[PLUG] Trouble building Linux answering machine...

[Darkhorse]

This method of telephony requires the caller to have different
equipment.  It's not an answering technology.  Lots of places
googling around are recommending to consumers that they attempt 
VoIP by setting up two 56k modems.  One for you and the other 
for the party you are calling.  I don't see how 56k is fast 
enough for VoIP.  I tried googling on vgetty modem, I didn't
get very far.

I want a vgetty compatible modem.  These are amazingly hard to
find.  On Ebay, there are few externals modems left where they
are getting very pricey.  My dream is to build a Linux server
with answer capability that also has a wireless network on it
so that you check messages anywhere in your house assuming you 
have a laptop with wireless capability.

It seems if you really want a Linux compatible voice modem that 
you just have to design and build it yourself.  I'm appaled at 
the lack of Linux compatible USB voice modems searching on 
http://linux-usb.org.  I think I saw a total of one, a US Robotics
model.  A person left a comment that it likes to stop working 
randomly.  Googled into a guy who says he has done BBS'es that 
doesn't like US Robotics modems.  He claims the cases they are 
in neither stack nor cool well.  I see no reason why a clever
person couldn't take one out of it's plastic case to use it.
His comment about them only being designed for two hours of
use at a time though, that's a more intractable problem.

Anyone know where a list of voice capable winmodems that work 
under Linux is?  Of all the winmodems, many HCF ones with voice
capabilities are supported by Linuxant drivers.  Externals on 
E-Bay are hovering around $50+.

I would like to see full featured V.92 modems with data/fax/voice
capability that work with Linux fully in both pci and USB form
factors.  There just isn't a product out there right now that
really works well.  This is too bad.  Many people have a single
phone line and a buddy.  A cable Internet service outage might 
make being able to place a data call to a buddy handy.  In the 
interest of buying the fewest possible modems, fully featured 
modems make the most sense.  Why buy one modem for voice and 
another one for data if you only have one phone line?

My Intel536ep voice features work under Windows, but I intended
a combination answering machine with wireless distribution of
the messages on a Linux box.  Short of figuring out how to write 
message distribution software for Windows that works with the 
Windows voice package, I'm toast.  Nobody wants to go in the 
room where I have the machine set up to check for messages.  I'm 
getting a lot of complaints from people about not knowing there 
are messages for them.  I'm also getting complaints about not 
having the message checking feature available at the most 
popular phone in the house.  Since I can't build a Linux 
answering machine instead of a Windows one, these issues 
are awfully hard to address.