Telephone Entry Point Firewall

A device consisting of a Public Side Telephone interface (standard 4 wire), a Private Side Telephone interface (standard 4 wire), an ethernet and/or wireless TCP/IP interface, and a stand alone Web Server interface.

Device is the telephone analogy of any number of existing Internet Firewalls. Software consists of a rules based interface that defaults to the concept "all that is not allowed is denied".

Public side Telephone interface accepts all ring signals, and compares caller ID (or lack thereof) to the user's rule base. One obvious, programable rule - "drop all calls lacking caller ID".

ONLY calls passing thru the rule base are eligible to trigger the Private Side ring interface. No blocked calls will trigger the Private Side ring interface. All numbers are logged.

One obvious rule is a random number challenge: "Dial xxx to complete your call", repeated X times prior to a disconnect on the Public Side Interface. Robo based phone systems, as with robo based Internet bots, will have a VERY difficult time ever dealing with this.

Device should also be capable of downloading Internet based "Block lists" - similar to the block lists used by people to identify anti-PSP services. Nothing prevents owners from creating their OWN block lists - and sharing them over the internet.

Solution offered as a TOTAL incomming call control system - devoid of politically correct limitations imposed by the silly "Do Not Call" system. I suspect Cisco, Netgear, DLink, and other current vendors of small Internet Firewalls would welcome the chance to leverage their IP Firewall experience with a must-buy consumer product.