Wired VoIP... wirelessly?

My current position requires me to travel internationally quite a bit. Using a mobile phone abroad is not cheap - and Skype is not always practical. Instead of spending US$ 0.99/min on my ATT mobile phone, I have a separate Vonage-based home office line that I carry with me when the mobile will not be cost-effective.

I have been a Vonage subscriber since 2004, and find its portability to be of tremendous value. Not only does it allow me to make calls from anywhere there is sufficient broadband (>64 Kbit symmetric), but also receive calls - in exactly the same manner as if I were at home.

Admittedly, I'm geeky about it. This means I don't use my PC with a headset. I like walking around when I'm on the phone, so I bring a Uniden 5.8GHz cordless handset and base with me (which normally is running in my office). This phone attaches to the Vonage ATA (the hardware device that connects back to Vonage HQ to give me a dial tone), so that also goes into the bag, along with its power supply. Needless to say, the setup contains a lot of wires and power plugs, but since it goes (typically) into checked luggage, I don't worry too much about the space.

Trouble is, I always had wired (ethernet) connectivity at the hotels where I typically stay. The Vonage ATA doesn't use wireless to connect outbound. On a recent trip to Scotland, however, the B&B where we stayed offered wireless connectivity only, so I had to improvise a bit to make it work. I had not planned for this, so that I could hack a solution together was extremely gratifiying!

My Windows XP-based laptop could connect to the wireless network without trouble, so I connected the Vonage ATA to my laptop's ethernet port. I then made use of a feature I'd never tried before - the "Bridge Connections" feature. I selected my wireless and wired interfaces, right-clicked and selected "Bridge Connections" and after a minute (and a reboot of the Vonage ATA), I had a dial tone!

I was not expecting it to work that easily, and indeed, later in the trip, it did not. At our last B&B, the same trick did not want to work. Not sure if it was because the first was a Linksys AP/router and the second was a Belkin AP/router, but needless to say, I went with Plan B - Internet Connection Sharing. I removed the bridge from the laptop's network configuration, and proceeded to share my wireless connectivity with my ethernet - and (after a reboot of the Vonage ATA), I had a dial tone again!

Not a solution for everyone, but it is nice to be able to make and receive calls exactly as you would from home!