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What VoIP Is Actually Good For
gManZboy writes "One of the things that's bothered me about VoIP is that other than so-so quality phone service at a cheap price, what's the big deal? I mean so you can now deliver voice mail into e-mail because it's all IP packets, does that mean I should ditch my telecom investment. Well in part 3 of Queue's special report on VoIP (here's part 1, part 2) two authors from Bell Labs help explain actually useful things you might do. Now I get it."
We've put a VoIP unit in our place in the Carribean and it allows guests who are mostly from the US, to make (effectively) free calls back home - something that would be very expensive using the regular telephone system.
Packet switched networks weren't designed for continuous constant bit rate data streams. Why use them for that? Sure the Internet is unregulated, so you can use it for free, but you lose any kind of quality of service guarantees. That is why the connection seems flaky to you. If you ever get a good connection, that would be more a function of luck than a quality VoIP implementation.
No matter how well you try to set up VoIP, if the Internet is used at all you will have to risk performance hits. The only way to enforce a quality connection would be through regulation of some sort, which would come at a cost.
Advantages:
Disadvantages
I believe that VoIP and any other "permanent" phone installation is going to pass and mobility will be more important to most people.
I installed Skype the other day (it's apparently developed by the people who originally developed Kazaa, using "peer to peer" technology, however that works). Anyway, it installed without fuss and works from behind a firewall without me having to open ports. I haven't tried skypeout yet, only skype to skype, but hey, I'm chatting to my friends in the states for free, and the quality is much better than a long distance phone call. Thusfar, I'm impressed.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
We're doing it for cost and flexibility:
1) No telephones == more desk space
2) No telephones == less money wasted on telephone maintenance
3) No telephones == less money wasted on phone line maintenance (only run one network instead of two)
4) IP == If you log in to VPN you can get calls transferred to you at home
5) VoIP == cheap long distance
6) Other features -- automatic call recording, easy ability to script call-ins, etc.
7) PBX Box ---- WAAAAAY cheap ($1,500 for a build-it-yourself asterisk solution vs $10,000+ for a traditional PBX solution)
Engineering and the Ultimate
I am a Vonage customer and use it as my primary line. Not only can you get voice mails delivered to email (great when travelling), but you can, for an additional $4.99/month get a line that is local to someone that calls you a lot, so they can make toll-free (local) calls, even if you're in New York and they are in California.
The feature I like best is that, free of charge, I have my cell phone ring anytime my home phone rings. That way, when I'm away, I still get all my home calls, and don't have to give out my cell number to everyone. This feature can be used for simultaneous ringing on any other number, or it can forward it to another number after a certain number of seconds without answer on the first line. You can turn the feature on/off and the change takes effect almost immediately.
Most of all, all the extras that you pay for with normal phone are automatically included in the Vonage plan. I pay $25 a month for all my phone needs (that are non-cell), and that's a lot better than my old SBC/MCI pairing I used to use.
I don't really notice bad voice quality, but I took a lot of time to set up my Vonage box *behind* my firewall, but then forwards all the ports necessary to have it manage the connection properly for voice-quality. For a more no-brainer setup, just route your connection to the Vonage box first, then to your router.
When VoIP is deployed on a network that is properly configured with QoS and you have adequate bandwidth, voice quality is not an issue. When it is done right you can get voice, video and data all on the same circuit without any loss of quality. I manage 6500+ IP phones in locations in a half-dozen states and everything work just fine. It all comes down to making sure you have the bandwidth and QoS, which is something that would won't find on your average home cable or DSL connection.
The days of high cost international calls are limited. Here in New Zealand I can use my Vodafone mobile to call various countries (Australia, Canada, US, UK, Ireland) at the same rate as a local call.
So far, VoIP's main attraction has been lower cost calls. THis won't last and VoIP will have to find a better way to justify its existence.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I had the same exact problem with VoIP, except I also didn't like the fact that 911 calls didn't go to the 911 center. However, I've figured out how to get around these problems:
So yeah, that should cover it. If you want more info, chech the Asterisk-Users list under the topic "Vonage, PSTN, 911, and hardware question". I'm planning building a system with this setup later this year.
I have Packet8 VOIP at home, and I love it. I have a 6 down/768k up Speakeasy connection and I've had no problems.. no outages, great call quality (Linksys WRT54GS running Sveasoft firmware), and I can take the box with me when I travel... VOIP is great, as far as I'm concerned, landline-quality phone (or better) for $20/month...
Michael R. Rudel
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I have Vonage, and the quality of service is better than what we used to have with the telco. Our neighbors have had lots and lots of lengthy service outages this year, during which we were fat and happy. Also, Vonage throws in a lot of freebie services that we weren't getting from the telco, such as caller ID.
[...] at a cheap price
What's so bad about a cheap price? It helped me convince my wife that it made sense to ditch modem access and get broadband.
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Supporting (generally) the parent post, Vonage is pretty good. I've been using them for my main work line for about 2 months now. Quality of service is excellent and the voice sounds quite good (think high quality cell phone) most of the time. You get a ton of great features for not too much cash. I love getting my voice mail as an .WAV file in an email, and it is really easy to foward calls wherever you need them.
The only time I have a problem with a connection is if I'm downloading, or worse uploading (dsl) something big at the same time which is entirely expected. (only so much bandwidth after all) My only recurring problem is that the Motorola unit they gave me tends to drop my PPPoE connection about once a day. Not quite sure why and there aren't a lot of settings to tinker with. I don't have that problem very often with my Linksys WRT54G and I'm pretty sure it's not the DSL provider (SBC in this case) causing the problem.
Anyway if you are thinking of Vonage I can readily recommend them if you can tolerate the occasional (and easily fixed) downtime. If phone availability is mission critical to you or you aren't especially technologically inclined, you might look for a more traditional alternative. But overall it's a great service, especially for home or home office use.
SIP does not always work well through NAT, even though there are some implementations that are NAT friendly. Also, some ISP's that offer their own VOIP service will block your access to competitors. ATTBI did it to me, I was even on the phone with the tech when he found the access list in a router that was blocking my access to Vonage.
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How much is that PBX in the window? ok, so Id like an SS-7 switching network, and I aint a phone company, oh? cant have one? have to run my own wires? hmm...
Separating control from data only makes sense if the network is smart. Smart networks only make sense if the manager of the network is your friend. Usually, that is not the case for anyone except the phone company. The whole point of IP is to make the intermediate network a non-issue. make it stupid so that there isnt any value there, and it can be replaced by any number of technologies or providers. That is always going to be cheaper for end users, but not the phone company.
backgrounders: