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."

Comments

Speak Feely works too!

[smnolde]

Have you seen this? Speak Freely

You can even encrypt the voip using various encryption algorithms so all your other geeky friends around the planet can talk for free.

International Rates

[aztektum]

Here's their rate chart for international calls

Answers to some questions...

[cfulmer]

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.

been there, done that, burned the t-shirt

[Zeekamotay]

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.

Re:What's the bandwidth usage?

[shakah]

Depending on the encoding used the bandwidth requirements could range from around 8K to 64K. They probably used G.729, which requires 11.2K.

Limited rollout to big cities

[_LORAX_]

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.

But you still need broadband

[drew_kime]

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:

Power Link service plans* start as low as $34.50/month for customers who own a DOCSIS compliant, Adelphia approved cable modem. For customers who prefer to have Adelphia provide the modem, service plans start as low as $42.95/month. All service plans include up to 4 email accounts and 10 Mb of personal web space.

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.

(a) You agree not to use the Service or any equipment or software provided by Adelphia:

...
(iv) so as to improperly interfere with, inhibit, degrade or restrict the use and enjoyment of the Service by others or Adelphias ability to deliver the Service to users and to monitor the Service, backbone, network nodes and/or other aspects of network servicing, including, without limitation, by:
(A) excessive use of bandwidth (e.g. exceeding 2.5GB of traffic in a given month);
(B) sending excessive data transfers;
...
(H) failing to comply with any bandwidth, data storage or other use limitations imposed on your use of the Service

(v) to run a server of any type in connection with the Service, nor may you provide network or host services to others via the Service. Prohibited uses include, without limitation, running servers for PPP, FTP, HTTP, DNS, POP, SMTP, NNTP, PROXY, DHCP, IRC, TELNET, TFTP, SNMP and multi-user interactive forums, or remapping of ports for the purpose of operating a server on the network.

...
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.

Bad "human logic" loop in the Cisco adapter docs

[chainsaw1]

In Cisco's document:

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/ vo ice/ata/ata186/ata186ug/186ugch3.htm

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...