Slashdot Mirror
New Study Finds VOIP is Getting Better
Proudrooster writes "Keynote Systems Inc. made 154,000 VOIP calls during the months of May and June. In total they tested six VOIP providers and seven ISPs. Their
conclusion was that VOIP isn't quite as robust as the public phone network due to dropped calls, lower audio quality, and latency (audio delay), but it is still pretty good. The worst VOIP provider had an availability of 94.8% (which isn't bad) and overall the reviewers were pleasantly surprised with the VOIP test results. Vonage ranked best for "most reliable" with 99.4% uptime,
AT&T CallVantage ranked best for "audio clarity"." Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either. But there is no doubt that audio quality is getting better. I only maintain my land line now for my HD Tivo to dial out from.
I disagree entirely! When someone's life may depend on a call going through (911) I would say anything below 99.99 (repeating) is unacceptable.
In addition...
There is another problem with using VOIP. When the internet goes down your VOIP phone may go with it. We use VOIP phones at work and I recall a situation last year where a hacker brought our internet connection to its knees (hence no VOIP phones) and everyone was running around like a chicken with their head cut off trying to figure out how to make calls. Our solution was to use cell phones for back-up, but I couldn't help but point out if we had regular phones we would have avoided the problem entirely.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Ya' know, I was going to get VOIP, but then I realized that with my dialup internet connection, it might be kind of redundant.
Have you ever wondered How to Take Over
Hey rooster: can't you put that TiVo on your home network? I don't have an HD model, but my Series 2 connects via Linksys USB wireless and works great.
Also, although not rated (and maybe that's because it's just a re-branded service from one of those that was--I don't know), my Speakeasy VOIP works pretty well. Voice quality is far superior to my old telco service, but there are indeed occasional minor dropouts or fizzle-outs. Since I also have a mobile phone, that gives me adequate redundancy in the event my service goes down, so I've been pleased overall.
With broadband and VOIP now coming from from Speakeasy, I can't tell you how nice it is NOT to be doing any business whatsoever with my old nemesis, SBC (formerly Pac Bell here in CA). Of course, in time, I may come to view Speakeasy the same way, but not yet. Perhaps I'm in the "rebound" phase after my divorce with SBC, but there's a spring in my telecommunications once step again.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
I only maintain my land line now for my HD Tivo to dial out from.
Normal TiVos can be configured to get data over the internet rather than over the phone line. Can this not be done on HD TiVos?
my land line works 100% of the time. That's not 2 nines, or even 5 nines. 100% of the time, through blizzard after blizzard here in the Northeast US, through rainstorms, through anything. You know what's nice about that? 911.
99.4% = 4 HOURS a month, your phone doesn't work. That's absurdly crappy. At that reliability level, it should be a free product.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
That's terrible, that means with the best service 1 in 200 calls doesn't go through? I run an old school PBX where we make hundreds, possibly thousands, of calls each day. I couldn't deal with that kind of poor reliability.
I have noticed an outage or 2, even when my Internet service was up. So don't take the plunge if you can't tolerate a missing dialtone. Personally, I don't think it's a big deal, anymore than when I'm out of the house away from the phone (no I do not have a cellphone).
We support people in several countries and sometimes the most cost effective way to get through is VOIP. Many times it is also has an almost intolerable delay. If it is a conference call with one person at a time giving information it is OK, with an actual conversation it is nearly impossible.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
99.999%
Show me VoIP that does 99.99% and then I'll consider switching.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
"We can't give you 5 nines availability, would you settle for 9 fives?"
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
99.4% of uptime equates to 518.4 seconds of unavailablity per day.
That's roughly 8 minutes of the day that you won't be able to use your phone. Given that unavailability is usually related to demand, you won't be able to use your phone for 8 minutes during the hours that you'd really like to.
Also, consider that for a bit more money you can get a land line with better voice quality and unlimited calling as well.
I have had 100% uptime -- e.g. I have never not had a dialtone when I picked up and to my knowledge have never been droppped. And quality is hugely better than my POTS line was.
But the best thing has been cost. I am paying $14.95 a month for better service than the $60+ a month I was paying to my local telco and MCI. And my local bell "wants me back". Uh, keep dreaming guys...
With regular phone service, you get:
Independent network, assuming cable not DSL
911
Quality of service: availability, reliability, signal/noise, time-to-repair, etc.
Regulation on quality and pricing
Works when the power is out
Not as cheap as VoIP, unless you are poor and get subsidized service
With VoIP you get:
Network dependent on underlying internet
Limited if any 911
Best-effort signal/noise
Good-enough(?)-but-unregulated quality of service
Little or no regulation beyond 911
Works when the power is out as long as your batteries last.
Cheap.
Generally no subsidized service, but most people on welfare aren't getting high-speed internet.
The best part: You get to choose.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How is this news? I would expect VOIP to get better. If it was getting worse - that would be newsworthy I guess...
What next? Study shows that CPU's are getting faster? Study shows that Linux is getting easier to install and maintain? I would say this is the natural progress. Things improve over time - that's just how it works.
I'm teminally incoherent
No It's not that stupid.
HD Tivo's are the unit's produced to work with DirecTV's HD. These boxes have their USB Ports disabled. So you suggestion will not work. AFAIK.
If I'm wrong somebody please enlighten me because I would like to put my HD Tivo on the network like I do with my regular series 2 Tivo's.
94.8% is....
20 full days per year down time or
1.2 hours down EVERY DAY!
And to make matters worse, failures tend to occur more often when things are heavily loaded - ie. not in the wee hours but rather when people actually want to use the phone.
Obviously someone has a different definition of "not bad" than I do.
I remember when M$ proudly claimed 99.9% uptime for NT. To me that sounded terrible. Over 3.5 FULL 24 HOUR DAYS of downtime every year. Horrid!
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
I recently switched to a VoIP provider. The cost is about 1/3 of what a land line would cost me for the same features. I understand that a large portion of the cost savings is realized because data passes over the public internet. I also realize that this means the service is unlikely to provide service that is equivalent (in terms of uptime quality) to a PSTN line. I'm extremely happy with the tradeoff. The service has been excellent so far.
A lot of people have already lost their land line and are now using just cell phones. Service on cell phones is certainly not 99.99999%, nor even 94.8% (my guess). But people still use them vs. a land line.
So, when you're comparing service availabity, cost, and features, you need to include cell phones as the dominant competitor.
Really, your grandma won't be switching to VOIP. If anyone, it'll be people who already have a cell phone and want a cheap long-distance service as their land line. If they need to call 911, they'll be using their cell.
-Howard
Favorite
So many people shrieking, "99.4% sucks!!" It seems almost like karma whoring. Yeah, yeah. It sucks. So don't buy it. Can we move on?
It depends on how the outages occur, doesn't it? If it means you occasionally need to redial, that's not a big deal at all. But if it means you might be without service for a whole day every few months, then that's terrible. There's a few subscribers who have piped up here with generally positive comments. Me, I can't say from personal experience.
But to put it in perspective, in many places outside of first-world countries, I suspect 99.4% would be better reliability than you can get with any kind of service.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
911 is a free product - so get your free 911 landline, then get VOIP phone service.
.6% of outage due ONLY to times when vonage was out, or did that also include ANY time the end user was unable to make a call - be it power outage, cable outage, etc.
Also, 99.4% reliability is perfectly fine for many users - like me. I have a cell phone (actually, two, with different providers) and VOIP. If for some reason my VOIP phone isn't working, I've got my cell phone.
Also, I'd be curious as to how they determined 99.4% reliability. Was that
I've had vonage for months, and the only times it hasn't worked for me were when the power was out or when the cable was out. My cell phone worked fine in either case.
paintball
Once I got it set up, though, it's been great.
The audio quality can drop slightly when there's a lot of traffic, but it's rare that the volume get's that high.
I'd like to monitor the actual bandwidth calls take.
And I've had excellent up-time.
I haven't tried 911. I'd probably do it from my cell phone anyway - I tend to use it more than the VOIP line.
FYI for anyone having trouble setting up the Telephone Adapter (TA). If the IP address given to the TA when it boots is a non-internet routable number (10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x for example) it could be that your internet provider is refusing to give out another IP address for the new MAC address.
You can get around this on many devices by going into the settings (try user/pass of admin/admin or blank/admin) and mimicking the MAC address of the previously-connected device (ie the computer or the firewall - whatever is plugged into the cable-modem).
I don't understand the 300mS cross-US latency figure -- my informal ping'ing has an average roundtrip less than 20mS across the US. And AFAIK, the QoS requirements of VoIP require a max of 120mS to 150mS (eg, http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-QOS). I don't use VoIP or Skype on a regular basis...has anyone ever experienced 300mS?
So far having VOIP LAN line for 6 months I can say the service is 10x better than Cell phone service. And yet every day people rely on their cell phones to do things like dial 911. I think the numbers are very promising for a reletively new technology. But like any technology it requires time to mature and find its place in the world.
For me it has been pretty simple...
Telco:
3-4 weeks a year of tech-support hell. (older urban phone systems)
$60 a month price tag.
Voip:
1-2 dropped phone calls a month--with calls routed to my cell when it's down.
$25.00
My installer even set me up with my DSL on it's own NID, after which I plugged the voip adapter back into the wall socket. Now all my wall phone adapters work just fine.
As to power outages, it can be hard to find the non-wireless phone in the dark. Go ahead, tell me you have a cheap ten dollar phone hooked up. Where is it if the power goes out? Of course, since all my computer equipment is plugged into UPS's, I only worry about prolonged power outages.
Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either.
It's just fine.
I see a lot of people whining about how your phone would be down 4 hours out of the month if you have 99.4 or whatever. My answer is: So?
How many times do you need to make that phone call right-the-hell-now? Out of the phone calls in the past year, I'd say maybe...20. Max. The rest were more relaxed calls to friends/family that weren't time-dependent. Out of that 20, I can think of one time when I wanted to use the VoIP to call my wife's home country (Australia) and couldn't because it was down, so instead I paid Sprint a few dollars to do it through my landline. Whoop-dee-doo.
Sure, 911 is a concern. But keep a cell phone or cheap landline around and you have that. My landline costs me $17/month. Potatoes. My VoIP is worth it because it has brought my costs down from over $75/month to less than $20. Couple that with neat features of running my own Asterisk server and I have a really fun, useful service.
I guess if you're using your VoIP as your home office phone or as a telemarketing device, 99.4% would hurt. For the average home user, the small inconvenience vs. price shouldn't bother anyone that much. I pay about $35/month for my entire phone service and my wife can call home as much as she wants. What a deal.
Blog,Twitter
My guns are purely mechanical devices, no electricity required.
Next question?
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
99% is better than my cell phone, and I find that useful enough to pay for. Not saying they can't make improvements though.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either. But there is no doubt that audio quality is getting better. I only maintain my land line now for my HD Tivo to dial out from.
Hey Taco, why don't you post Slashdot's availability?
Thought so.
Before anyone hits 'reply' too quickly, I am aware that he is talking about an HD DirecTivo. I am aware that the USB ports are placebos. This technique is different.
,#211. Your TiVo will now use PPP over the serial port to do its TiVo related calls. I can confirm that software updates can be fetched in this manner, as well as everything else.
You can get your TiVo to use your broadband connection if you're willing to hack things a bit.
You make a special DB91/8" stereo plug and plug one end into your TiVo's "remote out" jack, which is really just an RS-232 port in disguise. You connect the other end into a serial port set for 115200 bps on a computer running a PPP daemon. Set your TiVo dialing prefix to
You still must leave the phone line connected so that the crypto card can make its own phone calls, but THOSE calls will work just fine over Vonage (the modem bank they call into is 9600 bps). The only calls that have trouble are the V.90 ones into TiVo, and those are the ones that can be diverted with this technique.
In my case, I actually plug the serial port into a bluetooth-to-serial module, and have a virtual BT serial port on my mac doing the PPP server duties. Works perfectly and doesn't require running a cable.
Bell technicians have been on strike since March here in Ontario. Residential customers are taking the brunt of this strike, while business customers are generaly only slightly delayed.
If you moved (like me) and there is a problem with the phone line then you're totally stuck. After several calls to "Emily" and talking to fustrated outsourced call takers and finding my repair date slipping from mid July to early August to late September, I got sick of the lies and decided to try Vonage.
After some initial call quality problems, and disconnects, I can honestly say that the call quality is equal to or better than was being provided by bell. The secret? I actually read the manual and made sure the needed ports were forwarded to the vonage box. Once I felt I was sure that the call quality was consistent and reliable, I told Bell to stuff it and cancelled the service.
"Every security scheme that is based on secrets eventually fails." - Steve Jobs
Over on Speakeasy's service (which is a contract with Level 3), my experience is that if there are heavy transfers going on, even if SE does promise quality of service, the other traffic will disrupt your conversation. Worst case I've experienced is just high latency (one second delays are FUN!), worst case you get a lot of skips and pops.
This sig no verb.
For those of you considering dropping a land line in favor of VoIP, I have a few items you may be interested in taking note of:
- You can take advantage of your existing home wiring by simply plugging your Vonage/etc line into any phone jack after you unplug the phone company's connection to your house in your main junction box. On newer homes and appartments, this will be a grey box you open and simply unplug the phoen cable. On older homes you may have to disconnect wires (don't forget to wrap ends seprately in electrical tape).
- That step complete, even TIVO should have no problem enjoying VoIP.
- What will not work are alarm systems that are wired directly to your house so a burglar cannot prevent an alarm signal by knocking a phone off the hook. For that, you may need a connector for your alarm that will allow you to not hard wire but plug in the phone line. I choose Brinks because they had such a connection that the service guy said was for VoIP installations, though mine was the first he had done and it was only avalable since Fall 2004. Anyway, you plug your Vonage line out into this line and from there it splits into the alarm and then has another line out you can jack into your home wiring so if there is a breakin, it cuts out the home wiring and goes straight to the Vonage.
- update yout 911 info online. Because you can take your phone box with you anywhere, you have to update your 911 info if you are going to be somewhere, line on vacation, for a while.
- Get ready for lower phone bills, less long distance, and free Vonage to Vonage and inside your area-code dialing!
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
The charts in the linked article didn't say the service was down 5.2%. What it says is call completion failed 5.2% of the time. You can't extrapolate the call completion to determine network availability.
They made a call every 30 mins. If the the VOIP network was down for 20 mins it would still show one missed call. If it wasn't down but the call would have gone through if re-attempted 15 seconds later it would still show as one missed call.
And for calls that that were made, what was the phone provider at the other end? Was there a comparison between say a Vonage-to-Vonage call vs a Vonage-to-POTS call? If the phone network test was calling POTS to POTS, then you'd have to do Vonage to Vonage for comparison. If the VOIP networks are less reliable, is the loss in the IP part or the connection to the POTS line at the other end?
The real test of VOIP would be for in-network calls. Connections to the outside POTS network are at the mercy of the carriers, the competition.
We already have seen examples of ISPs screwing with VOIP providers and the phone networks don't like the VOIP competition either.
Interesting study, but the report in the article is sorely lacking in necessary data.
Even old-timey phone companies are in love with VoIP, and many mainstream carriers are moving (or at least looking to move) their internal phone networks to VoIP for all their customers. What this means is that even if you and your phone buddy both have plain old analog telephone service, there's a non-trivial chance that your conversation might be carried as VoIP part or most of the way.
I've been a Callvantage user for about 4 months, and absolutely love the service. I see a lot of people on this thread commenting about how bad 99.4% is, treating that number like server uptime... that the service is unavailable .6% of the time, which adds up to hours per month.
I believe that this study measures something different... the number of calls that were completed successfully out of all of the test calls. This is not the same as a time-based availability measurement. 99.4% means that out of 100 calls, less than one of them failed. This doesn't necessarily mean the service was down... just that the call attempt failed.
Think about it this way... 7 failed calls in a week of testing will result in the same "availability" measurement, no matter whether they were 7 failed calls in a row, or 1 failed call a day. The former indicates a real outage, where users would likely be unable to use the service if they wanted. The latter might indicate a temporary glitch (perhaps with the TA even) that could be resolved by immediately re-attmpting the call. The former is a much bigger deal than the latter, but the numbers they've given us don't distinguish them.
This matches my experience with Callvantage. I've never noticed that AT&T's service is "down". Sometimes when I attempt a call, it doesn't go through on the first try, but on the second try immediately after the failure, it completes. I've always chaulked this up to Internet flakiness. To repeat: I've *never* noticed an outage where I couldn't make a call, or where calls didn't ring to my cell phone (and I know... this is my business line).
Anyway, the point is, 99.4% can mean a lot of things... and we don't really know how these call-completion numbers really match to service availability.
-R
99%downtime would be
a lot more than you quoted it to be......
Karnal