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VoIP for the Masses!
SkywalkerOS8 writes: "Vonage has begun offering Voice-over-IP(VoIP) service to residential broadband users. I've had the service since Friday and the quality is indistinguishable from a regular phone line. It's only $20/month for 500 minutes or $40/month for unlimited service. They include Cisco equipment, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Caller ID and Voicemail (which you can check online) in the service price. You can read more about it in this
article in Time. It works fine through my Linux NAT firewall/router and my monthly phone budget has now dropped from $60+ to $20."
Cool idea and all, but why not just go all cellular/mobile? I have for the past year and a half. $40, 4000 minutes (which is WAY more than I'll use in a month), 3 way calling, caller id, voicemail, paging, text messaging, wireless web, email, custom ringers and a phone i can take anywhere if i feel like it. Yes, I know that not all areas have this level of mobile service but once you make the switch you'll never go back. People say that mobile service isn't reliable in the case of an emergency, but from my personal experience I'd trust my cell phone a LOT more than my cable modem =)
You can even encrypt the voip using various encryption algorithms so all your other geeky friends around the planet can talk for free.
Latency: no noticeable. When I say the quality is indistiguishable from a land line I mean it. I've used plenty of computer based things like Internet Phone, DialPad and Net2Phone and there was always a noticable quality difference. With this there is NO difference. Gateways into local exchanges: Vonage maintains the gateways and is also smart enough to direct VoIP to VoIP calls directly to each other. It saves THEM money to do that.
Here's their rate chart for international calls
No sig for you!!
It supports faxing but not PPP modems at this time.
Uhh.. that's BS. What cell phone company has 500 (ANYTIME) minutes for $20 bucks
Sprint ($50)
ATT $50-70
Verizon $55
Cingular 50-70
Yes, they all give you 2500 "off peak" (when you sleep) hours, but you (read most people) don't use them.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
So, this is my field of expertise... To answer some questions/comments...
1. Why?
-- Cost and features. It costs the same amount for the phone company to run 4 or 8 lines to your house as it does 1. Features like 3WC, call waiting, etc... don't require special equipment.
-- You don't have to have seperate phone and data networks (more important in businesses, where they actually own/lease phone equipment.)
2. Latency
Latency on a phone call is generally noticable above 120ms or so (1/8th of a second). VoIP calls typically split audio into 10ms (or smaller) packets, which have maybe a 30ms buffer. Add some propagation delay and you're still well under 120ms.
3. Gateways
Yes! Equipment providers have gateways to translate between packet and traditional TDM networks. All different sizes, including home gateways that have a packet interface on one end and plug into your home phone network on the other.
4. PPP over VoIP
Ick. It *can* be done, but generally isn't a good idea. Wastes bandwidth. (You could then run VoIP over PPP over VoIP again...) For 99% of the cases, you're just going to data over the base IP network.
5. traditional Telcos response
Most major telcos have slowed their growth in TDM equipment in favor of VoIP/VoATM equipment. (Sprint just announced a > $1B deal for this equipment recently.) Fact is that telephone switches are expensive and naturally low bandwidth. Growth is in high bandwidth services, so moving to a data network makes a lot more sense.
6 Why no 911?
That's just a problem with this particular implementation, not of VoIP in general. For even more arcane reasons, 911 uses a specific type of digital trunk and requires a special gateway to talk to that trunk. There are ways around it.
7 What about spotty cable modem service?
That's a problem. Broadband needs to be something that you don't think about before you'd hook your phone line up to it. It's coming, but isn't there yet for a lot of people.
Now digital doesn't mean ATM, of course, but at any rate not analog.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I've been using VoIP for quite a few months now. I have a hardware IP phone plugged right into my hub, and the connection goes through my firewall (over an IPSEC VPN) back to the central office, which is 800 miles away. I can just pick it up and dial a three digit extension to speak with anyone in the office. It works very well -- under ideal circumstances. Those momentary little pockets of packet loss that cause you to die in CounterStrike make the conversation sou..nd li..ke.. so..th...ng..swe. oke...n.. It's not bad for talking to the folks in the office, but not a good thing if you have to deal directly with customers. The quality has gone to heck since cox.net took over. I want my @Home back. :(
If you're not doing QoS (which isn't very likely on residential broadband), then you'll need to terminate (or at least pause) all your high-bandwidth activity while you use the phone.
In an unrelated topic, I ran nmap against my phone (what an odd concept!) and found a telnet daemon running on it. Has anybody hacked this puppy? It's a Polycom SoundPoint IP 400.
Depending on the encoding used the bandwidth requirements could range from around 8K to 64K. They probably used G.729, which requires 11.2K.
Not to cause trouble, but Vonage doesn't maintain the gateway, Level3 does.. But damn does Level3 they have some serious equipment..
:)
Level3 Network Map. I've physically inspected or have (or had) equipment or connectivity in their New York, San Diego, Los Angles, Tampa, and Frankfurt.. I've brought guests into the Tampa colo, and into one of their private peerings, and just watched their jaws drop.. Those who weren't impressed had no clue what any of the equipment did.. I have (and had) equipment in quite a few other companies facilities, or toured. L3 is very good. I'll save my negative comments for another day.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It appears that thie areacodes they support is fairly slim. Unless you really WANT to have NYC number. Hey mabye the scammers will love this, only takes CC and you can project a local phone number anywhere on their network.
New York - 212 - 516 - 631 - 646 - 718 - 914 - 917
New Jersey - 201 - 732 - 908 - 973
California - 408 - 415 - 510 - 650 - 707 - 831 - 925
So if you don't live in those areas it's useless.
If you already have broadband, then $20 or $40 per month doesn't sound too bad for phone service. But I don't already have it. So let's see, what would this really cost me?
From here:
Hmm, that's not too bad. But then add the $25 setup fee and the $20/month minimum for the phone, and I'm up to $62.95/month. Amortize the installation over the first year and make it $65. Suddenly sounding not-so-good. Oh, and can I even use it? From here:
===
1)Generally Prohibited Conduct.
...
5) "Camping on the system". When you are not actively using the Service for any duration of at least fifteen minutes or more, you agree to disconnect it so that other active users will not encounter difficulty logging on. Adelphia does utilize detection programs to ensure that our customers are not keeping the connection open for prolonged periods when not in active use. In the event that such detection programs discover an open connection with no activity for thirty minutes, the connection will be automatically shut down. Active use is user-directed utilization of the connection for activities such as web browsing, e-mail, chat and file transfer. You must be physically at your computer to engage in active use. Use of automated programs to keep your connection open without your active involvement is prohibited. In the event of active involvement for twelve continuous hours, your connection will be automatically shut off.
===
So when they say No getting booted off and You get flat-rate unlimited Internet access they don't really mean it. This service would be totally unusable for a phone.
Nope, no sig
Are you sure they'll eventually reduce the rates? Sometimes providers start you off with low-cost or free services to hook you in only to raise prices later. Like all these formerly free e-mail providers have recently done.
Granted, cost of long distance has gone down in recent years, but cost of home service has increased. Cell phone charges have also spiked up lately for per minute charges when you exceed your monthly quota. With the 200 anytime, 2000 weekend plan, for instance, how many times do you manage to stay within the limits? If you exceed those limits, what are you really paying per minute? And you're somewhat locked into it since cell plans usually involve at least a one-year contract agreement. Buying out of those is never worth it no matter how schweeet of a deal you can get elsewhere.
Which brings up an interesting point; Here is what the Vonage website has to say about the term of the agreement...
"b. Term
The term of this Agreement depends on the plan, feature or promotion you select and is described in separate subscription or calling plan ("Calling Plan") materials provided by Vonage."
Ok, I'd like to know what that really means. I couldn't find any calling plan details anywhere on their site, and I would be very interested to know how long I'm locked into something like this and if there's a way out if I end up not liking what I've signed up for. I'm sure this information is available to you before you sign the agreement, but they really should state the terms clearly up front. Makes for better PR, IMHO.
"Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing - and it was everything that I thought it could be."
In Cisco's document:
/ vo ice/ata/ata186/ata186ug/186ugch3.htm
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product
Unplugging the device while the function button is flashing could permanantly damage the device
If the device is configured to find a DHCP server when there isn't one, the function putton will blink forever
I can see my mom with an endlessly blinking IP phone guarding it with a bat in case any tries to unplug it...
- Sig
AFAIK, G729 is 8kbps. It uses 10 bytes frames, each carrying 10ms of voice. Usually you want to pack 2-4 of them in a packet so you don't waste too much bandwidth on headers. Say 3 FPP = 30 bytes + 12 bytes RTP header + 8 bytes UDP header + another 20(?) bytes the IP header = 70 bytes for 30 ms of voice. So you get a bit under 20kbps bandwidth used.
Of course they could use a different encoding, say G723 (5.3 or 6.3 kbps). But it doesn't sound that nice and if you have broadband it would be a pitty not to take advantage of it...
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
It will probably be promoted like some of the initial cable VoIP services were in that it's called good for a 'second phone line' but they recommend you retain the personal residential line. IIRC, there were two reasons for this. 1) 911 didn't work and 2) phone service wasn't available during power outages.
Yeah, but if you read the fine print that's 100 peak minutes, with the rest offpeak. Offpeak is 7 or 8pm to 6 or 7am usually. Sometimes weekends are totally offpeak, sometimes they are not. Looking at my cell bill, 95% of my calls are during peak.
A T1 is a single voice line with 24 timeslots or "channels". Each time slot is 64kbps (1.544Mbps/24 = 64kbps, not 66kbps). The voice encoding on a T1 timeslot is PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) which is uncompressed, digitized voice. VoIP uses voice encoders (vocoders) to compress and encapsulate voice in IP. G.711 is the standard, high-quality encoding, and it is essentially encapsulated PCM (uncompressed).
You are right about the packet overhead. Uncompressed IP encapsulation will bring the voice stream up to ~80kbps. IP header compression will keep that around 68kbps, at the cost of router cpu cycles.