I'm just wondering if its possible to use a dial-up modem (connected to a landline) as a softphone. I've looked at using Asterisk but I couldn't tell if it would support anything but specialized hardware. (Possibly a VOIP server with a sort of proxy to the modem)
The modem I'm looking to use isn't anything special- yast shows it as an "HSF 56k Data/Fax modem", although I'm not sure that's entirely accurate (the "phone" image on the modem seems to hint at some kind of voice support).

Is there some software that allows this, or does this kind of hardware even allow this?

-Thanks!

firstly I have concerns that you may have a linmodem....windowsonly modem
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...t/2669/cat/all

Can you confirm that this modem works on linux?

Looks like you were right. I found a driver at linuxant.com, but I'm not quite willing to pay for the full version
It doesn't have fax support, but I don't know if that matters here.
wvdial seems to have detected it now, so is plain data support enough?

-Thanks!

if the modem truly works for data then voip should work but the speed of data transfer is the biggest hurdle you fast.

try the linux edition of skype and test call.

2) check out hw that works with asterix
http://trixbox.org/wiki/hardware-support

3) then look at your data transfer rates....use a web based test site if you do not know
www.testmy.net if you do not have a local one.

4) best quality codecs also have to work with your other calllers.

Codec.................Bandwidth Usage (Up/Down)
G.711 (64 Kbps).......87.2 Kbps
G.729 (8 Kbps)........31.2 Kbps
G.723.1 (6.3 Kbps)....21.9 Kbps
G.723.1 (5.3 Kbps)....20.8 Kbps
G.726 (32 Kbps).......55.2 Kbps
G.726 (24 Kbps).......47.2 Kbps
G.728 (16 Kbps).......31.5 Kbps
GSM (7 or kbps).......low
ILBC (15 Kbps)........27.7 Kbps

and I think US like G771 and I doubt you have the transfer rate.

5) a nice gen info
http://www.ozcableguy.com/voip.asp

Check in your Suse repository, they used to supply a couple of full speed soft modem drivers that would cover about half of the modems. You may not need to buy one.

If it's a dell machine you can get the full driver for that modem from their driver site.

Thanks for all the help!

As far as I can tell, the commercial drivers are the only ones that played nicely with my kernel. I think I was lucky enough for my computer to come with hardware that wasn't linux-friendly.

Also, I was really looking for something that would use POTS instead of VoIP. (I wasn't very clear, sorry). All of my googling seems to suggest that this isn't possible without some expensive hardware (way more than I'm willing to pay, that is), so I've pretty much given up my search. I'm still open to ideas, though .

Thanks for all of the help!

My previous link mentions ATA devices....you plug your POTS phone into that device and your modem into the ATA.

good luck

http://linuxgazette.net/120/smith.html

You can do it for cheap, just need the right modem.