Gateways overview
A VoIP gateway bridges the analog world into your system: physical phone lines (FXO), PRI/BRI circuits, or a legacy PBX that has to keep working during a migration. To Exovo, a gateway is a special kind of trunk — one that lives on your own network and never registers with anyone.
Gateway or trunk?
| SIP trunk | Gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| What it connects | An internet telephony provider | Physical lines / legacy equipment |
| Authentication | Registration or provider-side IP auth | None — it's your device on your LAN |
| Registration state | Registered / IP auth | Never registers |
| Typical reason | New numbers, cheap calling | Keep existing copper lines, alarm/fax lines, elevator phones, PRI contracts |
Calls through a gateway behave exactly like trunk calls — inbound rules, outbound rules, caller ID and recording all apply the same way.
Adding a gateway
Admin → Trunks → Add gateway, pick the device template, enter the device's MAC address and the regional options the template exposes. Exovo generates the gateway's SIP identity (a system-reserved 90000-range account) and seeds one inbound number per port; the device fetches its rendered configuration from the provisioning URL by MAC (or via Download Config on the gateway's row menu), registers into the system, and appears in the trunk list.
Because a gateway carries your analog lines, give it a default route and inbound rules just like a trunk — a call ringing in on a copper line is routed no differently than a DID.
Regional settings matter
Analog telephony is regional: caller-ID signaling schemes, call-progress tones and disconnect detection differ by country. The gateway templates expose these — set the tone set and caller-ID scheme for your country or inbound caller ID will misbehave in subtle ways.
Supported devices
- Grandstream GXW series — 4/8-port FXO gateways
- Patton analog FXO — 1–4 port SmartNode devices
Other SIP-speaking gateways can be configured manually against the generated per-port credentials, the same way as unlisted phones.