Is VOIP Over WLAN DOA?

prostoalex writes "Voice-over-IP in Wireless LAN environment - a futurist's dream of always-on always-connected service. Guy Kewney from eWeek tests the technologies that try to satisfy this market today and finds nothing but disappointment. " The best result we got was that just once, I heard his voice with a delay of about 15 seconds, saying "You just have to speak up!"--which was part of a 20-second burst of speech from him. The rest was lost.""

Comments

sataphone

[Cyberglich]

Well i have used stantaphone over my home wifi worked ok (1-1.5 sec delay) normal for anything of that nature.

Re:sataphone

[Loualbano2]

1 or 1.5 seconds is not ok for any type of real telecom, maybe for walkee-talkees but not phones.

The telecom industry spent a lot of money to find out what people find is OK. The two main factors are delay and Mean Opinion Score (MOS).

For delay anything past 300ms people will notice, around 500ms you start to hear echo. Most phone service worth it's salt will keep it below 300ms.

MOS is a 1-5 score placed on the quality of the voice through a connection 1 being low, 5 being excellent. More info:

http://www.tech.plymouth.acuk/spmc/people/lfsun/ mo s/

So when the author states that it's not ready for prime time its because a 1 second delay is actually at least 3 times too long. If you can deal with it, more power to you, but the telecom industry would laugh at any company who would try to bring 1 second delays to market.

ft

Re:sataphone

[dasmegabyte]

I've used iChat over my wireless lan to my boys in Cinci who ALSO use wireless lan. Not only was there no lag at all, the clarity was better than any phone I've used.

Re:sataphone

[Effugas]

Without echo cancellation, anything past one or two hundred milliseconds becomes unusable. With it, you only know about delays during interperson handoffs.

There are absurd delays on cell phones. I'm sure there are studies that show that, because of this, noticably different talk patterns have evolved.

--Dan

Re:sataphone

[mbennis]

I use skype to talk from france to morocco, over 802.11b and it works like a charm. Skype is very efficient on WAN

Re:sataphone

[MenThal]

but the telecom industry would laugh at any company who would try to bring 1 second delays to market.

They won't necessarily be laughing all the way to bank, that is for sure. There are usages where the delay are less of an issue and if the cost savings are low enough, that laughter will leave a bitter aftertaste. This might turn into one of those "only five computers worldwide" retrospective quotes...

...after all, how often do you get a full one second in edgeways talking to relatives on the phone?

Re:sataphone

[pappin]

VoIP is becoming more and more popular up here, except we usually use a wired connection. Quality and service are fairly good... but like all new technology there are bugs to be worked out of the system.

Our biggest problem is not with the company selling the VoIP service, but the high-speed provider we use for our connection.

Thumbs up from this end.

Re:sataphone

[NateTech]

I've worked in telco on and off for most of my career and I have a few comments about your drivel...

1 to 1.5 seconds is a lot of delay in an analogue network because the end-points are 2-wire hybrids. They can't do echo-cancellation properly. On a 4 wire E&M or other standard trunking analog circuit where transmit and receive are completely separated, you wouldn't hear the echo at all.

"MOS" isn't used by any major telco carrier that I know of in purchasing decisions or in Operations. Most of my time in telco has been working for a vendor who sells to the AT&T's, MCI's, Spint's, Telia's (Telia/Sonera now), Telus', and NTT's of the world. I've never heard of the term before tonight. If it's used, it's used by suits far away from the procurement, deployment, or operations people, I assure you. That or it's a research project for research sake. Please find me a Fluke MOS meter and prove me wrong, if you like.

Finally -- back to the original topic... please tell me other than a delay in the response time when you ask a question of the person at the far end, how you would know if your audio was delayed by any time amount? Unless you've dialed yourself you simply won't be able to tell any other way in a modern digital network. Call yourself from your cell phone sometime and you'll notice at LEAST 300ms of delay from the time you talk on one phone to the other, but you CAN'T TELL from only one end of the connection.

So I insist that your entire argument is pointless and wrong. Yes, delays are avoided, but not for the reasons you've given. How people notice delay in the modern telco network is in the amount of time the responses of the other human being take or via other non-telco related scenarios like an echoy conference room at the far end where the audio bounces off the wall (one second after it's originally sent) mixes back into the audio coming back the other way on the full-duplex circuit (another 1 sec delay added) and is heard by the originator of that voice 2 seconds later. But if both parties are holding handsets up to their heads, this can't happen if the network is engineered correctly.

Re:sataphone

[Loualbano2]

I feel I am being trolled, but here are some articles I dug up.

This one talks about delay, and that most humans can start to detect delay at around 250ms. On the second page, it goes over different G.7xx codecs and tells you the MOS score for each one.

http://www.networkcomputing.com/1202/1202ws3.html

Here is an article about measuring MOS in a network:

http://www.telecommagazine.com/default.asp?journal id=3&func=articles&page=0011t16&year=2000&month=11

Here is an SLA from MCI that has provisions for MOS:

http://global.mci.com/terms/sla/business_connectio n/

Fluke wont have a meter for this, but Agilent does:

http://we.home.agilent.com/USeng/nav/-536885778.53 6882651/pd.html

Cisco more or less agrees with me about the delay (scroll down a bit):

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/788/voip/delay-de tails.html

So, you probably never heard of this stuff because it doesn't matter in a classic digital or analog network mainly because you are using dedicated circuits and g.711 all day. When you start using data networks and codecs like g.723.1, you need to worry about this shit.

BTW, it took me about 5 minutes to find this info using that Google thing. You should check it out.

ft

No Mr. Enderle.

[Raven42rac]

VOIP over WLAN is not DOA. If you tweak the QOS etc settings and don't just throw things together haphazardly, then it works beautifully. Personally, I just wire VOIP to a cordless phone, then let the phone handle the wireless part. Enough of the ____ is dead articles.

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[LostCluster]

If you tweak the QOS etc settings and don't just throw things together haphazardly, then it works beautifully. Personally, I just wire VOIP to a cordless phone, then let the phone handle the wireless part. Enough of the ____ is dead articles.

WiFi is always haphazard compared to wired. You never know if a packet's going to make it safely or crash into something else in 2.4gHz land.

Phone calls work better when circuit switched... we only do VoIP because packet-based is less wasteful.

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[nacturation]

Enough of the ____ is dead articles.

Yeah, no kidding. This guy had a problem with getting his VOIP implementation working. Well, let me tell you about my vehicle experiences. I once tried to start up a Lada car and drive it down the street. Well, within a few seconds the vehicle crashed into the median and then careened over an embankment and the car was destroyed. Therefore, according to the logic employed by the "VOIP is dead" reporter, all vehicles will never work and we might as well just forget about this whole "driving thing".

Oh, and a non-sarcastic note to others considering writing such drivel: just because your *implementation* sucks, it doesn't imply that the technology itself won't work. Case in point: most of the large long distance providers are already moving to VOIP, such as AT&T. So now when you make a long distance phone call, it's being routed through VOIP. Make that same phone call on a cell phone and now you're doing VOIP on a Wireless Local Area Network.

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[bconway]

You expect the average user to tweak QoS settings? The same people that don't change the default password on their Linksys wireless router?

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, maybe the author should have changed his default WAP password to stop the kiddiez from using all his bandwidth for muzix and warez.

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Becuase the average user is some geek just hoping he can have the bragging rights to say "loot how l33t i am! my uber voip goes over the air!"

The average american would need quite some time to understand how wired VoIP works, and trust me, they live in my house. So then of the smaller population who actually wants VoIP, find the segment that wants it over their WLAN.....

On a side note, what about the 5ghz used by 802.11a? it seems most people use the b/g wireless standards, and most phones are 900mhz or 2.4ghz, perhaps thats the best option? or is the shorter range/penetration enough of a disadvantage?

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[skaffen42]

Ah come on. This is Slashdot. We can still have BSD is dead/dying articles, can't we?

After all, it's tradition!

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[Kris_J]

The same people that don't change the default password on their Linksys wireless router?

I thought we just found out that this was pointless anyway...

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you mention that. I was recently looking at the products of this company, which makes their own sort of 'wifi cellphone', as it were.

Apparently, they've been around for some time now. I don't think this industry is "dead," either...

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[gl4ss]

* If you tweak the QOS etc settings and don't just throw things together haphazardly, then it works beautifully. *

well, but the thing is that if you need to do that(tweaking) it is DOA.

though.. personally.. who cares. gsm is so cheap and made for this that only point of 3rd party rigged voice transfer solutions(yea, i'm talking about the usual voip) is for marathon calls and other stuff like that or if the local telecoms just suck ass with their networks.

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[Koguma]

I agree, and no actual hardware used was discussed. Maybe Mr. Enderle should tell that to the guys over at www.locustworld.com? Their mesh has had SIP in it for a while and seems to do VOIP quite well.

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[swb]

Personally, I just wire VOIP to a cordless phone, then let the phone handle the wireless part.

I think what you're saying is: use a traditional cordless phone and terminate its POTS end into VoIP. This makes tons of sense, and I've always assumed that using VoIP over 802.11 in more than a home setting was too power-hungry and too many protocol layers to be efficient.

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[poot_rootbeer]

Phone calls work better when circuit switched...

IANATE (I am not a telecomms engineer), but from what I was told in an engineering class at university a few years ago, POTS service is only circuit-switched from the handset to the local phone company's central office. Everything that travels long-distance over the phone backbones is packet-switched.

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[Keithel]

They've since updated the firmware -- about 5-6 days ago.. If you've got a Linksys router, check out the support page..

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[afidel]

This is why 802.11a is great for the next couple years. The cost of the MAC is expensive enough to keep cheap crap like walkie talkies and cheap portable phones out of the spectrum. But the cost of 802.11a computer equipment isn't significantly more expensive than g equipment, best of all you can get tri-mode client adapters to work outside your home network and setup a 11a home base station.

Re:No Mr. Enderle.

[NateTech]

Not true. Shoot whoever taught that course, they're teaching crap and don't do their homework.

But you can lean on your economics teacher for the "why not?" part of this.

Large international telcos have too much money invested in circuit switched devices to change miraculously overnight to packet-switched backbones. They also have massive slow organizational structures designed to create stability and trade off some of the opportunity cost of being first to market with new technologies.

Many large carriers have started seriously switching out gear in some heavily loaded Central Offices to VoIP because they have plenty of redundancy and just need growth NOW, but it'll take another decade or two before all the circuit-switched network devices are fully depreciated.

Add in the fact that many packet-switched routers capable of carrier-class levels of service cost almost as much as a Lucent #5ESS switch, and the people and training necessary to run them at that level are sometimes more expensive right now than the people already trained to work on the older gear and you add another wrinkle.

Further confusing matters is the fact that you CAN go buy a Lucent #5ESS switch with IP cards in it now... and...

Well, you can see it starts to get confusing. But generally, most of the standard day-to-day voice traffic is still on circuit-switched gear. Big, complex, entrenched circuit-switched gear.

Most huge telcos will take at least another two to four years to get heavy VoIP replacement of that gear in place... two years for lab testing and interoperability testing, another two years to work out the various checklists and procedural plans that wrap everything in the telco industry, and then time after that for actual huge deployments.

The only market factor that will push faster adoption of VoIP will be higher traffic loads that push the existing gear to its limits. And the steep part of the upward cell phone curve of additional traffic and calls is over with in most of the advanced countries. We're at the beginning of the slow upward curve (almost a plateau) in those parts of the world with wide cellular deployments, traffic-level wise. There's now time for those who specialize in stability to come back into the market and do their thing... stabilize the standards and technology behind massive VoIP deployments, and room for the vendors to move in and make the massive VoIP backend-equipment necessary for a typical CO.

The small guys are desperately hoping that VoIP takes off at the edge of the network right now, because they need business. Ever-increasing reliability on CPE (customer premesis equipment) gear is hurting them. A company can reasonbly buy an incredibly feature-rich PBX/in-house phone system right now and it will probably not ever fail throughout the entire life of the company. The small guys sell these things and their sales are declining as a result of their own success.

VoIP peering is also in its infancy, and when I say peering, I mean passing off your VoIP traffic to someone else who can carry it to the particular end-point you're looking for. In the circuit-switched world, this was all traditionally handled by SS7 and Tandem switches that kept track at the "peering" point of all the billing information necessary to present the end user with a phone bill at the end of the month -- but the standards are not yet truly set/defined and generally not accepted by the various small-to-medium VoIP only early-adopters yet, even today. As a friend of mine says, "If you can't figure out how to bill for it properly, you might as well start calling it a hobby."

It'll get there, but it'll take time and a lot of hard work. I'm working on the deployment of a massive VoIP installation for a specific telco service in a few months -- you should see the documentation at both the engineering and the operations levels flying around -- people are still debating which voice compression CODEC to use, as a simple example of what's really a mu

too early

[Chanc_Gorkon]

First off, it's eWeek for crying out loud! Second, it's still too early to proclaim VOIP over anything (WiFi or Ethernet or whatever) dead. Second, I have seen it work and it worked wonderfully. Declaring VOIP over WiFi dead is like saying Apple's dead because it does nto have the market share that Dell does.

Re:too early

[BWJones]

Shoot, we used iChatAV rather successfully from Auckland, New Zealand to Salt Lake City for remote collaboration in a lab environment rather successfully with hardly any delay whatsoever. In fact, I routinely used (and still use) iChatAV with a wireless connection, so I do not understand what this is all about.

Re:too early

[Rimbo]

I agree it's too early to pronounce it DOA. The guy's obviously trolling for readership; things like this aren't going to work overnight.

As far as what you've seen work, he does make a good point: Once you get a bunch of people trying to use it at once, things are going to become an issue, especially with the limitations of Access Points.

The future is mesh networking, where rather than an access point, all of the 802.11 devices run in ad hoc mode. Then, routing software, such as AODV, will automatically generate routes with failover.

I work for a company called Kiyon that has been doing ad-hoc mesh networking for a couple of years. By dynamically generating routes between nodes, we can extend range through multiple hops and reliability by changing the route mid-stream. The lightweight nature of the protocol improves latency as well!

So we're pretty happy about what we've got. It'll solve a lot of the problems of VoIP out of the box.

Re:too early

[hawkeyeMI]

Sounds pretty cool. Now all we need is a standard protocol or something that works across devices. Is Kiyon's solution strictly proprietary?

Re:too early

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree it's too early to pronounce it DOA.

I don't think we ever can. If (when?) it does die, it won't be on arrival. I can promise you that.

Re:too early

[sg3000]

> shoot, we used iChatAV rather successfully from Auckland,
> New Zealand to Salt Lake City for remote collaboration in a lab
> environment rather successfully with hardly any delay
> whatsoever

Yeah. I do this all the time.

Ingredients:
1. PowerBook G4
2. Mac OS X 10.3
3. iChat AV
4. AirPort (802.11b version)
5. Comfy bed, little computer lap tray, Collie sitting on your feet (all optional)

Results: no problem at all. No delay noticeable. Voice quality was fine. Voice quality was so good, the whole thing was kind of anti-climatic.

Re:too early

[cbreaker]

"The future is mesh networking"

The distant future.. maybe. I don't see networking moving over to mesh topologies anytime soon, even if your company has some working systems.

Re:too early

[LostCluster]

VoIP over WiFi isn't dead... it's aborted before it's even born.

There is no point. There's enough room on the 900mHz and 5.8gHz bands for classic circuit-switched wireless phones to work. If you want better sound quality, you can go digital over that link... but there's no reason to bring along all of the overhead of UDP/IP and WiFi on the exchange. It's better to use a much simpler system of ones and zeros with a basic bit-flipping encryption key.

There's just no benefit to VoIP over WiFi when instead of going over the WiFi bridge you could use a standard consumer 900mHz phone instead.

Re:too early

[JWSmythe]

I have to agree. There are too many variables that could have been wrong.

Did he have a weak signal? Was he 300 feet from the AP or 2 feet? Did he have poor signal quality? Maybe he was standing by a wall where someone was running a microwave in the next room. We found a brand new radio in one office was interfering with our 2.4Ghz telephones. It was putting off a *LOT* of noise, even when it was turned "off" but plugged in. There's one room in my house, even though it shows 90% link quality, 802.11b devices suffer performance problems. Every other room is fine.

Maybe it was the throughput of his Internet connection. Was he sharing bandwidth on a 56K dialup, or a poor quality provider? Maybe there was any number of problems between point A and point B. Maybe it was simply the device(s) he was using were faulty. Nah, no one gets bad hardware.

Saying VoIP over WiFi is dead is like saying the Internet is dead because you're on a noisy line and it takes 5 minutes to view a single web page. By this judgement, television is dead, because as a kid I saw more snow on the screen than picture. Was it television technology at fault? No, it's because I was 100 miles from the nearest broadcast tower.

But hey, people declare perfectly viable projects dead all the time. *BSD is dead, right? :) I'd be more willing to declare Amiga dead, but there's hardcore Amiga lovers still using it who may argue with me.

Re:too early

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy's obviously trolling for readership; things like this aren't going to work overnight.

I'm not sure about that. It's only his first attempt and he's already gotten /.'ed ;-)

Re:too early

[WasterDave]

Likewise, I gave an interview via iChat AV from Wellington NZ to someplace in California.

However, I would say that iChat and VoIP are actually very different things. The point is (IIRC) that VoIP has to use much shorter frames and more or less *has* to run over H323 to be compatible with other bits of VoIP gear.

To those of you who say "well, to hell with VoIP and POTS numbers and all that, we'll use our modified IM networks and be DAMNED!!" ... I can only suggest that, well, you're probably right.

Dave

Re:too early

[AmericanInKiev]

The Statement is only true in the current context.

I happen to believe that soon we will share our wireless ports in a harmonic fashion - and that will permit us to get service beyond current base radius.

Add to this the possibility that personal wifi phones could also be mesh points and you have the makings of a personal beehive of connectability.

ironically - the power requirements of repeating signals - as opposed to making single long hops suggests that sharing your service with others actually saves you bandwidth and power.

(assuming random locations and equal useage)

So vowifi is a choice technology for the sharing type - and will probably be a badge of community before long.

the only requirement is a hackable model with the right form and feature set. This has happened already with the linux linksys wifi router - a hackable linux wifi phone could spark a new craze of peacedriving - wandering around looking for others who WANT you on their link.

the dynamics should look a lot link ametuer radio without the damn keying requirement.

AIK

Re:too early

[Ariane 6]

I use iChat AV to keep in touch from Honolulu to D.C. Hardly any delay, and since the connection's wireless, I can walk around the house and give my friends on the east coast a virtual tour. Easy as pie, and when the network gets in the way, it's never the wireless end of things that causes problems. More likely someone else in the neighborhood downloading pron.

Re:too early

[Trillan]

I can do better than that. I regularily talk to my wife in the Philippines on a 43k dialup (I'm on broadband). The results are less than perfect, with her voice cutting out occasionally -- especially when her prepaid ISP is heavily loaded -- but they're much less frustrating than standard long distance. And I get the satisfaction that, well, sure it's crappy sometimes... but at least I'm not getting charged $0.25 per minute for it. It actually works out closer to $0.01 per minute, because of her dialup. And if the connection is decent, we can send stills from the web cam to each other.

I'm hoping to get her onto a better ISP soon. I think if she could get 56k consistently we'd have a lot fewer problems... and probably need less of a buffer (and thus, less delay).

iChat AV rocks. I never thought it would work on 43k dialup.

Re:too early

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, iChat is much closer to VoIP than you realize. Apple uses industry standard protocols for signaling (SIP) and streaming (RTP). It's pretty much identical to a VoIP phone call.

Re:too early

[Icyfire0573]

except that its free

Re:too early

[hashashin]

You may not see a point, but I do. Sure, I can use a standard consumer 900MHz phone at home, but where this technology really shines is in mobile phones.

The idea is: you have a mobile phone that you carry around with you. When you are not in range of WiFi, then you use the normal GSM/CDMA network and pay the normal price for it. But when you are in range of a WiFi network, like at the office, you can switch to VoIP and talk for free (more or less).

It may not be perfect today, but I think it's pretty close, and in a few years it will be obvious.

Re:too early

[Morth]

Voice quality was so good, the whole thing was kind of anti-climatic

Yeah, gotta hate those nonweathers.

Re:too early

[Tarwn]

Wireless mesh networks are not to far in the future, I know for a fact of several being installed in the mid-west of the US and several more tat will be installed in the next 8 months (though I can't say more about location).
To say mesh etwroking is far in the future isa bit inaccurate, unless your measuring in Universal Ticks...

-T

Re:too early

[Anonymous Coward]

Ingredients: 1. PowerBook G4 2. Mac OS X 10.3 3. iChat AV 4. AirPort (802.11b version) 5. Comfy bed, little computer lap tray, Collie sitting on your feet (all optional)

That's because Apple can do no wrong. If Steve Jobs were to come and take a dump on the average Mac fanatic's head they would claim it smells like fresh cut roses and ask for more. iChat AV is a miracle program clearer than the phone network itself! Uh huh.

Re:too early

[Lumpy]

I wander the house using WiFi and my Sharp Zaurus as a Voip cordless phone. works great with the right headset and this app

no problems and my GF sees no problems surfing the net while I am talking, and I get no more noticable delay's than what I get from a regular long distance connection...

now network congestion somewhere out on the net causes a hiccup once in a while but nothing that is as bad as most nextel phones have every day.

Re:too early

[Rimbo]

Why not?

I mean, it's all and well and good to express doubt behind any new technology, but without some reasoning or facts behind it, it's just mindless FUD. You can believe what you want, but you'd better be able to back it up.

Give some reasons why it'll be in the "distant" future... and what exactly you mean by "distant."

Re:too early

[cbreaker]

No no, that's not exactly what I meant. The original post insinuated that all networks will be mesh, and that everyone would participate in the mesh. I do not see this as becoming a reality anytime soon because none of the current wireless technologies have enough bandwidth, and wired networks can't really mesh without a lot of wires =)

For ISP'ing a wireless mesh, that's a little different, since you can put some large antennas, the routes will be pre-determined, and you won't have that many of them.

Stanaphone worked for me:

[Xshare]

I couldn't accept incoming calls, I kept getting a busy signal, but I got my email (the article writer didn't) and even made a few calls. Quality was fairly good, and there was only a delay of a a second or so.

Good idea

[BlindSpy]

It sounds like an awesome idea but I'm wondering whats retrainting it from working?

Re:Good idea

[sunilonline]

bandwidth, packet loss, high latency, bad optimization (of qos,etc) to name a few

The 802.11 basic standard does not support voice!

[Ho Kooshy Fly]

802.11 standard was modeled around having a CSMA/A algorithm that tried to be as much like Ethernet as possible. There is no provision in the BASIC standard to provide for clients to shut up for higher priority voice clients at all! This means that a data client can blow the voice guy to kingdom come.

There are extensions to the 802.11 standard like 802.11e and WME that will allow priority queuing and some minimalistic scheduling to take place. Other companies play tricks with the protocol to allow for voice clients to perform better under the BASIC standard but there are drawbacks.

In the end, it is too early to judge VOIP over WLAN because clients and access points have yet to adopt extensions to the basic standard.

-Ho

VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[EmbeddedJanitor]

A collegue of mine has VPN over DSL to a corporate network. They do all their phones via VOIP. If you send him a ~1MB email while he's on the phone, the call goes down the toilet. Not exactly a "new millenium experience".

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[gcaseye6677]

Sounds like this could be fixed with some QOS (Quality of Service) software. Prioritize the VOIP and deprioritize things that are not of a time sensitive nature, such as email, and the call won't lag.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[UserChrisCanter4]

And that would be where QoS comes into play. If his company set that system up for him, shame on them for not making the obvious assumption that the connection might occasionally be heavily utilized for data at the same time a call is being placed.

If he set this system up himself, tell him to go get one of the linksys/netgear/whatever router/gateways in a box that support QoS (it's usually the units a step above the basic ones). If his router or gateway is a linux box of some sort, get it setup on there. If he's using Vonage, their VoIP adapter supports it if connect it in front of the PC/router/what-have-you.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Yes QoS defintiely can fix issues like this. Didn't most of us read about Robert X Cringely's idea to make WISP/VOIP providers with WRT54G's??

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[mcrbids]

Your post is an excellent example of what's wrong with VOIP at current.

To use a telephone, you go to the local thrift store, spend $5 on a phone, and plug it into the wall to get reliable telephone service.

To use VOIP, you have networks, hubs, routers, wireless cards, firewalls, switches, and enough power bricks to saturate two 6-plug power strips so that you end up with something that must be tweaked to operate smoothly at all, in order to get something with the range of a cordless telephone. (Wifi uses the exact same frequencies as a cordless telephone - it's essentially a fancy cordless telephone modem)

Never mind what happens when any of those various boxes have a security vulnerability found...

In order to be truly successful, the technology needs to GET OUT OF THE WAY for the common user. Bridges are technology that are so reliable we never think about using one. So are telephones. VOIP will have "arrived" when it's use is automatic and reliable.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[thedillybar]

Will your regular old (cheap, household) wireless router allow you to adjust QoS easily?

I've only played with a few of them and never looked for any QoS settings. My guess is you can't change them without a lot of hassle.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[rgbscan]

I was working on a VoDSL product based on the HomeRF protocol a while back during the whole dot.com thing. The protocol worked rather well for this sort of thing. The protocol knew o turn down other traffic when it saw a becaon for voice data. Too bad it didn't catch on and we're trying to bolt QOS over into the 802.11 world.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[Tony Hoyle]

This is one of the reasons VOIP can't be justified at the moment.

eg. at home, the cheapest VOIP phone is 50UKP (compared to 2UKP for a cheap POTS phone), and you need an asterisk router to make it all hang together if you have more than one phone. Oh, and an FXO as the VOIP carriers are all 2-3 times more expensive than regular POTS and you'd be stupid to use them at the moment (in the UK it's impossible to have DSL without paying the full rental for a POTS line anyway so there's no rental cost saving).

If the DSL line goes down (not infrequent) all the phones are out, except the main analogue line which has the asterisk machine plugged into it...

It's worst at work - I had to price a system (was in the wrong place when VOIP was mentioned in front of PHB). 60 Grandstreams is still damned expensive, plus a 60 line FXO/PBX. Then I found out that simple things like call forwarding didn't work -you need a more expensive phone for that, so more cost. When I gave the final figure to PHB he nearly had a heart attack! Needless to say the company will not be investigating VOIP for another few years.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[Col. Klink (retired)]

> To use a telephone, you go to the local thrift store, spend $5 on a phone, and plug it into the wall to get reliable telephone service.

Yes, to use your OWN telephone. But if you want to telecommute and be on the corporate PBX, VoIP is the ultimate solution. You can have the same number for days when you are in the office, at home, or on travel. All calls you make come out of your office PBX and not your home phone.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[mcrbids]

Yes, to use your OWN telephone. But if you want to telecommute and be on the corporate PBX, VoIP is the ultimate solution. You can have the same number for days when you are in the office, at home, or on travel. All calls you make come out of your office PBX and not your home phone.

You can get (pretty much) all of these advantages with a cell phone, starting at around $35/month.

Oh, wait a minute. Aren't we talking about wifi VOIP? Isn't a cellular network just another wireless network?

Here, in Chico, CA (Near Sacramento) we can get a cell phone with a company called Metro PCS and you get unlimited calling, though your coverage area is somewhat limited.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[ThePiMan2003]

The 3com NBX 100 is actually pretty cheap, and works very well. This assumes that you have up to 100 CO's and up to 100 extensions per office.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[mla_anderson]

Well perhaps in the UK it isn't worth it, but in the US and Canada Vonage is making a big impression. I'm going to spring for my DSL no matter what phone system I use, so that doesn't enter into the price comparison. Once I add the features I want onto the POTS line my monthly bill before long distance is near $40. The basic fee for the POTS line to support the DSL is around $10, add the $25 Vonage fee and I'm at $35.

True it's not much of a savings prior to long distance, but calling the relatives in Canada is much cheaper on Vonage.

At least here VOIP can easily be justified if you want all the bells and whistles on your phone line.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, when you plug that phone into a wall it plugs into a networks, hubs, routers, wireless cards, firewalls, switches, and enough power bricks to saturate several nuke reactors.

It's just that you are paying top dollar for the honor of plugging into that network.

And we have had networked wireless phones for a long long time now too. They are called cell phones.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[edudspg]

Grandstreams Budgettone 100's are $65 from Pulver.

http://voipstore.pulver.com/product_info.php?produ cts_id=34

I just bought a pair of these for a cross-country test from the SF, CA
area to Northampton, MA. The most striking thing was how quiet the
connection was. (Sort of like going from phonographs to well-recorded
CD's.) The fact that the phone doesn't need any 2-wire to 4-wire
hybrid can't hurt either. Lets hear it for true uni-directional talk
paths without any transformers in the way to saturate and add other
distortions and coloration.

As to pricing the system for 60 Grandstream's and 60 FX0's, isn't that
a touch FXO heavy? I mean, how many people in a normal company are
using an outside line at once? Normal ratios are only a few percent
(unless the business is telemarketing or something like that).

The fact that VOIP phone calls can be done without any middle-man and
they don't cost anything above and beyond what one pays for an
internet connection, is going to be a strong driver for acceptance of
this technology. Pulver already has just short of 500,000 folks
signed up for his Free World Dial. He also has Packet8 and Vonage
peering so one can call those company's customers for free.

http://www.freeworlddialup.com/support/quick_start _guide

I think the ball is rolling and VOIP is picking up critical mass.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[Yaztromo]

To use VOIP, you have networks, hubs, routers, wireless cards, firewalls, switches, and enough power bricks to saturate two 6-plug power strips so that you end up with something that must be tweaked to operate smoothly at all, in order to get something with the range of a cordless telephone. (Wifi uses the exact same frequencies as a cordless telephone - it's essentially a fancy cordless telephone modem)

You'd have to install a whole pile of even more expensive equipment if your phone company wasn't providing all of the necessary switches and other hardware leading up to your home.

I just moved into a new home less than two weeks ago. The house didn't have any telephone service coming into it, so I had to order it from the local telephone company (Bell Canada). Unfortunately, for new homes they'll only setup your service from the curb to an outside wall of your home. You have to do the rest (or pay them quite a bit to have them do it).

Between the cabling, the phone line, the basic 1x9 phone distribution panel, the wall box to contain it, and various bits and pieces of necessary hardware, it's cost nearly $200 CDN in parts. And none of these components has any processing capability -- it's all simple electronics.

Sure it's easy to think of POTS as being easier than VOIP, but that's typically because the telephone company or someone else has done all the work for you, giving you a wall jack as your interface. If the phone company did nothing but give you a cable with access to their network, you'd have to invest a pile of money into the necesary equipment to make that useful.

VOIP may be in the same boat one day. One of my previous employers went all VOIP for a new office of about 2000 employees, and setup a seperate network just for handling the telephone traffic. For those of us using the system, it was as easy as plugging the phone into the jack marked "phone" -- no different than with a POTS phone in any home (but mine. As it happens, the builder appears to have screwed up much of the phone cabling theey roughed in internally, as thus far only 1 in 5 is actually working :P).

Brad BARCLAY

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[tftp]

Grandstream phones are really cheap inside, very shoddy manufacturing etc. etc. Most of them work, but you must buy extra 10% for spares. I have one phone here that just refuses to recognize network... sometimes :-) I opened it up and inspected soldering, seems to be OK but still the phone is defective. And they also love to ARP-flood your network, you need to check the configuration with a sniffer to be sure they behave.

However a working SIP phone with Asterisk is great. I had more problems with two analog phones than with 10 SIP ones.

At some point I even had some of these phones bridged over 802.11b - no phone-related problems (but plenty 802.11-related ones :-) Now they are on 100 Mbps cable, though - more reliable.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[boysimple]

What type of connection does he have? If it's a crucial connection why is he not using any QoS server (as mentioned elsewhere), and if he knows it kills his phone, why is he checking his email while he's on the phone (or not setting his email to not download large attachments automatically)? These are pretty simple fixes.

Not to bash the user, but c'mon, he's gotta work at it a little, it's an emerging technology. It's not gonna "Just Work" for everyone right away.

Full disclosure: I have the standard SBC 29.99 DSL and my VOIP (over 802.11b) works just fine. It's the uploads that kill the phone as my DSL upload allowance is teensy -- but I can easily when uploads occur.
--

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[_Brazil_]

But QoS would fix that...

At my old apartment, we had ADSL, and my roomates were Counter Strike nuts... and would come to my room yelling at me for doing p2p stuff to runin there ping times...

I refused to stop my file trading, instead, I made my Linux box router use QoS... I made certain services have higher priorty, as well as in general, small size packets have higer priority...

It wouldn't matter how much I was uploading or downloading... their CS ping times stayed the same...

Plus what you are discribing is 2 problems...
if your upload speed is slower than your download speed... you can't upload response/acknoldgement packets back, and reduces your speed to the effiecientcy of your upload...

Point is... VoIP over WLAN is possible... just takes some fine tunning...

Why would you want your e-mail packet have a higher timming priority over your VoIP packet? Or enven the same priority?

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[AKnightCowboy]

I just moved into a new home less than two weeks ago. The house didn't have any telephone service coming into it, so I had to order it from the local telephone company (Bell Canada).

When you say "new home", do you mean just recently built or do you mean it's a new home to you but it's actually 85 years old on a farm somewhere? If you just had a new home constructed and didn't bother to have the contractor run cabling for telephones (and even ethernet, cable TV, etc.) before the drywall went in you're nuts.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[faedle]

had to price a system (was in the wrong place when VOIP was mentioned in front of PHB). 60 Grandstreams is still damned expensive, plus a 60 line FXO/PBX

I don't know what phone system prices are like where you are, but here in the US any decent mid-scale PBX will cost you around $300-500 per extension, more with advanced features like ACD/Automated Attendant. You can build one hell of a VoIP system for around the same amount of money, if you have somebody who knows what they are doing put it together.

There are some pretty big advantages to a VoIP system as well.. things that no PBX can do, since (in the case of Asterisk) you have the Fine Source and a really neato API for extending the system. My home phone system, as an example, even has tie-ins to pgpGroupware, doing things like notifying you of important appointments via your phone, allowing you to record voice memos (which show up in the Groupware)... and allowing you to map speed-dial numbers from your contacts in the groupware. I'm a shitty programmer and it took me about an afternoon to get this kind of stuff up and running.

Then I found out that simple things like call forwarding didn't work..

Funny. On my Asterisk system here at home, call forwarding works just fine with Grandstream phones. Call forwarding is usually a function of the PBX.

Now, if what you're referring to is "attended transfer", yes, that's a known limitation of the BudgeTone 100. We keep being told on various mailing lists that Grandstream is working on a firmware that will allow for that functionality soon.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[edudspg]

Grandstream phones are really cheap inside, very shoddy manufacturing etc. etc.

I'm under no illusion with respect to their quality. ;-) They seem to have some incredibly bad software that is prone to drop packets from the intenal http server. I often need to hit the refresh button on firfox 2 or 3 times to get the screen displayed after saving a setting. Hitting the http reboot button causes the phone to be stuck in the reboot light-on state until I connect to the built in http server again. Still, as a phone for talking on, it is wonderful. The only way to describe it "crisp and clear", well at least in ulaw 8k. ;-) I haven't found a need to limit myself to the compressed encoders.

Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better

[Yaztromo]

When you say "new home", do you mean just recently built or do you mean it's a new home to you but it's actually 85 years old on a farm somewhere? If you just had a new home constructed and didn't bother to have the contractor run cabling for telephones (and even ethernet, cable TV, etc.) before the drywall went in you're nuts.

A new home as in: we're the first people to live in the building :).

(Not as in, however, just built -- this house used to be the model home, so it was actually constructed a few years ago, but without most of the interior walls. It had to have some major reconstruction ddone inside by the builder just prior to our moving in to make it livable).

As it is, there is roughed in wiring put in by the builder to each of the bedrooms, plus the kitchen and living room. The problem is that it was a bit of a shoddy job, and none of the interior wiring going through the walls had any form of connectivity to the phone system outside the walls. And it hasn't helped that in the basement there are a dozen wires of different sorts that aren't connected to anything that are just hanging down into nothingness (a product of being the model home -- it had an alarm system wired into it that was removed prior to taking posession, as well as some exterior lights and such that were removed, plus roughed-in central vac control wires and such), making it extremely difficult to isolate which wire is supposed to go where.

As it happens, the builders telephone guy was here this morning, and between the two of us we were able to narrow down the possibilities and finally identify the roughed-in telephone cable that was intended to provide service to the upper floor. Unfortunately, for the upper floor they just ran a single continuous loop. Additionally, they wired in the wrong pairs as ring and tip (the jacks are standard 4-wire, but the cabling itself is 6-wire CAT3, each of course having a different colour scheme).

Thankfully I've been able to fix this, and today all of the upper floor bedrooms now have proper, working telephone service.

Yaz.

That does it

[worst_name_ever]

VOIP over WLAN is DOA? WTF? I'm going back to DTMF over POTS ASAP!

Re:That does it

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the RIAA get wind of all the MP3s being passed over P2P when VOIP goes mainstream.
its gonna be WTF? Call the DOJ.
then its gonna be RIP for the fans of U2, UB40 and 10cc

Re:That does it

[paul248]

STFU! (JK)

Why not...

[NIK282000]

...just use a phone?

Re:Why not...

[bersl2]

...just use smoke signals or carrier pigeons?

Re:Why not...

[0racle]

Just use the keyboard.

Re:Why not...

[Tony Hoyle]

Why was that marked troll?

Mobile phones are cheap commodity hardware. They work, don't break up, and don't require you to invest in an entire network infrastructure just to make a local phone call.

VOIP is great for geeks to play with (heck, I have one at home.. at least as far as the POTS line - I refuse to pay the premium charges that VOIP providers want) but let's not pretend it's some kind of great idea....

Re:Why not...

[Lawrence_Bird]

especially when you can get long distance at 5c or less..

Re:Why not...

[ThePiMan2003]

However in a small bussiness environment that is setup in several different cities VOIP is a god send. If for no other reason than we don't need someone to answer the phone at each location, so people can actually take a break without phone calls heading off into phone mazes. If you already have an VOIP system in place WiFi makes it really easy to leave your desk and take your phone with you, to a copy room, confrence room, drafting room, etc. And since it is your phone it is your extension.

Re:Why not...

[devilspgd]

If my "premium charges" you mean that it costs less then POTS by using a lastmile I already pay for, then you're correct.

Re:Why not...

[tftp]

Less, for sure - like ZERO. There are many flat rate plans that cover all of North America, and the cost only depends on number of minutes in the block that you purchase. Great for businesses.

Re:Why not...

[tftp]

If you already have an VOIP system in place WiFi makes it really easy to leave your desk and take your phone with you

Any cordless phone can do that, and that's what I use at work. We do have VoIP and Asterisk, but WiFi phones are heavy and expensive, and they will stay heavy and expensive simply because of economics of WiFi - the 802.11 protocol is not very power-efficient on its own, and the protocol is too complex anyway.

Is that the standard being applied now?

[Chairboy]

I know a guy that just had problems getting KDE to work with his video drivers. Does that mean I can submit a story titled 'Is Linux dead?' and see it published on Slashdot?

I'd like to visit the magical world the submitter lives in where every new technology works perfectly from the get-go and never needs to improve and be developed. Must be nice.

Re:Is that the standard being applied now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a guy that just had problems getting KDE to work with his video drivers.

I don't usually nitpick, and I'm hardly a Linux guru, but I have to say that KDE has nothing to do with your video drivers. Your X server deals with all that.

Re:Is that the standard being applied now?

[carrett]

I know I'll probably get flamed for this, but whatever: If a company is MARKETING something it had better WORK with some ease. Regardless of how stupid this guy may be, something can't expected to be popular if the average Joe (not a /. reader) can't get it to work (and Joe doesn't want to invest any effort in VOIP or getting KDE to work). That's why Windows sells, it's been dumbed down so that anyone can use it without any investment other than a computer and the software. Obviously, it's not fair because the hardware and software markets cater so obviously to M$, but still, this is why superior products remain in the background while people go out and buy a crappier one. I don't know what the solution is, but I hope it comes soon so people stop coming to me bitching about Windows bugs.

Re:Is that the standard being applied now?

[antdude]

Chairboy, KDE is a window manager. KDE doesn't have video drivers like Windows. XFree86 does all that video stuff. :)

what a curmudgeon

[randyest]

And I could probably use Skype, ... But I would still run a serious risk of failure, because Skype doesn't ask for a duplicate password when you set it up. So, if you mistype it, you'll never know what it was.

The other complaints range from are valid (they don't work), to dubious (confirmation email never arrived), to the downright persnickety, such as that quoted above.

I guess now I should make some pithy or snide comment about the acronyms in the article title, but I think it's OK. The answer is "no", BTW.

Actually, the real question....

[Stick_Fig]

Are acronyms overused, or is Slashdot focusing on making their posts palatable for SMS capable phones?

Re:Actually, the real question....

[Feanturi]

ITTAASOBIYLAILEIJMMESASYWBATSIRW. W, ALTPISF.

The above doesn't really look like yelling, but the lameness filter thinks it does...

Cisco 7920

[Acidangl]

At work i use my Cisco 7920 wireless VoIP phone. We are in the middle of a remodle of the IT department and it works great. I've had very few issues.

Re:Cisco 7920

[Flower]

Yeah, I have to agree. The 7920s work great. Heck, even the SpectraLink phones do a good job though I prefer the 7920s because they display more information as they boot up. Having a SpectraLink show 'No Net Found' when the solution is restarting a tftp service on the Call Manager is kind of obtuse. With the 7920 you can at least see it is authenticating to the AP instead of having to use a tool like AirMagnet.

But in the article it appears this guy is trying to do VoIP on a laptop or PC and the first question that popped into my mind was did the device have a DSP card in place or was it doing everything in software. From the admittedily little I've seen it makes a huge difference in performance. Of course the other obvious issue is QoS but that is already getting a lot of discussion here and I don't have anything more to add.

Re:Cisco 7920

[NateTech]

What kinda stupid tftp server crashes? I'd have to go check, but I think mines been running for three years straight on a Pentium I machine somewhere...

Imagine...

[TechnologyX]

... what would have happened if during the invention of the telephone, they all became put off and declared "Voice over Wires DOA" just because the 2nd test wasn't perfect.

It's not like this is as good as it's every going to get. If that was true, EVERYTHING would suck.

IMHO...

[Anonymous Coward]

VOIP/WLAN isn't DOA, but it might be MIA. OTOH CSCO, NT and LU have put a lot of money in IP that might result in BFD if they can improve their QOS ASAP. AFAIK, CSCO's VOIP/WLAN might present legal troubles although IANAL. But WTF, IYKWIM.

The Mike

[dj245]

A lot of some peoples troubles has to do with the Microphone. Most people use the bargain basement $8 model with no standard over how far away it is from their mouth, how loud they speak, etc. A good microphone headset is worth its weight in gold. I remember just a few weeks ago I went to a baptism/christening, and at the mass the microphone was so good you could actually hear the water flowing from one cup to another at the mass, and the little "crunch" when the priest broke the bread. After hearing the little slurp when he took a drink, I fully realized the value of a good mike and taking the time to set up the correct voice activation thresholds.

Me? I use Zalman headphones with a logitec webcam microphone duct taped on the right side. But I just use it for gaming. If I had to communicate anything other than "Our base is 0wn3d!" I would probably get something better.

Re:The Mike

[JPriest]

For US users, you can pick up Zalman headphones here for $44, you can add a clip on Zalman microphone for it for another $8.

Re:The Mike

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

If I had to communicate anything other than "Our base is 0wn3d!" I would probably get something better.

Actually, you'd probably be able to communicate with your team better, and they might appreciate it more, if you said, "Our base is owned!" rather than, "Our base is Zero double-you en Three-dee!"

Re:"Is VOIP Over WLAN DOA"???

[realmolo]

Did you RTFA? Spreading your BS around here is not OK. So STFU.

Mod this guy OT.

someone...

[abscondment]

Someone needs to implement this in PHP. Then we'd get some real performance.

Maybe its Uses are Misunderstood

[artlu]

75% of my day is surrounded by WiFi access, however, that access is not always free (Tmobile, Leap Auth., Hotel services). I think that the problem with VOIP via WiFi is just that - not all WiFi is free. If we had free WiFi everywhere, then carrying a small VOIP would be cost effective, but would I throw away my cell phone? No. What if I broke-down on the side of the road? VOIP WiFi has no regard for those "emergency" situations. However, I would definitely get rid of my current VOIP "land line" and buy a WiFi model that I could take with me instead.

On another note, Im trying to get some users to a new website I created. It is basically my "day trading" stock journal online. Everything is free of course, so if you like stocks, I recommend taking a look. GroupShares.com.

Thanks,
Aj

Re:Maybe its Uses are Misunderstood

[Anonymous Coward]

On another note, Im trying to get some users to a new website I created. It is basically my "day trading" stock journal online. Everything is free of course, so if you like stocks, I recommend taking a look. GroupShares.com.

Is that kind of like those spycams into dungeons and other nasty places where the participants are royally screwed?

VOIP over WLAN?

[Cytlid]

Is it just me, or am I the only one who ever thought this was completely stupid? Some company came to where I work and had a big presentation on VOIP over wireless... I thought it was ridiculous.

Let's see... you take your voice, turn it into packets to be reassembled a short distance away (espcially indoors). Ummm this has been around for millions of years... voices going "wirelessly" over the air... it's called "yelling".

Re:VOIP over WLAN?

[stevenbdjr]

Is it just me, or am I the only one who ever thought this was completely stupid?

You just haven't seen it used in the right environment. VoIP over WLAN is perfect for a multi-building campus-like environment with roaming users. Instead of building a single-purpose analog infrastructure to support Spectralink-type phones, you can invest in building a data infrastructure (or use an existing one) that supports both your computing resources and your telephone systems. Plus, many of the industrial VoIP wireless handsets support push-to-talk, making them perfect replacements for your maintanence crew's walkie-talkies.

If you're using decent enterprise-class AP's (Cisco, Enterrasys, Proxim) which support QOS, call quality is quite good.

Re:VOIP over WLAN?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Yes. The demo I saw with a ritron transciever plugged into the back of the cisco router was very cool. In fact, it sounded better then most analog lines I have heard. This transciever made it cake to add phone patching ability to a VOIP based system. And VOIP phones, be they WiFi or Ethernet were also able to page the radio users. Very cool stuff and very useful. Defintiely not DOA.

Re:VOIP over WLAN?

[mr. methane]

One of the biggest issues with this, is there's simply no predictability in it. You go out and spend $200k on a new voice switch and wlan equipment. A week later, the company one floor up from you installs some cheap microwave ovens, which push your packet loss to 40%.

Plain old cat5 wiring is still fairly expensive, but for even home use, most people are simply not willing to tolerate the iffy behavior of 802.11 for voice service.

The other thing to consider is that all the cellphone companies read the news, and they don't stand by idly while the market moves elsewhere; we've already seen per-minute rates drop from 80 cents around 1990 to 6 cents now. At the same time, coverage has increased amazingly, and a congestion-blocked call is becoming more of an anomaly. As the number of phones (and other traffic sources) increases, they install more capacity, which tends to be more consistently maintained than most corporate or personal networks - plus, they have a (flawed but still usable) recourse in the event of interference.

Voice over WLAN will still be around, but I think it's a niche techology, unless someone comes up with a nifty store-and-forward technology.. but I don't see an interesting enough app for it yet.

Works fine at my house

[Gaewyn L Knight]

My main phone line comes over a 6.1 mile 802.11b link. I use Asterisk PBX with the IAX protocol to bridge the calls.

And my Grandstream SIP phone works great attached to a Linksys WET-11 client bridge.

And my Ipaq runs IAXComm just fine over it's wireless card to use as a netphone.

Does the battery life suck... yes... does it work and show promise... YES!

Just because people have problems with these cheap (as in quality)(usually SIP or H.323 based) piece of crud phones doesn't mean the technology and possibilities are not still there. SIP is VERY prone to problems from NAT (which many wireless networks use of course).

Anyways... for my 2 cents though I say... just give it time.

Re:Works fine at my house

[b0lt]

My main phone line comes over a 6.1 mile 802.11b link.

And when someone turns on a microwave in the vicinity, the shit hits the fan.

Re:Works fine at my house

[tftp]

It is not easy to interfere with a spread spectrum signal such as 802.11b is. You need more than just a microwave oven.

Re:Works fine at my house

[TheMysteriousFuture]

Your iPaq runs IAXComm?....As far as I can see it's only built for windows, linux, and mac...Perhaps you meant xpro from xten?

Re:Works fine at my house

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Actually... no... I do live in a semi rural area so this is not going to be a statement that would apply in a city but... I have documented only 4 hours in the last 2 years that my wireless connection has been down (I keep rrd statistics on the link). During every one of these times there was HEAVY thundershowers.

Four hours in 2 years is actually beating my telco on reliability by a VERY large factor. If I ever have a problem I just turn to my Nextel phone. If those are both out then I should probably be in the basement getting ready for the tornado anyways. :}

I would also suggest not using Cisco, Linksys or DLink gear. Senao are the best cards in transmit and receive by a large margin. They are fairly immune to microwaves and the occasional Panasonic Gigarange user. (Evil bastards!) :}

Re:Works fine at my house

[Gaewyn L Knight]

No... xpro is crud. Get the source for IAXComm... it's there... only took my about 30 minutes to get it compiled for and running on my iPaq under linux.

Re:Works fine at my house

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I don't supposed you've documented some of this on a publicly link somewhere? I am a VoIP newbie, particularly with open source stuff, and would love to read about your setup.

Thanks

Works for me..

[jcr]

What, is this supposed to be hard or something?

I've used iChat AV with Airport extreme (802.11g). There can be a bit of latency, but the audio is fine.

-jcr

Re:Works for me..

[LostCluster]

Try doing that when there's somebody else downloading something big on your network and tell us how that works...

Re:Works for me..

[wahsapa]

agreed, airport express promises even more of that.

Re:Works for me..

[jcr]

I do this from my office all the time, and people around me are doing net installs, distributed builds, etc.

-jcr

It's perfect for mothers-in-law!

[FunWithHeadlines]

Just set your mother-in-law up with a VOIP over WAN phone, tell her she can call you any time from the garden, and then when she calls just put the phone next to a recording of you saying, "Yup...uh huh...sure, that makes sense....yeah..." When she complains about the connection issues, just tell her, "I hear you better than ever, must be your hearing."

Re:It's perfect for mothers-in-law!

[Tony Hoyle]

It'd be a darned sight cheaper to get here a mobile phone...

Mobile VOIP does seem like a solution looking for a problem.

Re:and ...

[Anonymous Coward]

and in PHP.

Re:"Is VOIP Over WLAN DOA"???

[EvanED]

I was trying to make fun of the acronyms in the headline, but this guy did it both before me and better than me. Oh, and I don't really care about Karma anyway, so mod me whatever you feel like...

Skype

[minairia]

I use Skype over my wireless home network via a cruddy 4 year old laptop with a no-name wireless card and the cheapest Linksys wireless router I could find. I connect to the internet using SprintBroadband, a kind of wireless DSL that's beamed to users via a big antenna. Even with two wireless links, I get a perfect connection 99% of the time. While on Skype, I can surf ordinary news, etc. sites fine. Trying to play a video at the same, admittedly, will be system slow to a crawl..

Of course, the new technology will have glitches. I may just be lucky. However, I think the story submitter pronounces wireless VOIP dead far too early. If, at this early date in the life of the technology, a Mickey Mouse set-up like mine can work, then the future for serious, enterprise level applications seems bright.

Re:"Is VOIP Over WLAN DOA"???

[realmolo]

FYI, I got your acronym joke. That was the point of my post.

VOIP WLAN DOA? (YAFIYGI)

[joelparker]

IMHO the VOIP RFC for WLAN was OK, FWIW.
But IIRC, its FUBAR WRT the FCC and maybe IRS.
A FOAF says the MSFT will BSOD it b/c its w/o DRM.
IAC, the US DOJ, FBI, CIA & IRS also dislike it.
So FTTB VOIP WLAN is SOL. HTH... HAND! -JPH

Re:VOIP WLAN DOA? (YAFIYGI)

[EMH_Mark3]

QED.

Re:"Is VOIP Over WLAN DOA"???

[EvanED]

OK, sorry, I wasn't sure

But

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux IS dead.

Complete bollocks

[GuyFawkes]

I've used Skype ( http://www.skype.com/ ) quite extensively (windows only at the moment but they have a linux version in the works) over my LAN and via my cable connection to people ranging from 160 miles away to people in other countries.

Sure, there is a slight "houston, this is tranquility base) type of delay, but within a couple of hours use this becomes second nature.

Many of the calls I made exceeded one hour in duration, god alone knows what they would have cost via telephone.

Every call was end to end encrypted, yes, even the voice signal.

To call what is effectively a brand new technology which is basically still in public beta DOA is nothing other than complete and utter bollocks and a sure sign that whoever is applying such a label to VOIP is either...

a/ terminally fucking clueless
b/ blunkett (UK) / cheney or rice (US) / a telco shitting themselves.

BT has just started rollout of 21CN which will involve the ENTIRE NETWORK moving over to IP based traffic routing, so some 30,000,000 telephones in the UK alone will be, guess what, VOIP within a few years... link here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/09/bt_ip_netw ork/

Slashdot is rapidly declining to the point where Pissy World (UK) / Fry's (US) sales staff will start calling what THEY percieve as stupid clueless customers as "slashdotters" as a term of generic abuse.

"News for Nerds" ??? Give me a fucking break, Twaddle for Teletubbies is more accurate a decription of the content lately.

Re:Complete bollocks

[harveyswik]

He never called VOIP DOA. He said VOIP over WLAN is DOA.

Re:Complete bollocks

[YrWrstNtmr]

Many of the calls I made exceeded one hour in duration, god alone knows what they would have cost via telephone.

BigZoo.com US-UK @ $0.039/min. $2.34 an hour. A small price to pay for avoiding the "houston, this is tranquility base) type of delay problem.

No PC, Windows or otherwise, no cable or DSL connection needed, just a regular phone.

Re:Complete bollocks

[Anonymous Coward]

"BigZoo.com US-UK @ $0.039/min. $2.34 an hour."

His cute use of English vernacular might have indicated that 'UK-US' might be more desireable, and will be most definately more expensive.

Also Bigzoo.com is fond of hiding smallprint. They allow you to 'schedule' calls by using a web-based front end?

"A small price to pay for avoiding the "houston, this is tranquility base) type of delay problem."

Currently normal packet-switched networks (ie BT in the UK) use filters to stop echoes coming down the line. Myself and my father use a hybrid VOIP->telephone system and the quality ranges from crystal clear to echo hell depending on the routing.

"No PC, Windows or otherwise, no cable or DSL connection needed, just a regular phone."

They say you need an internet connection, especially if you're outside the US; 'BigTalk is a "callback" service. Instead of you dialing a phone number, you schedule a call on the web-site and our system connects the call by calling you and then the destination numbers.'
'If you are located outside of the continental U.S. and wish to use BigTalk, you must have online access to a BigZoo account.

If you do not have a BigZoo account and wish to sign up, you must have a U.S. issued VISA or MASTERCARD. Currently, we do not accept international issued credit cards.'

You're going to have to read the really tiny writing on contracts in the future. That's where the interesting stuff is.

Re:Complete bollocks

[YrWrstNtmr]

I realized he needed UK-US only after I posted that...:)

Anyway...normal Bigzoo is not a 'scheduled' service. You only need call their toll-free or local access number, enter your PIN, and dial your destination number. Just like any standard phone card.
The only web access needed is to buy new minutes. BigZoo is my standard long distance service. I have no MCI or AT&T on my local landline.

Bigtalk, OTOH, for oveseas-US, is a different aspect of it.

Obligatory...

[cynic10508]

Can you hear me now?

Re:Obligatory...

[ryanmfw]

[pause]..................

Yes.

[pause]..................

Good.

We are the BORG, but not yet.

[erucsbo]

always-on always-connected service
urk, what a concept.
couple it with the ability to pick up subvocal sounds from sensors near your voicebox and we'll end up like the Belcerebon people of Kakrafoon (HHGGTG reference)
As if the plagues of mobile phones aren't enough (people talking in restaurants, cinemas, while driving), freed from Telco mobile charges it could become a real social concern if it isn't DOA but merely pining for the fjords.

HHGGTG quote: The Belcerebon people of Kakrafoon used to cause great resentment and insecurity among neighboring races by being one of the most enlightened, accomplished and, above all, quiet civilizations in the Galaxy.
As a punishment for this behavior, which was held to be offensively self-righteous and provocative, a Galactic Tribunal inflicted on them that most cruel of all social diseases, telepathy. Consequently, in order to prevent themselves broadcasting every slightest thought that crosses their minds to everyone within a five-mile radius, they now have to talk very loudly and continuously about the weather, their little aches and pains, the match this afternoon and what a noisy place Kakrafoon has suddenly become.

VOIP booming in Australian Universities

[Skylark-101]

At our Uni, we have 6 campuses over the eastern seaboard of Australia (over 4000km apart). I work in the Infrastructure team and we have been running VOIP since 2000. We are all using AARNET for WLAN traffic and VOIP works wonderfully (CISCO callmanager, CISCO 7960's phones and CISCO infrastructure). Any non-campus (other than Australia University traffic) phone calls (local or interstate calls) hop off at the nearest local AARNET node onto the old analog exchange to the phone number you are calling. This gives us local phone calls all over Australia! The reason it works so well is that AARNET has QOS. In the US, this is a problem and VOIP will never work as well. We are also starting to use Video over IP using the same network. About the only problems we have had is worms and viruses in the AARNET network, but we have blocks into the network and at campus boarder routers that stop this kind of thing happening (most of the time).

Re:VOIP booming in Australian Universities

[Skylark-101]

Ooops, VOIP traffic is routed through our WAN (not WLAN) but since our entire telephone network runs on VOIP, wireless VOIP on the Cisco 7920 phones works fine as long as you have enough AP's to cover all areas ;-)

Alexander,

[simpl3x]

this telephone thing sucks! Duh! It's data!

No problem here

[maxic]

At my office, I have MCK units in the company's two buildings talking ADPCM32 over bridged D-Link 2000APs (yes, I'm a cheap bastard, but I was saving company money!) through a FreeSWAN/PIX VPN. Nine lines total, plus the usual data traffic. Works beautifully (as long as the APs don't freeze).

You mean...

[el-spectre]

/. OK 4 SMS ?

Test your connection out

[fiji]

You can simulate a VoIP call and get the MOS voice quality score. So if you want to see how your Wireless setup fares, visit testyourvoip.com.

Even if you don't care about VoIP, it is a useful test of the latency and bandwidth of your connection. VoIP is pretty sensitive to late packets so this tool highlights connectivity problems.

-ben

Re:Test your connection out

[rixster]

Ok ... Golden rule no. 1. Software shouldn't make hardware crash... but that's what that testing site did to my router !! FWIW, it's a draytek Vigor2200 USB running the v2.3.1 webcam firmware with the stingray modem.. Hell, I may even bother to write to those Draytek people and tell 'em to look at what that java app is doing to see how good their support is !

I just put a Cisco VoIP system in...

[eric2hill]

...one of our plants in Ohio. The install was a little rocky, and many of the features you'd find in any circuit-based system were simply non-existant or poorly implemented.

Now, that said, I put the system on its own POE switches and isolated network. Nearly 100 phones and the voice quality is superb. As a matter of fact, I had to introduce some comfort-noise because if nobody was talking, you couldn't tell you were even connected to anyone. It was really that clear. The POTS connection was done with a single PRI span, so calls were digital end-to-end.

I had to place two of the ephones on a remote end of a 10MB fiber link. They worked flawlessly. I then tried a single phone on a WIFI bridge, and it worked flawlessly.

Back to the article... The protocol the phones talk to each other using is g729. It uses roughly 9.6K worth of bandwidth, and sends packets every 20ms or so. A quality secured WiFi connection without any interference can support at least 25 to 30 phones before you start having channel speed or bandwidth problems.

In summary, a properly architected system has NO problems, whereas a system implemented over old, crappy hardware will have problem after problem.

The equipment matters

[Effugas]

First of all, full disclosure: I work at Avaya, for their security practice. What I'm about to say may seem pretty self-serving for the company, but I can only hope my posting history establishes me as some sort of credible source.

Second warning -- I'm actually raving about my own company's gear here. I'm way more likely to get in trouble over this, but heh -- can't let an entire nascent industry get tarred over a temporary generation of *ahem* lesser performing equipment.

So, warnings aside -- I was at Hivercon last year. Hivercon's a fun show, set in the middle of Dublin, Ireland (which, btw, is a fantastic city.) I'm sitting there, on:

1) My laptop
2) Wireless
2.1)HOTEL wireless
3) VPN (IPSec w/ 50% packet overhead!)
4) An international link
5) VoIP into a conference call

By all rights, the quality should have been awful. I mean, it had every right to be...

Now, we have VoIP at home too -- Vonage, to be specific. Our Vonage link runs over an 1.5mbit SDSL line provided by Speakeasy/COVAD, is QoS'd at our firewall, and connects directly to our home telephone wiring.

The quality on the international, wireless, IPSec'd, laptop'd conference call through my Avaya softphone exceeded what I was used to from our home VoIP provider. It was basically landline equivalent -- yes, it was even better than my cell phone.

I was _shocked_. I remember PowWow, FreeSpeak, and all those other systems that ran VoIP over Modem lines. In what alternate universe did VoIP become a quality leader under difficult network conditions?

Turns out that implementation matters. I went and harassed some of the people who worked on the phone equipment (heh Brian) and asked how this system could possibly be working at all. Apparently Avaya got a bunch of the people from Bell Labs (it came from Lucent, which came from AT&T, which itself came from Ma Bell), so there was all this knowledge lying around already in how to manage reliable communications like lives depended on it. The big things being used were:

1) Error Concealment
2) Dynamic Jitter Buffers

Error concealment is simple -- there's necessarily 50 packets per second on a 20ms-latency link (1000ms / 50 packets per second = 20ms of audio per packet), and speech is massively redundant. So rather than simply dropping out when packets were missing, the voice client was "filling in the gaps" with neighboring content. Since the overall frequency profile was kept relatively consistent, short term drops were kept outside the range of human perception. Neat -- obvious, and not entirely unique to this particularly implementation (there's direct support for concealment in some of the G.72x codecs), but neat.

The dynamic jitter buffers are cooler. The basic idea here is that some links are high quality and others are less so, and sometimes the quality of the link will change in the middle of a call. As a response, the Avaya architecture will negotiate a longer buffer for packets to be stored before they're output to the listener to be heard. This buffer starts at ~10ms and can scale up to ~300ms -- distracting, but users have been accustomed to higher latency through their love of cell phones (sad, but true). The key is that the human auditory system can't easily detect speed changes at subsecond resolutions, so you simply execute a non-pitch-shifting slowdown of output speech over a second or two and now you've got a jitter buffer far more tolerant of inclement network conditions. Mind you, this is an absolute nightmare for automated testing equipment, which expects time to be constant, but it's great for everything else -- even TTY's! You'd think a 150bps modem could travel over any link, but apparently not...

Anyway, we keep hearing about how Motorola and Avaya are putting out some kind of VoIP phone, so I'm actually pretty hopeful that we'll see a GOOD VoIP/WiFi solution sometime in my lifetime. I can say this much, though -- simply spurting ulaw on the wire and calling it VoIP ain't my idea of a good time.

--Dan

Re:The equipment matters

[Kiryat Malachi]

(note: I work at Motorola, which is why this is posted anonymously.)

I've also been hearing rumors of a Motorola VOIP over WiFi, and eventually a dual mode GSM/VOIP-WIFI phone. I'd expect to see one in the next year or two.

Re:The equipment matters

[Kiryat Malachi]

Haha. Posted anonymously indeed.

Whoops.

Well, since I blew it - I work for Motorola's automotive group, not any of the phone/802.11/networking groups, so what I've heard has been rumors only - we're not even in the same physical city as the phone guys.

Re:The equipment matters

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:The equipment matters (Score:1)
by Kiryat Malachi (177258) on 11:29 PM June 9th, 2004 (#9383946)
(Last Journal: 02:38 AM March 10th, 2004) <br/>

(note: I work at Motorola, which is why this is posted anonymously.)

Oh, really? (hint: preview is your friend)

Re:The equipment matters

[onosendai]

(not: If you want to post Anonymously you might want to check "Post Anonymously", otherwise it might get embarrassing) :)

Re:The equipment matters

[Kiryat Malachi]

You might want to check my own reply to my post, where I noted that I did, in fact, forget to check that inviting little box.

Re:The equipment matters

[Effugas]

http://www.networkitweek.co.uk/Analysis/1138234

There's definitely been work on this. There's alot of financial incentive to get this to happen, since cell phones not working indoors is a massive problem, and except for Nextel, no carrier will let you throw up their base stations. They're happy to let you throw up 802.11 stations, though, and not use their radio frequency space to complete calls (as long as they're still making some cash on completing the call).

This isn't secret or anything -- it's just pretty damn cool :-)

--Dan

Re:The equipment matters

[Kiryat Malachi]

Honestly, I just wanted it anon because who knows if I caught a glance at something internal; I'm pretty sure its all publicly released info that I'd seen, but just in case. That said, after reading that, I haven't seen anything that isn't in that article.

Re:The equipment matters

[shplorb]

"Error Concealment" is a no-brainer. I went to a developer's presentation on XBox Live a couple of years ago and the Microsoft Marketing Shill said that's what they use to make voice sound smooth.

Really, it seems logical to do and sound hardware should handle it automatically... your sound buffer is 20msec long and if it doesn't get new data written into it every 20msec then the DMAC will just send the same sample again. (Hence the no-brainer thing at the start of this.) That's also the reason why you get that little repeating sound when a CD-player buggers up or your game crashes.

As for the dynamic jitter buffer... I don't recall ever hearing about that before. It's definately a cool little trick.

I wonder if Apple will ever put out a VoIP phone or adaptor thingie? Just imagine how much more incredibly cool that AirPort Express would be if it had an analogue phone jack on it too!

Re:The equipment matters

[Effugas]

The problem with pure sample duplication is that for any significant timescale, it sou-sou-sou-sounds pretty awful. That's because any sort of increasing or decreasing envelope will get duped into a sawtooth pattern with all sorts of fugly high frequency artifacts. The game in concealment then is not to duplicate features but to eliminate spectral artifacts that the human auditory system can pick on. The elimination of such artifacts is different between music, mid-sentence voice, and end of sentence voice (the histories of compression for speech and music are radically different, btw) and thus one size fits all solutions rarely do.

--Dan

a futurist's dream

[joebolte]

Wow imagine always-on always-connected service for your voice! It woud be like... wait an image is coming to me... a cell phone that you never turned off. No wonder every futurist from Vernor Vinge to that other guy spend all their time talking about how great it is going to be.

Seriously, in twenty years, we'll have nonoxes that build anythign you have the designs for overnight from you old pizza boxes. Then VOIP over WLAN will be SOL or whatever the headline was.

Just not ready yet

[emorphien]

Maybe one day, but right now the technology isn't there, and the need/reason/means isn't that strong in a lot of ways. People have cell phones, and for most those accomplish all that is necessary. There are already devices connecting over cellular networks that can accomplish everything needed for many people.

Down the road I bet the networks will mesh together, and the wifi, cellular and others will start to be one big network operating in small clusters to keep things running smoothly. We can't handle that kind of bandwidth and that many users now, but who's to say we won't be able to in 20 years?

I just doubt that the separate wifi and cellular (and other) standards will persist side by side for all that long as convergence quickens.

FNAO

[Lord Kano]

F' No! Acronym Overload!

For a minute, I thought that maybe this was a Jon Katz submission.

LK

Re:The 802.11 basic standard does not support voic

[LostCluster]

Furthermore, there's no possible way to order all of the other devices that are causing conflicts on 802.11x to shut up... there's no promise that the interfering device is even part of your network! In fact, there's no promise that the competiting device is even a WiFi device.

IP is nothiing but extra overhead that really isn't needed over a "last inch" network hop.

Not dead... yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Xten Lite on my powerbook wirelessly connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station hooked up to a measely 384kbps DSL connection here in the Philippines and it works rather acceptably.

clearly

[Digitus1337]

Obv. abv. r'n't DOA

We tested it and the quality is good

[isolvesystems]

We tested Cisco WLAN VoIP phone, Spectralink phone and they work fine with good quality. We use Cisco routers and swithes that support QoS.

Writing down time of death is premature but...

[Knight2K]

I agree with other posters that one conference failure does not a funeral make. Slashdot gets enough traffic without having to sensationalize everything.

However, the current state of WiFi is pretty sorry. Perhaps I am just flustered because of the problems I've had setting up a WiFi network for the first time, but everyone I know who has setup WiFi has had to deal with a whole array of perplexing problems. Without fail, they end up consulting with tech support to get the connection to work. Many router reviews I read on-line detailed mysterious problems and uneven user experiences. On the other hand, connecting Ethernet is practically like plugging power in an outlet nowadays.

I'm not tech-illiterate. I've built every computer I've owned since high school and have run Linux variants on each of them at one point or another. I don't mind some technical complexity, but setup should be easier than it is, and the connection more reliable.

At this point, I could launch into a rant about cell phones as well. CNN had an article today about growing customer complaints with cell providers in the US. In related news, java.net's front page is leading with a blog and associated discussion about how the current speed of software development is going to get the industry in serious trouble.

I think someone should write an article about the death of the IT industry as a whole. Computer-based consumer electronics and software have an amazingly poor degree of reliability, and there appears to be little liability on the part of companies and few channels of recourse for consumers. Well, </bitter>. I'm going off to enjoy my newly configured WiFi.

Solution for PC to Telephone?

[crypto1969fl]

Anyone know a good solution for making a phone call FROM my PC to a regular telephone? I used to use FIRETALK which worked really well but all the offerings Today seem to be only PC to PC and not PC to Telephone. Any suggestions?

TIME....

[vwjeff]

Technology needs time to improve and mature. This is something we refuse to accept today.

Re:TIME....

[Fortyseven]

Not unlike most TV shows. If they aren't an instant insane hit within an episode or two, they get canned. I hate this time period. :P

Obey the network QoS requirements

[stock]

Obey the network QoS requirements for VoIP over a WiFi network link, and your fine. If not, you get in your face exactly what the WiFi admins were ignoring.

Robert

The key to good VoIP is QoS primarily

[toesate]

Essentially, what we need for VoIP over "any network" is bandwidth allocation based on QoS.

This QoS capability must happens at various OSI layer, like physical layer 802.11, and/or network layer IP. (Transport and application layer QoS are not as effective.)

From IP to IP perspective, IP QoS will be the key for good VoIP.

From WLAN only to WLAN only perspective, WLAN QoS will be beneficial.

In a hybrid physical layer network, with backbone+broadband+ethernet+WLan, IP QoS is the way to go for good VoIP.

However, current IPv4 does not support the needed QoS effectively, and IPv6 is suppose to hold the promise. Ironically, we also see that IPv6 deployment is very slow.

In short, my take is - existing 802.11 is good enough for VoIP, and the problem is actually on the current IPv4, which is not capable to handle QoS.

Latency...

[aphor]

If you RTFA, the guy is whining about latency. Wireless, in this case 802.11, and specifically Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum digital transcievers often employ more than one forward-error-correcting protocol to get around the horrible bit-error-rates. For most packet traffic, a little latency is an acceptable price to guarantee that more packets pass their checksum. For streaming audio/video this is not so.

Not knowing exactly what was going on, I'm going to guess that his connection was really bursty, possibly due to other 802.11 traffic and also possibly multipath interference aggregation problems with many RF sources in the same band in a confined RF reflective space. If I were a latency-sensetive streaming protocol, I would buffer a little bit, and cut out a lot. I'm thinking I would probably flush a lot of bytes from my buffers because they got too old before I could assemble a meaningful blast of audio.

If this kind of thing sold access points, then 802.11 chipsets would have a sideband that tolerates more packet error and less delay. That would allow you to turn on "interference robustness" and still make a phone call because it doesn't use "interference robustness."

It works well.

[tarak.org]

Its all in the connectivity and the speed of the device getting the call packetized and placed on the wire. I use my softphone on my laptop with a 802.11b PCMCIA card at home through a Juniper SSL VPN with consistant success and quality. I have installed VoIP phones that connected to a gateway for call setup and tear down over a wireless bridge with good success. I have also experienced the mediocre quality of the DialPad's/Net2Phones etc.. If the device doing the codec compression can get the packet on the wire fast enough and there is enough throughput for the call. The call will succeed and be quality, WLAN's included. If the network is already taxed and the device doing the codec compression/and or call setup and teardown is taxed (in the case of some of the VoIP providers) the call will suffer.

VoIP over WLAN has just started. If you work for an intrenched Wireless Phone provider or a Baby Bell you wish that VoIP over WLAN was dead and this is probably just the beginning of the FUD from these guys and their pawns in an effort to hold on to their customers. So my answer is no.. its not dead.

VoIP over IPSec VPN over Internet works

[Anonymous Coward]

I regularly use an Avaya softphone (on my laptop) connected to the corporate Avaya phone switch over a Cisco VPN from a consumer grade DSL connection at home. A colleague does this between Vancouver and Calgary. The major contributer to dropout, of which there is very little, is when my colleague runs the IPphone in a VMware guest image.

Re:The 802.11 basic standard does not support voic

[michael_cain]

I started doing VOIP applied research while employed at one of the big telephone companies twelve years ago (at least). The same basic rules that applied then apply now. VOIP can consistently provide telephony-like service -- high-quality audio, low round-trip latency -- under one of two conditions: (1) some form of QOS, or (2) swamp the problems with bandwidth. For most LAN situations (not all), switched Ethernet is sufficient to provide the "swamping" solution. Unfortunately, wireless CSMA is shared and seldom gets into the "swamping" category. QOS can take a variety of forms, from packet-by-packet prioritization, to traffic segregation and call-by-call admission control.

I'll admit to being surprised at the use of IP for plain old telephone service. I always thought the interesting applications were those involving multiple media -- shared slides (with pointers and scribbling), shared apps, some low bitrate video, etc. I remember a whole series of very effective four- and five-way meetings between the developers of an authoring system in Denver and the people using it to write training materials in Minnepolis.

wireless VOIP works for us

[petsounds]

I don't think this fellow tried very hard. The company I work for just replaced all of our phones in our local office (500+ people) with a VOIP system, including wireless VOIP phones for many. While they had to iron out some issues early on, the system (and more to the point, wireless VOIP via a wireless LAN) is working extremely well. (Unfortunately I don't know the specifics of the system off-hand)

Seems like Mr. Kewney has an alternate agenda, or is just really quick to jump to conclusions.

Re:wireless VOIP works for us

[petsounds]

I have a bit more info on the system. We're using a Cisco (oh no) setup. Desk phones are 7940 Series IP phones. The wireless phones are Spectralink Netlink DS models.

What this means...

[Anonymous Coward]

It means that VOIP WLANS are 2-3 years away, maybe less.

VoCP

[konrd]

If you want great sound quality and can live with a little delay, try straping a small HDD with your voice message to a carrier pigeon. It's wireless.

Acronyms

[NotALamer]

3:2 ratio of acronyms to regular words in that headline... I wonder what the 'highest' ratio in a /. headline has ever been, undefined?

Re:Acronyms

[Spheroid2]

Yes, and maybe you use your RTF over the PNS with
IDP and RDA compatibility as well.

Re:Acronyms

[hacman.nu]

just reminds me of Good Morning Vietnam. :)

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

VOIP (Voice Over Invisible Photons) over WLAN (Wimpy Lose-it-All Network) is DOA (Dropping Out Again)? WTF (Well, isn't That Fine)? I'm going back to DTMF (Deal with That Mother-Fscker) over POTS (Pissed-Off Technical Supervisors) ASAP (Real Soon Now)!

are ya sure?

[hesaigo999ca]

I have gone to skype.com after a friend of mine invited me to join for an account...this seems to be the best yet. I can do many things without affecting the sound card majorly...although gaming has proven a bit difficult at times as there is no individual volume control....it has tapped into the master volume....but over all great!!!

It's all in the context

[c0y]

A lot of readers post positive responses to doing audio or video conferencing over WiFi.

My guess is that their successes are due to having a monopoly over their signal.

With CSMA/CA, a single user is probably going to have success setting up VOIP over any of the 802.11x WiFi standards. However, for true shared-medium environments, you want something that's going to do TDM for media reservation.

I've done some tests with Trango's gear, and was able to shove 5+mbps of data through two of their 5ghz radios while simultaneously holding a call over the same two wireless links (a total of 7 miles one way incidentally). Would I try the same thing over 802.11b? Hell no.

Cisco Rocks

[bizitch]

This phone

http://cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/phones/ps379/ ps 5056/index.html

Totally rocks! - I have over 100+ installed - no problems whatsoever - crystal clear

VOIP over WLAN Dead? No fucking way IMHO

I've can even war drive with it! It will hop on any wide open access point connect and go - mind you QOS is dicey - but it's fun anyway to have it hop on some dummy's access point and then 4-digit dial someone at the office.

Re:Cisco Rocks

[Humba]

We had trouble with more than 8 concurrent connections on a single access point, and also had troubles with these phones running hot.

Are the 100+ phones spread across a campus, or in a single location? How many concurrent calls are you able to handle on a single AP?

--H

Re:Cisco Rocks

[bizitch]

Good point - that is a limitation

My 100+ are for a retail client of mine with 100+ stores each with thier own Linksys WRT54G AP

Never heard of the heat thing though

Ever war drive with one ? ;)

Re:Cisco Rocks

[Humba]

I was using them in more of a "cube farm" setting, where a not-uncommon use case was to sit on a conference call for an hour.

There, we found characteristics not unlike a cell phone: handset gets uncomfortably hot, and your battery is close to tapped out.

Some manufacturers have worked around this problem by allowing the phone to be used with a head-set while still in the charging cradle.

--H

Wifi-Voip Spectralink, Symbol, Cisco

[dustintodd]

Ok so I know this reporter was not speaking about Enterprise Ip PBX solutions. But Cisco, Spectralink and Symbol have shipping Voip wifi solutions that are used by thousands of corporations worldwide. It's not cheap and it's meant just for use inside the enterprise. But the technology is proven and heavily used. The article seemed to imply that the technology wasn't ready for prime time which in fact
is contrary to the experience of many enterprise users.

Acronyms

[gad_zuki!]

> VOIP over WLAN is not DOA. If you tweak the QOS etc

IANAE, but perhaps change the TCP/IP settings so you dont waste so many SYN/ACKs then upgrade the WIFI to 802.11g perhaps with a VPN/IPSEC or maybe SSH over RF ASAP. FWIW the WAP shoud be IEEE standards compliant, the company who sells it should be ISO9000 compliant too. HTH.

Not if Cisco has anything to say about it!

[ncowger]

I have used a cisco Wireless 802.11b phone. On a single access point you can easily maintain 7+ calls with better than cell phone quality. Yes you have to use Cisco AP's or it gets cut down to about 4 calls before you can hear delay. As a engineer for a Cisco Gold reseller I can say with confidence it not only works but it works well. It is being put into live production networks.

LOL

[Kethinov]

Mod parent up funny.

Your company has Network Engineers

[billstewart]

But John, you work at a company that has really good network engineers doing their infrastructure, so they've made sure to do things competently and think of the important issues. (For instance, they were one of the early companies to figure out that you put the 802.11 _outside_ the corporate firewall and run VPNs over it.) They've almost certainly got enough switched lan bandwidth behind the Access Points to get good throughput, while the columnist was at a trade show where the network was overloaded, just barely stayed up at all, and was probably installed by convention center union engineers instead of techies. (That's not to criticize union engineers - the hardware is probably nailed to the wall securely enough you could stand on it, in a location picked for mechanical stability, rather than attached to the radio-propagation-optimal spot with duct tape like a techie would do.) VON is probably a much more benign networking environment that, say, DEFCON, but the standard VOIP codecs aren't good at high latency and high packet loss which were apparently a problem for even regular data. Skype uses some of the codecs from GlobalIP which are designed to tolerate higher-loss environments, so it would have had a better chance,

The stuff should Just Work if you install it out of the box, as long as you're not getting too much interference from microwave ovens, 2.4GHz cordless phones, etc., and as long as you do something with traffic shaping to handle slow cable/DSL uplinks, but it's possible to do it badly, and the columnist appears to have reviewed what happens under near-pessimal conditions, and appears to be surprised that that didn't work.

useless article with useless conclusion

[Helix150]

Maybe i'm missing something but from what I can tell...

1. Guy goes to tradeshow
2. Tradeshow offers shitty WiFi that goes down alot
3. Guy tries to use VoIP/WiFi at tradeshow
4. Shitty WiFi makes VoIP not work / go down alot
5. Guy concludes that VoIP/WiFi as a technology sucks and is unreliable.

Am I missing something here? This dude's problem was not his hardware or his SIP provider, the problem was his shitty connection, so he shouldnt be blaming VoIP when his internet link is the problem.

To be fair

[Effugas]

Yes, all the carriers use VoIP on their backbones, about as controlled an environment as you'll find. The real question is VoIP to the endpoints, particularly over wireless. The answer is -- it's doable, but you need a much more aggressively correcting implementation than what's commonly deployed.

Cell nets aren't LANs, btw -- they're either MANs or WANs. There are real differences -- in protocol, in problems, in nature.

--Dan

Re:To be fair

[nacturation]

Cell nets aren't LANs, btw -- they're either MANs or WANs.

Yeah, I was stretching the LAN definition to fit my analogy. And what's a MAN with regards to cellular? Multi Access Network? Metropolitan Area Network?

Re:To be fair

[Effugas]

Yeah, Metro Area Net. Cells in the rural context are relatively straightforward -- stick an antenna on something high, cover alot of space, hand off every once in a while. Cells in the urban context start having extreme demands for managing variable density deployments and managed handoffs / signal strengths over short periods of time. It's just different tech, particularly vs. WiFi which doesn't even have a real handoff model.

--Dan

Mac Not Windows

[Wizard Drongo]

Main point here: All you need for decent VoIP wireless is a decent ISP, airport capable machine, a decent computer, and a decent Operating System running on said computer. His failure was probably using windows and having a shitty ISP. Next time, buy mac!

VOIP is not DOA?

[OzRoy]

Adrian Cronauer: Excuse me, sir. Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P., shouldn't we keep the P.C. on the Q.T.? 'Cause of the leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A., and then we'd all be put out in K.P.

Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have just spent the past 8 months working on a rollout, installing 2.4Ghz 802.11b Wireless networks in major retail chains across the country. Part of this rollout is setting up VoIP-over-802.11b telephony network. It's worked out extremely well. Someone can walk from one side of the store, to the other (roaming across the access points) without more then a .1 second latency, and without dropping carrier or suffering any real degradation in quality. The phones even sound a lot better then your usual PBX, especially when talking to another IP phone on the same network.

VoIPoWiFi's not dead, it's just not blatenely obvious unless you know what to look for.

Speak freely

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak freely, anyone?

Not an ideal solution, the two-way delay is slightly too large to be comfortable (> 400 ms). I don't know what should be changed to fix that. However, otherwise a great application: it uses UDP, supports encryption, can send the packets several times to avoid problems created by packet losses etc...

And it's not evil (hello Skype?).

Re:Speak freely

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops, the link didn't get through:

http://speak-freely.sf.net

Wireless VoIP

[lars_boegild_thomsen]

This is completely rediculous. I've been using Wireless IEEE 802.11b handsets for months and it works just as well as my LAN IP phones with quality significantly better than a typical GSM phone.

Vivato Panels, Symbol Handsets

[Anonymous Coward]

Take 3 Vivato panels, tack them on a pole for almost 360 coverage, voila. A several mile across bubble of wifi coverage with roaming, rouge client detection, set up per-minute billing from cpdi.com and start selling symbol handsets (or similar) to the locals.

Boom, instant VoIP/net service to a whole town.

Re:The 802.11 basic standard does not support voic

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll admit to being surprised at the use of IP for plain old telephone service. I always thought the interesting applications were those involving multiple media -- shared slides (with pointers and scribbling), shared apps, some low bitrate video, etc. I remember a whole series of very effective four- and five-way meetings between the developers of an authoring system in Denver and the people using it to write training materials in Minnepolis.

Most phone calls aren't meant to be productive. They're used to stay in touch with loved ones, chat with friends, that sort of thing.

I think there would be more demand for combining games with VOIP (much in the same way that simple, non-gamer games are integrated with chat in msn messenger and the like) - doodling on the whiteboard gets boring after a few minutes.

Use decent gear.

[doddsy_au]

Gee I really hate that crap like this can be published for people to read all over the world.

We use Nortel VOIP handsets connected to a Nortel BCM400 here at work. The units are brilliant and put the regular digital handsets to shame. Not only that if I can connect the handset at home, VPN back into the office and take calls off a 512K dsl line. Because of this ability we ran the units via Wi-Fi when we were moving offices. That way people in both buildings were working off the one PABX.

The units commented on in the article are crap but you get what you pay for. You have to remember voice over digital transmission technologies has been around for ages and have made telecommunications relatively cheap now. VOIP is a bit like the killer app for ISPs'. If there were decent handset available for home use you could deploy them with a broadband connection and never have to use your local carrier for anything but a copper connection. I know in Australia that'd really piss off Telstra.

Works Just fine here.

[piett134]

I Have Vonage VOIP & another VOIP phone to connect to my office with, and both work great. Only about 2/10ths a second delay at most, not even noticable. You just gotta make sure the wifi signal strength is decent.

VoIP is the only *real* option over satellite

[avronius]

Having replaced an aging communication system in the middle of nowhere (no phone lines / roads / etc.) with a VoIP solution, I would have to declare the author of this news article to be a bit of an alarmist.

The *average* home user has never installed a telephone switch, what is it about VoIP and WLAN's that suddenly makes them professionals?

In my environment, it required a couple of months of ensuring QoS (reducing delay as much as possible, echo cancellation, etc.) before we were satisfied. As with all implementations of new technology, there were some pitfalls and blind alleys. However, that was 4 years ago, and the overall performance improvement over the previous "analog" system left the client with a smile.

It is a very dangerous idea to assume that having the tools automatically qualifies you as an expert.

Investigations into VoIP should first be driven by cost, then by performance, and finally by features.

In our environment, VoIP allowed a more flexible utilization of available bandwidth, with dynamic allocation of bandwidth for voice / data communications, providing a more cost-effective utilization of the service.

Shrug...

[MoonRug]

I don't see how this couldn't be feasible. I can hear my homeys fine using the XBox headset.

Speaking of dead ...

[jon3k]

You can get my 7920 when you pry it from my cold dead hands!

Infrastructure/Protocol Are Everything...

[AstriCon]

I've been working with WiFi + VoIP for the past year (I'm working on Asterisk, the opensource VoIP PBX) with decent results. I've found that WLANs installed by professional wireless engineers and connected to wireline routers and switches that support QoS/ToS can support Vo-WiFi without a hitch. Tradeshows, including VON (I attended the US spring VON in Santa Clara) are usually rigged to provide email access and web surfing, not quality controlled voice services.

The other issue is the protocol in use. SIP, the dominant VoIP protocol, is extremely difficult to make work behind a NAT (which the trade-show LAN almost certainly employed) or a firewall. SIP makes use of three different ports to establish a communication session, including a dynamic RTP port that requires open UDP access on a large block of ports, a STUN server, and/or a SIP proxy that understands NAT. The Skype guys and we in the Asterisk community have found SIP so awkward to roll out in uncontrolled environments (i.e. the real world) that we employ alternate protocols designed to work with NATs/Firewalls. Skype's protocol is proprietary and secret (and we wouldn't want to violate the DCMA, now, would we?). Asterisk offers IAX (Inter-Asterisk Exchange) which is opensource an can securely cut through all but the most draconian of NATs/firewalls.

Warning - Shameless Plug
I used my IAX Phone to place calls from the Spring VON show while all the guys with SIP handsets or SIP soft-phones grumbled, checked proxy settings, cursed, checked STUN settings, etc. Asterisk supports IAX, SIP, MGCP, H323, and SCCP, as well as connections to the PSTN using Zaptel or CAPI-compatible hardware. It's free, and it rocks. We're having a user/developer convention this fall: Astricon. Check it out.

Maybe he just can't install worth a damn

[frog51]

About 4 years ago (with your bog-standard 802.11b) I installed a wireless network for a large computer company's production site. Initially it was for general wireless duties expected of a warehouse (inventory scanning, remote PCs in areas with no network cabling etc.) but as the bandwidth used was so low, we decided we could cut the massive mobile phone bill (thousands per month) by using Symbol VOIP phones. Initial issues of glitching and jitter turned out to be related to roaming across switch ports (and arp tables updating too slowly) and were cured by hooking the WLAN off a dumb hub. For use with the company's entire VOIP phone network globally, Cisco VOIP gateways tied in beautifully.

Much better sound quality than mobile phones! These days it is even better!

It works for me

[elgaard]

I dont know what Kewney did.

But I live in Denmark. I april I was at meeting in Finland. I used a cheap headset on my laptop and the kPhone SIP client to make 4 or 5 phone calls to Denmark using Musimi, a new danish VoIP phone company.

It worked OK. No notiable delay. Some noise, probably from cheap headset and soundcard.

At home I use a Grandstream Handytone 286 and it works better than the kPhone software on the same DSL line.
So I am sure this on would work well on a good WiFi net:
http://www.zyxel.com/product/model.php?index cate=1 075688089&indexFlagvalue=1075687935

Cell phone at work? That depends...

[SuperKendall]

You can get (pretty much) all of these advantages with a cell phone, starting at around $35/month.

Unless you're in a building of any size, then you have to head for the window to make or receive a call.

Cell phones are not even close to a global answer, and certainly not a good idea if you value you internal communications at all.

OpenH323 worksforme

[zbik]

OpenH323 (ohphone), Prism II chipset 802.11b card with Orinoco driver, and good ol' Linux OS... no probs even with an inefficient audio codec like G.711. Works great for video too, if you've got the horsepower.

http://www.openh323.org/

So, is wired VOIP really any better?

[mwood]

I'm still waiting for someone to convince me that packet voice makes sense -- that it won't be made useless by dropouts, garbles, stalls, etc. just like RealAudio, Quicktime, et al. Packet networks are designed to get the message there eventually. You can hit congestion or have a packet trashed in flight at any time, and then you have two options: wait or do without. Either choice destroys the continuity of a voice connection.

Lest you think I'm just suffering from some horrible slow noisy dialup, and a shiny new DSL drop would make my problems all go away: I test this stuff at work (yes, testing multimedia players is part of my job), and I'm colocated with the NOC for a big swathe of Internet 2, with inconceivable bandwidth leading off in all directions. The problem ain't *my* connection, and that's the only part of the path which I control.

I think you mean...

[TheRaven64]

Are acronyms overused, or is Slashdot focusing on making their posts palatable for short message system capable phones?

Works for me

[fatboy]

Vonage VoIP box -> Linksys WET11 Bridge -> Netgear 802.11 Card on Linux workstation -> 128k ISDN Line.

Works just fine for me.
(No, I didn't RTFA, because it works for me)

Re:Works for me.. too...

[wiremind]

simple 802.11b using skype and a headset.

tada!
I have wireless voice-over-ip and it works GREAT.

this whole story is just dumb. wireless networks arent any laggier than their wired counterparts.

also, doing a stresstest on the voice chat ability, with my desktop pc, i downloaded some speed test files off of telus's ( dsl providers ) ftp servers, downloaded at 120kbps and voice didnt even suffer a single byte.

Why are we moving backwards?! It worked ni 1996

[brak]

Quick history lesson first. Ok, it's a bad one since I can't remeber the exact year, but it's right after Windows 95 came out with NetMeeting. I was using dial-up on the east coast, while my friend was dialed up in the midwest. We were playing Yahoo Chess on-line and had a netmeeting connection opened.

Conversations were more than acceptable and we would sit there for an hour or more, not loose a call and converse about all sorts of things while playing chess. On Dial-up!! I realize this was a point-to-point connection, but so what, it was 8 years ago with dial-up!!

I've used vonage in the Bay Area and it does work great over fast connections (dsl and up.)

A co-worker took his vonage phone to France and plugged it into his hotels broadband connection. The delay was over 1.5 seconds, probably 3 seconds. After less than a minute of conversation we simply started an interleaved conversation that took the gap into account (cheesy, I know, but afterwards I thought it was a really cool and efficient way to maximize productivity over lag (kind of like IRC, except with voice I guess.)

Regarding the troubles with Wifi, I have a feeling it has more to do with the queueing and QoS on the Wifi network than anything else. If it's really as bad as people described, then it should be totally impossible to play games over Wifi, etc...

There are cell phones coming out which will switch to VoIP when near an accessp point, and I'm sure they've done some testing on these things.

Vocera

[fwr]

We install Vocera VoIP badges in hospitals, and have had nothing but success. Granted it's not "standard" VoIP, as it uses it's own proprietary protocol, but it does have the geek appeal of having badges that look like Star Trek communicators. It also has group functionality, so that a nurse can call for the closest doctor available. Now, this wouldn't be for the general public, to have a Vocera badge that they can take anywhere and have it work, but it does well in business environments where you can have a badge instead of a phone sitting on your desk.

Disruptive Technology

[JGski]

Everyone writing articles are on tech futurism should have read Christianson Otherwise anything of that genre from such an author should be summarily ignored as suspect and likely ignorant. The tone of this article strongly suggests he has not read it.

A key feature of all new disruptive technologies is that initially they always suck compared to what they proport or appear to replace. That's what gives them the opening to take over.

A second feature of all new disruptive technologies is that the established players dismiss them, often calling them "toys". This article itself seems to be another point of evidence though the conclusions drawn are typical "established player" self-deceptions.

Another key feature is that the price and business model is often radically different from the assumptions on price and business model held by the current technology. Usually the new technology is cheaper.

Cringley's article suggests it's WLAN VOIP will be disruptive. It seems to qualify as such.

Consider other disruptive technologies: minicomputers disrupting mainframes, microcomputers disrupting minicomputers, the internet disrupting desktop microcomputers, etc., etc.

Re:The 802.11 basic standard does not support voic

[michael_cain]

Most phone calls aren't meant to be productive. They're used to stay in touch with loved ones, chat with friends, that sort of thing.

Quite possibly true (although until very recently, I think you would be surprised at the fraction of all calls that were business calls). What I meant was that as a researcher looking at questions of what was technically possible, and how different protocols might work, and what services might be offered for which users would be willing to pay a premium, investigations of multiple media were much more interesting than plain old phone service.

Pros, Cons, and the Reality

[teqo]

I had to deal with VoIP and video conferencing over WLAN for a couple of months, and everything said here is correct:

• Yes, it can work perfectly under certain circumstances, and then...
• right in the middle of a nice VoIP session everything goes havoc, maybe because somebody else associated with the AP from quite far away thus making the whole AP performance flakey.

It can work out when you are lucky, or/and when you do it under pretty optimal circumstances. But it's also true that the 802.11 world lacks any practical implemented QoS measures so far, and that APs are behaving astonishingly instable and unperformant under certain circumstances, especially when they have to deal with constant data streams, like during VoIP phone calls. Collision avoidance schemes, frame retransmission, bad signal, this can all cause VoIP to go down the toilet in a wink of an eye.

I also have plaid with Skype in Wifi environments with questionable reliability and quality, and it worked amazingly well...

What is the conclusion of this? It's neither a "Sure it's ready for broad VoIP use, because it worked for me", neither is it "I failed ,thus it's not ready." It just means that it can work, but isn't reliable, while there have improvements to be made to get it more thrustworthy for real world use.

Anyway, reliability of 802.11 gear is not the only obstacle that keeps us from efficiently using VoIP as a POTS or mobile phone alternative. I haven't come across any metropolitan (or other) area where there is enough and effordable WLAN coverage to really use VoIP, and as a simple DECT phone (aka wireless home phone connected to POTS), this is more like a geeky toy than a real application.

What is good-quality voice?

[systemBuilder]

In my studies I have learned that good quality voice has a one-way delay (mouth-ear) of 250 ms or less. When the delay exceeds 250 ms, there is a noticeable 20-30% loss of communications efficiency (speed of talking.) When the delay exceeds 400 ms, the system is known as a "CB" system ("Breaker, Breaker") or "PTT" system (alarm tones precede conversation). Otherwise the MAC built into your brain and vocal chords is unable to function effectively.

The efficiency of 802.11 is so low that almost any vocoder may be used. Think 100 bytes for each 802.11 MAC/PHY header, 40 Bytes for IP/UDP/RTP, and this happens every 20 milliseconds with most vocoders. Frankly, that's about 160 x 50 = 64 Kbps before you've transmitted one single bit of vocoded data, which is quite frankly, ridiculous.

Try using good gear

[Hidyman]

I work for a wireless ISP. We use Cisco wireless bridges that support Spectralink Voice Priority QOS. We have no problems with VoIP.

Cisco 7920

[carpus]

I've given up my ROLM phone during an internal job transition and have been on the pilot rollout of Cisco 7920's, SIP/H.323 over 802.11b. It works great! I don't know what anyone could complain about. Then again, Cisco phone, Cisco Callmanager, Cisco AP's, not sure if this might be an "enhanced" solution. I know that Cisco CallManager doesn't play well with others in our implemented release. That's going to be next version, accoring to Cisco.
But I have had VERY good luck. Perhaps it's probematic pieces, not the technologies themselves. Again, I'm very happy.