How to use my office phone at home?

June 28, 2007 7:13 PM

Suppose I wanted to rig up the phone in my office at work such that I could access all of the phone's functions from someplace else, not on the office PBX...like, say, at home. Is this possible, and how?

The extensions are all Cisco 9160, so I assume it's a VOIP network. Is there some gateway device I could get that I could plug my office phone into, which would then connect to some Internet IP, which could then have a phone model identical to the office phone, and can function as normal?

I'm not out to just receive messages, I want the full functionality that attaches to actually using that phone model to place calls, but from a remote place.

posted by Brian James to computers & internet (3 comments total)

If its a VOIP system, and your office has configured the network to allow remote access (to the VOIP system).. its possible you could use a SIP "soft-phone" (such as X-lite --> http://www.counterpath.com/ )

I work for an ISP that also provides VOIP services and we use X-lite internally.. and (from what I understand) several of our off-site clients use it too, although I dont know the specific technical details of if they get full phone functionallity.
posted by jmnugent at 7:23 PM on June 28, 2007

If your office PBX is properly configured, the short answer is no. Calling features are provided by the PBX to endpoint stations only, and never "reside" in the desk set.

Also, the fact your phone system may be VoIP, doesn't mean, and shouldn't mean that your desk set IP addresses are publicly routable, or could be tunneled. With help of your systems administrator however, it's possible you could set up Cisco Universal Mobile Communicator to accomplish what you want. That's the Cisco solution, of course, but it has certian platform hooks that will be worse than difficult to replicate with other devices.
posted by paulsc at 7:32 PM on June 28, 2007

If your office PBX is properly configured, the short answer is "sort of, but not the way you're thinking." You're not going to get some kind of magical work-from-home box to plug in, but if the PBX is correctly configured you should be able to tunnel a phone to it with the cooperation of your telco administrator and a little networking know-how on the home side.

However, not all workplaces have properly configured PBXes and telco administrators without rectocranial inversion disease. It's possible -- even likely -- that perfectly good functionality like this is intentionally disabled or hobbled by design and implementation, often in the name of a false sense of security.
posted by majick at 8:43 PM on June 28, 2007