think learning from other cultures is highly important, because it’s in that group that Americans need to be reminded, and be taught to have social skills. I have came to a conclusion that women have not been taught the same level of social expectations a guy has; and the guy has to take that load by being unfairly single. Sadly I have to say I have been abused, and exploited more by women than I would never would think of doing it to them.
America is no longer a responsible country with grown adults, it’s a one way street and one has to be 200% responsible, and the other half has protected-class to do whatever they want. By telling the context of this post; the reader should know who I am referring this to. You do the thinking.
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I am an American, therefore I will not talk global-speak to the audience.
I’ve done research on growth and development of the human race against other species. Animals and creatures live less, but develop really quickly compared to the human. The average human fully develops by their early 20s, and yet our lifespan has grown expeditiously since the dawn of time. However at the level of a mother’s biological system, it’s almost as if it’s pre-biblical times.
In recent years, say since the radical 60s, mothers have expanded their responsibilities of not just protecting their children from physical or imminent harm, to protecting their psyche. Starting with some of the Gen-Xers, Millennials and Gen Z are stereotypically known for having overprotective parenting, that lead into the “helicopter parenting” practices. This is mostly a mother derivative practice, leading to children to grow up with a perception that they are entitled, are unable to handle let downs (hence the start of the “Participation Trophy”) and the enablement of micromanaging the child’s life literally hour to hour, day to day. It’s presumed this is at the mother’s side not on the father’s side because statistically it’s mostly the female to the offspring that has these traits over the male (or father.)
But despite to popular views; is the on-paper good-mama-bear good for everyone else? And why should they care?
Because their adult (or hierarchal) “children” are burdening society of their broken ego, and ability to self-survive on the basic, or the most trivial things. These people who are barely biological adults, or even barely with an adult mind; are incapable because the mama-bear figure disabled their ability to:
While in society people mock them as “special snowflakes” no one has the audacity to blame this on the parents (mostly the mothers) for enabling the idea to disable the children from being independent individuals. TV series like The Goldbergs, and even worse for special needs parents, Speechless gives a confirmation bias of it’s perfectly OK to overprotect your children, and that because it’s on TV it must be real.
In researching for this post: I had seen some claims if this had to do with single parenting. I do not like to discuss that issue at all because I come from a single family. One issue that I have not seen elsewhere but seen on social media years back about single mamas identifying themselves as “the love of a mother with a strength of a father”. For one thing that is scientifically false because the contrarian view is that women and men are different. A woman can’t be a bi-gender individual because most often the estrogen takes control on everything. They can’t be “strong” and “supportive” because the hormones calls for emotion and protection; most often a single mother will be a smother/overprotective, etc.
This goes back to the issues with the most at risk, not “special snowflakes” but individuals with disabilities. The mother is by default, almost entirely the “caretaker” and the word “care” implies protection and physical indemnification. Moms are rewarded for further disabling the children, already enhancing emotional instabilities and the inability to self-control.
Mothers rarely are held accountable for their inactions, and are always rewarded like they are a sister/bestie to the hierarchal child. Instead of celebrating backass parenting practices, the easiest thing is to delegitimize the group of sisters, and not celebrate Mother’s Day as it doesn’t celebrate the have-nots like the woman who created the day, who wasn’t one.
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When seeking for SIP Trunks, or “Cloud PBX” or “Cloud Phone systems”, they are mostly provided by an Internet Telephony Service Provider known as an ITSP, believe it or not. Some coaxial ISPs like Comcast Business, Charter/Spectrum or Cox will also bundle this for their “Business Class” offerings. SIP would not work to scale on DSL, better on bonded T1 lines. While the Internet (the data/web) is considered to be Title II of the FCC regulations, the FCC has put some conditions to VOIP service providers. Your freedoms are not well as celebrated in theory like the ol Part 68/Carterfone ruling; because of the provisions the FCC put in as well as Kari’s Law for Enhanced 9-1-1 services (let’s not touch that anymore.)
As a customer (and not a consumer); you can throw-away-the-script by using phrases like
“How are these phones going to connect with my existing network?
“What concerns should I have with security?”
“Wait, I am responsible for something right?”
“I have a SIP Proxy being implemented, and my ‘IT Manager*’ telling me we need this interconnected or we’re done!”
*he doesn’t exist because the person that’s talking, has a part time IT manager in their role!
The best way of scoring deals is to do reversed-sales tactics, and go on the offense as your best defense. Put the sales person in the call center into the fetal position (ok that’s too far) but in a way to get a higher up so then you’re holding the sales person at the ISP or ITSP accountable. This is how customer service used to be, then they went “consumer” (or dumbed-it-down) to then force the customer, the not so well versed communicated type to do anything the enterprise class ISP would tell ’em to do.
Even better, throw a Service Level Agreement to ensure if the imaginary lines go down in the packetwaves, that you can get credited in the next billing cycle for loss of potential revenue. Make sure you can reproduce the problem so you can ensure you did your part.
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I don’t intend to scare any potential readers with my written work, however it’s something people need to be on alert. Particularly on a specific technology, not the protocol/service itself.
Voice over IP or VOIP (sometimes spelled with the tacky “VoIP”, pronounced as Vo-eye-pee) is a technology that puts mostly telephony over the open Internet Protocol (hence the IP part of the acronym.)
IP dates back to the early 1980s and it’s offspring to the original DARPAnet that began as a Defense Department project in 1969 to have some form of a communications network in case the Soviets or some other rouge country had bad intentions against America.
IP then and now is a fragmented protocol, with billions of devices traditionally tied to firewall or Network Address Translation, that is better known as a “router”, so on the wild Net, what it sees is mostly machines and rarely users; except at the application level of the OSI Layer. In reality TCP/IP is your device’s driver to interconnect with other devices like the sound driver enables you to hear things on your machines.
VOIP is mostly an application, and the IP Phones are really desktop sized streaming devices that replicate that ol telephone that was invented by either Alexander Graham Bell, or Elisha Grey or Thomas Edison.
When VOIP became popular in the enterprise in the early 2000s, the security and reliability had been a concern. “Pure IP” vendors like Cisco came from data point of view so they felt routing telephony should be routing like accessing the Web. Early on some large-scale implementations had some major failures. Some were bone-headed from the phone guy’s point of view, and some were reliant on Microsoft Windows Server (other vendors probably laughed at Cisco.)
The issue then was a lack of encryption, lack of basic controls such as binding IP addresses for specific services, etc. Earlier versions of VOIP used proprietary protocols, and vendors like Avaya, Nortel and Mitel implemented their hard-wired telephony protocols on top of the “IP stack” (again like a plugin to that driver metaphor”.) VLANs along with firewall policies ensured that VOIP networks would be seen by the IT or phone guy and not a co-worker in accounting.
If a bad guy wanted to get into the phone system, s/he would needed to know the IP address of the server, or gateways, and manipulate the system at that point.
Problem Met Another Problem Without a Simpler Solution
Within the VOIP ecosystem, there was that proprietary way known as H323 (this is a signaling protocol of how the VOIP sets talked to the routers and servers) and then there was Session Initiation Protocol or SIP.
SIP decentralized the telephony networks by putting a switching like system on every device; and took the Web playbook for signaling the servers and gateways, and streaming audio and even video through the hand or headsets. Even that, it could support instant messaging or chat services, since the devices were chatting to each other via text, why can users?
The one thing I left out with H323 vs SIP, was, either a hostname or an IP address with H323, and with SIP it requires a server for authentication, another server for “proxy” another one for an emergency (ala 9-1-1), and another for time of day, and another set of IP addresses or Domain Names for “provisioning” to send all those stuff to the sets.
It also enabled the customer to the standard 19 Custom Calling Services features that in the old consumer landline world would cost a fortune. Any “PBX” type of features has to be “extended” from the vendor, say a Cisco, or Avaya.
SIP was great for long haul trunking between the phone company and the customer, or even inter site linking, since SIP did Caller ID well, if you had played around the graphically enhanced distro of Asterisk, Free PBX, the phrase is used very liberally.
As with any technology or service, without any baseline of historical context, the only thing SIP could relate was the unrelated H323 standard. SIP is open, meaning any vendor that adheres to the Request for Comment/RFC for SIP could theoretically work. Early on in the development of the endpoints (the “phones”) the prediction was you could go to BestBuy or RadioShack and buy a phone off the shelf and bring into the office. While those places did (or does not) carry them per se, but any eBay or Amazon store you could buy a $59 single line set and plug it into a SIP controller in the office and hello to BYOD.
Improper SIP Deployments can be a Threat to Small Businesses
The issues in the early 2000s involved H323 and proprietary software and servers. A lot of what caused H323 issues then were taught later (such as admin web pages to stay local and not be exposed to the open Internet, or remote users requiring log in through VPN compared SIP could be logged in from anywhere; which is why it’s successful)
Many traditional Nortel, Avaya small end systems that serviced customers less than 30 stations have been replaced Key Phone Systems “for a little more” or “better off” going a cheaper path to “Cloud PBX” systems. Most small businesses are using store bought technology (which is a whole other issue that would be beating a dead horse); worse is that these devices, Polycoms, Grandstreams, alike are likely directly connected to the Open and Wild Interwebz. If you work in an office with over 255 PCs, typically the DNS address is going to be something like a 172.16.1.x or 10.0.x.x) and not an 8.8.8.8 because if every PC and every device had that; it would stress out the network with every device pinging Google to get onto Facebook.com that then turns into Facebook’s public IP address when using browsers or apps.
For SIP deployments, these devices are going directly on the Internet and not some middleman in the datacenter or server closet. This is how many of the VOIP Phone Spam or Prank calls on steroids occur. There needs to be some device at where the Wide Area Network, WAN or “the Internet comes in” such a enterprise class firewall or a proxy server. All SIP calls would “originate” from this box. Unlike H323 or the traditional phone system, it’s not “the brain” per se, but it controls the quality, security and the “noise” that SIP devices would talk to each other if it’s going to Comcast Business or RingCentral. These things are called SIP Proxy Servers or firewalls, they aren’t “private” per se, it’s a hybrid of a multi line phone system meets the customer premise equipment like those T1-landline adaptors, or straight up modems. They can come in various shapes and sizes. You may need more servers/devices for redundancy. Cisco’s IOS routers have some level of support. If you have virtualization like VMware, you could run this as an instance, or if you have PFsense firewall, there is built in packages to do that.
In 2020, you wouldn’t plug your computer into a modem like you used to in 2002, so why would you do this to an IP enabled phone?
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