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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."
VoIP
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
VoIP
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
VoIP is something that I despise
For it means destruction of telephone lines
For it means tears in thousands of executives' eyes
When their trucks go out to remove their telephone lines
I had a rather frustrating experience with the Net2Phone Voiceline product. Simply put, no matter how I tried to install it, it wouldn't give the green "provisioned" light or a dial tone.
Their tech support was less than useless at telling me what was wrong... they just processed the return instead.
If you run a modem over VOIP, you can then dial into the Internet without a phone line. Now any computer with a broadband connection can surf the web in luxury at an amazing 56kbps!
Many telcos are using VoIP in parallel with their PSTN backbones, and this is ok - most users don't even notice this behind the scenes VoIP application.
When it comes to services to end users, except for companies like Vonage and a few similar ones there's a huge gap. For example I've subscribed to Stanaphone just to find out that my account disappeared simply because I didn't use it for a month. Well, there's no way these companies can compete with operators if they keep this kind of policies in place. Could you imagine if you're enjoying a 45 days holiday in Europe (or in New Zealand, which is really cool!), and when back home find out your phone doesn't work anymore because of this kind of policy? No POTS operator would do this...
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.
Having used Vonage for several months I can say I am very pleased with their service and the quality of the calls. Before Vonage my only phone was a SprintPCS phone. When I got Vonage and called family/friends to tell them about a new number most of them commented how much clearer it was compared to the PCS phone I usually call them on.
;)
The only time I have had a 'problem' was when I was downloading some files on bittorrent AND playing FFXI Online and received a phone call. There was a slight echo audible on my end.
I have actually convinced my father and two friends to ditch the local phone company and get VOIP. They are also very pleased with the service and money they have saved, which equals free months of phone service for me!
Presumably, like other things that travel over IP, you could encrypt your calls against tapping.
-"so-so quality"
This is simply not true. Voice packets are given the highest priority across the network. If a voice packet does not make it to the destination, it is not resent. If the proper investment is made (you need newer switches and equipment) and the configuration is correct, it really does work great. I think it is ideal for an office with 30 people, especially if it is in a rural area where you may be paying a lot for a frame relay circuit or other connection. This setup can be done using Avaya VoIP phones in just a few hours and is very reliable!!
http://tomgould.com/
I don't have first hand knowledge of the actual testing that was done because I just transferred here. However, I was told by one of my professors that the school just tried to implement a VoIP system, but the sound quality was terrible. In fact, they've already dropped it and gone back to the regular PBX / POTS system.
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"
When you need cover fire to plant a frag on some fool's camp spot, that crappy voip over is 100X better than typing.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
under peak hours, the lag has got to suck...
Lag is an artifact of an poorly provisioned network. If you had end-to-end, trusted QoS, lag would never be noticable. Every important packet - voice, game, etc - would be delivered on time, and all the background "junk" - web, e-mail, BitTorrents - would fill the gaps between the important stuff that can't tolerate delay.
The trouble with VoIP is the dependence on QoS, which most third parties can't provide. I've been tempted to try Speakeasy Voice, since they should be capable of setting good QoS for the VoIP service. But I still haven't checked pricing to see if it would actually save me money over traditional phone & DSL.
I am kindof with VOIP and would be very happy to make the switch once it qualifies the basic requirements, like it should work with there is no power.
My local phone works when there is a power outage (how would i report a complaint that my power has been cut off otherwise?). Also, VOIP uses the existing internet connection, which means if the internet is down, the phone is also down (so no more backup dialup access or phone line).
The day it gets over such things and guarantee a 99.9999% availability, I dont think i would give up the regular phone. Might consider the additional line of VOIP someday (but who needs 2 such lines when u have a cellphone)
Well, one interesting application is to have the same phone number at multiple places... very easy to do with VOIP, useful for small businessmen who dont have soo much cellphone minutes.
Telco company: Hello, welcome to genericom, how may i assist you. Me: My pho....pho....ne.... is laa...a..aaaa....a..g.... Telco company: Whats that sir, I cant quite understand you. Me: My god....amn....phon...is....lagg... Telco Company: Sir, your going to have to speak more clearly...
I don't know how many phone calls you have ever made in your life, but my experiance tells me that they are definately NOT "... continuous constant bit rate data streams."
I tend to talk a bit, listen a bit, talk, listen back and forth, etc. And of course it is spoken word so there are pauses and other irregularities when I am talking.
Maybe there are resons it won't work, but yours is specious. Most likely the real problem will be getting all the switches/routers and other infrastructure, between you and the person you are talking to, to agree that your packets are indeed more important than all the current porn traffic and to expidite them.
does that mean I should ditch my telecom investment.
Don't you think question marks are just the worst.
I mean really, who actually bothers anymore.
However, I've had others swear by their VoIP. It seems to me that there is still just too many variables in the IP infrastructure for the experience of VoIP to be uniform. Not to mention the issues with power outages, 911 service, and the like.
Another thing to note is that having voice mail sent to email is not a feature of VoIP per sey. We are currently implementing an email system that has this ability, given that you have the right voice mail equipment. While there are some features that VoIP does offer that can't be done with POTS and appropiate equipment, many of the features being touted as "VoIP only" features can be done with POTS.
That said, about 5 years ago I was involved in a project to roll out VoIP in a new building (about 300 people, a call center of about 10 stations included). We used Cisco equipment and had two 24 channel trunks come in from POTS (one for local, one for long distance). Once it was up and running, the sound quality was nearly as good as POTS - we did have a slight echo once in a while, but other than that, it was great. We, of course, had complete control over the network, so doing QoS and stuff like that with voice packets was easy.
VoIP, if done right, can be nearly as good as POTS in terms of sound quality, if not better. But given all the variables (phone, DSL/Cable router, your ISP, the POTS/Internet interface, etc), there are just too many places that can cause quality to suffer. And the problem becomes worse if you try and use a fax machine over a VoIP line, which doesn't have a high tolerance for packet delay.
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.
It worries me that these articles concern themselves so much with matching traditional US PSTN services (like 911 and call centers) and very little with celluar phone services. It's probably because of the lack of a good packet switched cellular network in the US... Since GSM based phones are already packet switched, and can already do packet switched (IP) data via GPRS and 3G technologies, why aren't we seeing a strong push fot VoIP and cellular integration. An additional advantage is that the turnover of mobile phones is much higher than land lines, so technology adoption is much faster. Regards, -Jeremy
more important than all the current porn traffic
Let's stop this crazy talk before it begins!
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.
> If you had end-to-end, trusted QoS,
> lag would never be noticable.
I think that is called a "circuit".
sPj
Phones are easy. Pick them up, dial a number, you talk to the other person.
Email is easy. Type a person's address, your message, hit send.
I don't consider myself a stupid person, but whenever I've had a phone in my office, I've had absolutely no idea how to use any of the conferencing, hold, transfer, or even voicemail features. They vary from phone to phone, and have non-obvious icons. It took me a few moments to realize that the icon that showed a receiver going down didn't mean hangup, but speaker-phone.
I agree that having this infrastructure will make new, better things possible, but a VoIP infrastructure isn't all that more disruptive than already having an IP infrastructure. Some novel applications came out of IP being pervasive, but I see VoIP as a byproduct of an earlier disruptive agent, not as the disruptive agent in itself.
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.
Power outages are a problem, but the consequences can be minimized. I currently use Vonage through my cable modem. I have my cable modem, router and Vonage box on a UPS. As long as I turn off my computer shortly after a power outage, the UPS can give me a few hours of phone usage, and I could get a stronger UPS and/or dedicate a UPS solely for the cable modem/router/vonage. Of course, if the outage is widespread and the cable service is also affected, then I won't have phone service. Vonage does have a function that automatically forwards your calls to a number that you set if you lose your connection. I have this set to my cell number. I can always use my car to charge my cell phone if necessary, so I shouldn't miss any calls unless cell towers are out, which is pretty rare.
Right now most people have multiple phones a house phone and a cell phone. Some even have a buisness cell phone that their employer has them use. all have different numbers. Some people have family plans with multiple phones each with seperate numbers. Imagine this. You call my phone number lets say its (234)555-xxxx. When you dial that number my home phone connected via ATA, my VoIP enabled handheld with 802.16a and my wifes phone all ring. Just one number. Each phone (although having individual IP adresses with inside my network including my modile which is VPN'd via [insert your favorite flavor of VPN technology] share 1 number. Basicly makeing my old PBX connection dead. So what's bad about this. Granted the quality is a little lesser than my PBX connceted home phone but my cell phone is pretty much worse than both. The reason for this is probably because your VoIP provider lives miles away across high latency cabling. QoS helps yes, but maybe when you have a VoIP provider that lives in the same state as you do you wont have such a bad signal. Besides it's still relitivly new give it some time so we can work out the kinks.
KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!
...it usually means I'm getting a phone call from an international telemarketer.
Last week, I got a VOIP call from a telemarketer named "Steve Dallas". Although you wouldn't think that someone named "Steve Dallas" would have such a strong Indian accent.
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
Owner, http://www.obhost.net
VoIP is good because AT&T can begin using and save $500 million like that. No, really. It scales incredibly.
Read jack phelps dot net
It is true that there are pauses in phone converstations, but you need a constant reserved bandwidth if you are going to be able to provide a quality connection. You can attempt to overcome packet loss and lag with buffers, but that doesn't lend itself well to a two-way communication. The result is something that often ends up sounding more like a CB radio conversation.
We're replacing our knackered commander system (15 years old) with a bunch of VOIP phones (Snom 190). Also we're splitting our shop into two premises; using a WiFi link (with WEP/MAC filtering/IPSec/L2LTP etc for security).
Using VOIP on our local LAN/WAN, we can share the same PSTN line pool (about 20 lines total) between both shops. If someone dials one shop but wants to speak to someone in the other, we can transfer that call. Very useful, not to mention the other possibilities with Asterisk (caller ID, call logging, stats, voicemail, extensions, music on hold, etc).
As for actually using a VOIP carrier for outgoing call... no, not yet.
We're setting up with Asterisk and Digium TDM400 cards with FXO modules.
Standard x86 servers, Linux, Asterisk, Digium and Snom phones add up to a LOT less than the integrated turnkey solution we were looking to get from Siemens.
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.
- People to be polite, and not mislabel traffic for their own advantage. What happens when some bit-torrent users figure out how to double their download speeds by setting the QoS bits on their traffic.
- People to agree on priorities... if there is a late breaking virus, maybe it is more important to download the patch than for fifteen teenagers to share a rave in quadrophonic sound.
- People to be reasonable... I dont care if you do drive a mercedes 500, all your traffic is NOT high priority. (that is, can people buy QoS? If you have QoS then the whole billing question becomes very interesting, and the price of the data will shoot back up to voice network levels, because every intervening hop will, quite reasonably, want their cut.
QoS is a DOA technology on the Internet. The technology makes a lot of sense on corporate networks, where there is somebody in charge, but in the wide world, it just is fundamentally not going to happen because the interested parties have no incentive to make it work.IP telephony will happen because the bandwidth will rise to the point that voice traffic becomes noise to everyone but the last mile. The last mile will have to take care of their own problems (perhaps using a cheapo version of QoS, such as preferring packets on a certain port, but it will not require any action of the network.)
oh... folks were complaining about acronyms, so.. DOA -- Dead On Arrival, the status of unfortunate patients on reception in the Emergency ward of a hospital. Also applies to technologies, ie. MiniDisc, MemoryStick, (oh.. stop picking on Sony...) DAT, Video Disk, (technologies that arrived and died without garnering much market share.)
I can readily recommend [Vonage] if you can tolerate the occasional (and easily fixed) downtime.
. . . Wow. As if the tolerance of Windows BSODs wasn't bad enough, now this? Whatever happened to "you pick up the phone and it just works"? In 26 years of using POTS, the only thing I can recall even approaching an outage is very occasional "circuit full" messages on long distance calls on holidays, and I haven't even heard those for over a decade.
If you can deal with not having a functional phone every now and then, then I'm certainly not going to argue with you, but this casual acceptance of "things break" is rather surprising. And somewhat disturbing, as it reduces the incentive to make things work well. I, at least, would vastly prefer a pencil and paper that "just work" to an electronic notepad that did OCR and networking but a habit of conking out at the most inopportune times; I've got enough stress to deal with as it is.
Worse: your spouse/beloved answers your phone and hears a sexy voice saying "Hi, I saw you at the party..."... or "Brandy and I had a great time last night, we'd like to see more of you...".
They won't actually increase their download speeds by much (a really tiny amount). The point of QoS is to reduce latency on specific connections (which doesn't really matter for large downloads), not to increase bandwidth.
Speech coding techniques used in VoIP are well tuned to human speech, for which it may still have poorer quality than ordinary phone lines in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, but sounds about the same quality to the human ear. When a modulated signal is fed into a speech coder, you get way poorer SNR than a telephone line, so the transfer rate you can achieve is generally much lower than the 33.6kbps achievable on a phone line, and definitely much less than the size of all these VoIP packets generated, so there is no point anyway.
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:
There are a couple of point's I'm going to make in response to this.
Does that clarify my statement sufficiently?
Since there is skype for pocket pc it makes any pocket PC into a mobile phone.
What's more it is only useful when you are making outgoing calls or expecting an incomming one so there is not that annoying incoming cell phone buzz.
People will switch entirely to IP telephony and it will be free eventually, the hardware to implement it will become powerful enough.
What's bogging it down? No standards. Same as Webcams there simply is no way to get everyone onto one system except to get them to abandon their old system, something the telephone network never had to deal with.
Tm
/obvious
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
> What happens when some bit-torrent users figure out how to double their download speeds by setting the QoS bits on their traffic.
At that imaginary time, whatever stupid ass ISPs turned on QoS for all customers with no extra fees or access restrictions or planning will learn a hard lesson. Then they'll turn it off by default and make you pay extra for the privilege of QoS. Or, more likely, that scenario will never happen, because ISPs will only let high-paying customers use QoS, and those high-paying customers won't waste their expensive guaranteed bandwidth across the whole ISP's network on BitTorrent traffic, when they could just let that be "best effort" packet traffic at a near-zero cost.
QoS is not a magic "I get to take all your bandwidth" bit that you can set that will trick all the intermediate routers into putting your stream first. It's not something that ISPs are just going to open up to every customer for free so that the l33t h4x0r kids who know about it can fuck up the network. Or, at least, most ISPs will be smarter, and the ones that aren't will get nailed and figure it out pretty quickly.
I'm well aware of this, and not arguing the fact. I'm just puzzled as to why such a complex, untested system is seen as a sufficient replacement for a simple, well-tested system.
The main advantage that I can see is the ability to upgrade the system for dirt cheap. With POTS, every time they've wanted to upgrade the system (upgrading to fiber being the most recent that I am aware of) it's been a $billions dollar investment, and small towns have always suffered. OTOH, if you're using VOIP over a cable connection, upgrading the system is just a matter of replacing a box on your end and the VOIP provider doing software upgrades on their end. Cheap by comparison, which means the technology can evolve much faster and incorporate many more uses. The IP network itself is well-proven and as solid as POTS. So solid, in fact, that many POTS providers are *already* passing some of their traffic over the IP network.
If the reduced cost is worth the inconvenience, then I guess that counts as a reason. Personally, I'd get a POTS phone line for phone service and a separate data connection for Internet service--but then again, I live in Japan where they already have fiber to the home in major cities, so maybe that's not an option for you. (I also don't subscribe to the "cheaper is better" theory, so that may by itself put me in the minority.)
Having had POTS, cable internet, and a cellphone all at the same time, I think I can say that the most reliable performance I've had is from the cable internet. Outages were few and far between, and usually associated with the last time I had paid the bill. POTS (in Bellevue, WA, not exactly rural America) was fairly unreliable. Calls would frequently not go through and had to be dialed several times. Also frequent (especially bad on holidays) was the "no line available" noise. And this doesn't count the fact that at least once every couple of months I"d pick up the phone and *not* get a dial tone. And don't get me started on Verizon's shittier-than-shit smeg-sucking cell phone service.
I just got my box from Packet8 today, and I immediately claled my dad to test the service. I'm happy so far. :)
It doesn't have to be. Pencil and paper (or charcoal and hide, if you like) "just work", for an extreme example. Bridges "just work". Even POTS "just works". Certainly the latter examples have had a lot of effort put into them, but declaring at the outset that stability, "just works"-ness if you will, is rare--and, by implication, not a feasible goal--seems overly pessimistic, and is certainly disappointing to hear from an engineer.
YOu mentioned you were in Japan already, so a lot of what you see as POTS "just working" is probably going to be stuff that isn't true in America. Forgetting for the moment that Japan typically adopts technology faster than America (along with the rest of the world). Also forgetting for the moment that Japan has had a wired POTS network that is the envy of every major industrialized nation for years. Laying out cable and running new fiber and so forth in Japan isn't nearly the same scope of a project as doing the same in just hte 48 contiguous united states. Add in Alaska and Hawaii and you've got a project that'll drive anyone to the loony bin. There are still wide swaths of rural America that have the copper lines and switching from the 70s. It wasn't so very long ago that the little shit-hole town I spent my high school years in still had echos on the line of other callers. If you got quiet, you could pick up a fair amount of the town's gossip. This was in 1990, I might add. Now they offer fiber, but the baby bells aren't nearly as fat and complacent as they were in the 80s, so it's coming along.
We've still got last mile issues in many areas to just bring POTS up to the same level of service and quality the rest of the country enjoys. We've still got last mile issues in many areas getting high speed internet. But cable goes almost everywhere. In fact,
Like what I said? You might like my music
Yeah, could you imagine what would happen if ISP's let all their customers connect to remote SMTP servers by default. Just think of the rubbish the unscrupulous side of the internet would make!
Heh, good job they were on the ball and only allowed those who asked for it!
Oh, wait..
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
I thought that all phone lines had to be alive enough to let you call 911 (emergency) and 611 (set up new phone service)? Dial any other number and you get an immediate busy signal, or maybe a recording explaining? That's the way it was in all (I think) of the apartments I've lived in.
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