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VoIP and Home Security Systems Don't Get Along
coondoggie writes "Here is a story about consumer VoIP services that can cause your home security alarm system to malfunction or not work at all. There have been problems with customer phone systems in Canada who were using Primus but Vonage customers in the U.S have complained too. A number of sites have popped up offering suggestions to help deal with the problem."
Here is a story about consumer VoIP services that can cause your home security alarm system to malfunction or not work at all.
This would present quite a difficulty, if say, your home security system was ED-209.
Wizard Needs Food, Badly
I don't mean to be mean, but home broadband connections and VoIP services do not meet the same standards of reliability and uptime that your landline is generally required to meet.
Whether it is 911 service or your home's alarm system, do you want to trust your home broadband connection for emergencies?
If you''ve got VOIP, you've got an IP network.
Get an alarm system that uses your IP network rather than legacy POTS network.
Just call VoIP to shut down security
There is a lot of signal degradation converting from analog to digital, lossy compression of the digital signal, and converting it back to analog. Not to mention the analog to digital conversion has to happen twice (once over the VoIP carrier, and again when it's received).
Depend for emergency communication on a shared bandwidth communications link whose functioning depends on utility power availability coupled with some ISP's service plan, and maybe when the bad guys break in you won't get the call? Huh? You think? Or, to put it another way, there's no guarantee that The Phone Company's own landline will work perfectly either, but if I had to bet my home on it, I'd go with TPC over VoIP. In fact, personally, I've stuck with TPC landline because of E911, because my landline has always worked during NYC blackouts even when my cellular phone didn't, and because I have yet to see a VoIP service provider that would guarantee that if some guy in Afghanistan (or Milwaukee, for that matter) somehow manages to clone my SIP identity and proceeds to make N-billion dollars (well, amounts are relative to my savings account balance) worth of international phone calls, that they won't hold my feet to the fire if I refuse to pay the bill. But of course, you may see things differently.
I have a large locking screen door with bars across my $500 steel door.
Inside, I have an army of the most vicious dobermans you have ever seen.
If you get inside my bedroom, my Arabian stallions bred in Enumclaw will destroy you.
Vonage is the least of my worries in my home security system.
It smells because there are easy solutions to the problems. First of all, you can supply backup power to your ATA and not have to worry.
Secondly you should wire your setup as RJ31X so the alarm system can cut in and take control.
Thirdly - you can set your bandwidth so that fax and modem signals will work. Better yet, how come no alarm company has an IP based monitoring setup? Be pretty simple to do with VPN's, etc.
Finally the E-911 issue was resolved a long time ago. I have full E-911 service through Vonage.
All this leads me to believe that ILEC's are behind these stories. They're losing business left and right to less expensive VoIP carriers. And Verizon for one is in a particularly bad spot, their little fiber build out isn't generating the returns they expected.
To a single number. And hope that your security system HAS a local call-in number (it should anyway). The neat thing is, old fashioned phone lines are self powered and always work; you can get a dialtone that will only work with 911, 0, and a designated number for as little as $12/month in some cities. You can get 911 and 0 for free in most phone companies in the nation, this is called "basic dialtone service".
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I have to say that most people I have seen do not put a UPS on their DSL or cable modem. So all the "bad guy" has to do is turn off the house breaker and then no call out. Sorta silly. The POTS service would stay on and since alarm systems have a battery, they work. But no call goes out if your broadband is turned off or your router has no power.
Please send US$50 and your social security number to this suspicious website with a .ru tld.
Today's lucky number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Is anyone (here) surprised by this? It seems painfully obvious to me, that most such services obviously wouldn't work. That this guy wasn't notified BY THE SECURITY SERVICE that his alarm system wasn't functioning for over a year, speaks volumes about how useless that service really is.
It's only too easy to cut a POTS line, or tie it up by dialing-in to it, which is exactly what any competent burglar will do... Maybe with a (pre-paid?) cell-based service, your alarm will have a fighting chance, but not a lot even then.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
works great, doesn't require any phone line, and has gone down in price recently.
POTS lines are no longer needed.
i just my adt system to stop answering my phone with "system on." they deny that there service ever does such a thing, yet, it occurs with my system as well as a number of buddies who have adt. no discernible pattern to when the system picks up...
Well, as far as Sig's go, Freud was a doozy.
Seriously.. technology has been clashing for a long time..
My friend had a problem when he first got wireless where the phone would cut his wireless off because they were on the same frequency..
guess what.. he got a new phone... wow.. big deal!
you simply buy a different voip that gets along with your security system, or a different security system that goes with your voip.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Sounds like a modem attempting to dial out in your burglar alarm will run into problems unless your Voip gateway is configured to pass calls to the PSTN. The GSM codecs used by voip are going to seriously break any attempt at transmitting data even at horribly low bitrates.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
I live in a neighborhood where cops take 10-25 minutes to respond to a shooting. Paramedics will show up faster than any cop.
I pay insurance because I know the cops won't do anything or care about my possessions.
Can you call someone a hero is they wait until they have backup? Give me a gun and my neighbor's phone number and I'm my own malitia.
Um, so maybe the home security vendors should look into IP connectivity.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You could also try the LoBenn solution. I requires support from the Alarm company, and if you ask for it they are much more likely to support the solution! (squeaky wheel and all that.)
http://www.lobenninc.com/
I have a monitored alarm in my home. In my case, the phone line passes through the alarm (to allow the Alarm system to cut the rest of the house off when communicating.) If you dial my home and hang up after one ring, then dial back in again, the alarm modem will pick up. Apparently, this is done to allow the alarm company a dial-in "back door." One ring, hang up, call back. Annoying sometimes for me.
Caveat: some of their links were broken the last time I checked. Makes you wonder.
Obligatory disclaimer: I've just hit their website looking for a similar solution; not a customer (yet).
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
Then the house said...
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid can't do that"
The original generic sig.
According to the Allied Fire & Security firm firm
I ALWAYS want my firms to be firm.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The main problem is your security system contains a modem which is plugged into a VoIP adapter which encodes and decodes the analog signals on both ends of the connection, potentially distorting the communications.
Well, what about plugging the alarm system directly into the internet, bypassing the VoIP link? This might allow even MORE reliable communications between the alarm and the monitoring station than the phone line link would be.
Direct all complaints to dsanfte. Due to asshat mods I must now post Anonymously.
No apostrophe needed when pluralizing an acronym. VPNs is fine.
Mr. Smith & Mr. Wesson and by Mr. Avtomat Kalashnikova
And is backed up by two German Shepherds.
No problems here.
Has anyone ever stopped to consider just how incredibly stupid this is? You're converting a digital signal to analog via a very slow modem over a simulated voice line running over a much faster digital network.
Fax machines would have to be the most redundant technology since the floppy. Why isn't there an IP transmission option for faxes?
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
I didn't know they did VoIP - I thought they were just a really cool band...
A competent burgler will get around most any system, and will have a fighting chance of never being caught.
ADT and their ilk are designed to thwart the moronic burglars, which are the majority of them.
Vonage was upfront about this when I got their service. It shouldn't
be a surprise -- and it only affects those alarm services that use
copper to monitor the system. If your alarm system is independent of
the phone lines (i.e., doesn't need Daddy watching it all the time) there
is no problem.
My home phone service is through AT&T CallVantage VoIP. AT&T has a FAQ on its CallVantage information pages specifically about this issue. And I quote:
What's more, I seem to remember I was shown this information during the sign-up process and had to acknowledge on a terms-of-service agreement form that I understood that this service was not to be used for home security systems.
Elsewhere on the site AT&T discusses the fact that a power outage will knock out your phone service -- in fact, it's in bold type.
I agree with the others who say it's probably the ILECs behind this kind of FUD(*). It's not that the problems don't exist ... it's that you shouldn't be complaining about them after you've gone ahead and signed up for the service, because nobody is concealing this information.
(* Ironically, however, my VoIP provider is now technically the same company as my ILEC ... though the two services are offered by very different divisions.)
Breakfast served all day!
I find that interesting, maybe it's a difference between Canada and the United States. I work for the ILEC up in British Columbia, and we receive numerous calls from customers who recently ran off seeing some happy Vonage ad that later find out their alarm companies won't offer service on a VOIP line. Maybe it shows they care about their customers more, rather than raking in the cash with a service that is subject to power outages, etc.
Cell backup for security systems should be a requirement. I have ADT going into my Vonage box but wired ahead of the home telephone wiring so the ADT can grab the line if it needs it. However, if my Internet connection is down for whatever reason, a cellular call is placed from the ADT. It isn't that much more, and it makes it far more likely that someone will actually be aware what is going on.
Also, some people have asked why no company does Internet based monitoring. There is an ADT system that does this and also requires the cellular backup.
Beyond my reach, but looks cool.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
In Canada they just launched this service which uses the 1X network to monitor your home. It's much more advanced than classic alarm system because you can also self-monitor over the Internet, get paged/IM's/texted/emailed when something happens in the house etc. It also supports motion activated cameras that send pictures to your web account. I'm sure a similar service must exist in the US. Bottom line is this will work even if you're on VoIP... Oh, and no I'm not affiliated with them, I just thought it was relevant to the discussion. I have not tried them myself but will consider them when my current contract expires.
Used to work at an ISP that did VoIP (wirelessly in fact). If you could tweak the baud rate on your security system and drop it down to say 1200bps, it would typically work. It was still fairly hit and miss though. Add to that that many customers had no clue how to do this and alarm companies didn't care enough to try and help them.
Modem-type communications expect timing to be near exact (something the PSTN can guarantee) and just don't work well with the random delays (caused by 'net conditions, jitter buffering, etc) that are inherent with VoIP. T38 helps with faxing, but any sort of modem connection is going to cause problems.
We made sure our customers knew that burglar alarms were _not_ something we supported over VoIP. In fact it's a downright silly idea tying your home protection in with your Internet connection in most cases anyways. You can often get a phone line specifically for burglar alarms for less than you'd pay for a line used for talking on as well, so this is typically what we'd advise customers to do.
Alarm systems used to use a separate solid copper connection between the premises and the alarm service. The better systems sent a continuous psuedorandom code sequence, constantly reporting "OK here"; anything that interrupted the connection raised an alarm. US telcos stopped offering solid copper connections because people were ordering those and using them for high-speed digital connections.
There used to be "data under voice" services, which provided a very low bitrate channel in a narrow band below audio. These were used for alarm systems. But data under voice can be incompatible with DSL (which is "data over voice", in a higher band), and has mostly been phased out. Actually, there's no fundamental reason you couldn't have data under voice, analog voice, and DSL on the same line, but all three services have to have the right filters to prevent interference.
Then there was ISDN, but that was botched in the US. In many European countries, ISDN voice is common, and the premises equipment is powered via the ISDN connection. So alarm signals could be sent over the D channel. In the US, ISDN was priced higher than analog voice, and powered from the premises end. So it never went anywhere.
Alarms over analog dialup lines are common, but not really very secure, since they're not in continuous communication with the security monitoring center. But at least they don't require AC power at the premises.
There's an installed base of alarm gear that operates over cellular phone services, but much of that is AMPS, the older FM analog cellular system, which, in the US, sunsets next year.
As for the VoIP issue, here's the Central Station Alarm Association's white paper (.DOC format) on the subject.
"Random burglars do have the option of moving on to the house next door that doesn't have an alarm system at all, saving the precious seconds to locate and cut the line. Targeted attacks are rare and quite difficult to handle."
An outside siren will take care of that, unless you live out in the middle of nowhere. But then I've found that people that independent have more than just "home security".
There is a lot of signal degradation converting from analog to digital, lossy compression of the digital signal, and converting it back to analog. Not to mention the analog to digital conversion has to happen twice (once over the VoIP carrier, and again when it's received).
It's not just that.
POTS signals are generally converted to digital samples at the first switching center they hit (or at curbside equipment along the way), switched as a digital signal, and converted to analog again similarly near the far end. To avoid clicks and pops (and persistent phase jumps) the sampling rates at the D->A and A->D conversion must match - exactly. The phone companies use very accurate clocks, synchronized across their whole network, to make this happen.
The phone companies originally used digital just to pack multiple phone calls for a hop from one analog switching center to another - and D->A->switch->A->D converted at each switch - with synchronization only needed between the ends of the hop. This saved a lot on cabling and gave better signal than analog transport, but not as good as digital from one "last mile" to the other. Then they added digital switching to eliminate the degradation of the multiple A/D conversions and simplify the switch - and spent a decade or more getting clocking synchronized across the whole network to eliminate the resulting glitches. Even today, in the being-retired POTS network, "timing is a third of the problem".
(These days the clocks are synchronized even between carriers by essentially all of them getting their master clocking from the atomic clocks of the GPS system. Before that they used things like LORAN D - a pre-satellite clocking-based radio navigation system for ships - or generated them in their own committee of atomic clocks and distributed the clocking along with the signals using the carriers of the SONET optical fibers or the T1 and E1 carriers of copper and microwave days, and these methods are still used to synchronize boxes that aren't in installations big enough to rate their own satellite-derived clock.)
The signal is encoded as a "DS0" stream of 8,000 8-bit samples per second, in one of two closely related floating-point-like coding schemes ("A-law" or "u-law" where "u" is "mu"), depending on whether you're using European or American-style standards.
So the signal is only capable of carrying 64,000 bits per second. (In fact the LSB may be "stolen" every few samples for ringing, off-hook, and dialing information, so only 56,000 bps are reliable - and it's actually a bit lower since some code sequences are forbidden by a regulation.)
Modern modems are designed around this and try to use as much as possible of these bits for data. In typical ISP-type modem banks the ISP end is connected to the phone company by a digital link and can directly control the bits, without incuring an A->D penalty, so the downlink can approach 56k, with the modem figuring out the actual sampling boundaries as part of the decoding. The uplink (or both sides in communication between two modems on analog POTS lines) comes pretty close to it - though it has to sacrifice some bandwidth to use a coding scheme that can survive clocking-rate errors between the modem's transmitter and the digitizer.
Of course if your VoIP link uses compression to carry your signal in less than 64k bps of payload, you're totally hosed. (And many of them do. For starters, if you're working over a dialup line you don't HAVE 64k bps to use.) Your modem assumes it's working over the POTS network and tries to use the bandwidth. And its signal gets totally hashed by the compression.
But even if you have the bandwidth (or the modem figures out that it's got a "noisy link" and down-speeds), you're still hosed. Because the clocking used for VoIP A->D and D->A steps is just not stable enough for the modem to take advantage of the bandwidth in the digital link.
One of the big pieces of persistent fallout from the war between
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Vonage works just fine with my alarm system. The only thing I had to do to make it work was have the alarm technician set the system to dial *99 first in order to put the vonage ATA into "fax mode". This is supposedly needed to make vonage lines work with TIVO also.
Obviously the author of the article (and the submitter) didn't do their homework.
A great place to start looking for how to make your alarm work with Vonage can be found here
And as for the people posting that using VOIP for an alarm is foolish because all a thief would have to do is cut the power: A thief is more likely to cut the phone line going from the PSTN to your house than he is the power. He isn't going to think, "Hmm, this person might have VOIP. I'd better cut the power, the cable, and the phone line outside the house just in case".
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d? s: a-- C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E- W++ N o-- K- w--- O- M+ V PS+ P
Why isn't there an IP transmission option for faxes?
Probably because of e-mail having made paper faxes about 98% obsolete so nobody bothered to promote with any vigor, any form of ip-enabled fax transmission protocol so there never has been any serious enough demand for it to come into common use.
I have Vonage and my alarm system works fine. No, I don't trust my home security to Vonage. I bought the cell phone sending unit and it works perfectly. Vonage drops calls from time to time but they are still much cheaper and better than Bellsouth. Just use your head when you purchase your alarm unit.
I dont have either ... honestly who cares!
It's not "Any Damn Device You Can Plug Into A Phone Jack over IP".
any wireline connection an alarm system uses can be comprimised-whether it be POTS or VOIP. Cellular or Alarmnet radio backup are definitely suggested as either primary or backup communitation. FYI, i've been an alarm tech for 12 years now, have been a Vonage sub for past three years and alarm has never failed to send a signal to central station-including the monthly auto test signal. Of course, all my network gear is attached to a 1000va UPS and I do have cellular backup. One thing that I haven't seen anyone mention as they flippantly call alarm systems useless is the monitoring of fire and flood detection devices-my system saved my home from fire by detecting smoke coming from, of all things, a PC's power supply. If left plugged in, it may have burst into flames(maybe). But instead I got a call from alarm company stating that the fire department had been dispatched due to a trip on the hall smoke detector. The fire department almost broke the door down but I showed up and upon opening the door we were met with that familiar burning electric-ozone smell and visible smoke haze.
...<snip>...Clocking is part of it, A/D and D/A another, but the compression algorithms used by the VoIP device itself are generally the main culprit of modem device failure. They are designed specifically to carry voice (hence the big V in VoIP), same as telephones and the POTS network were originally designed for, not modem tones. After all, why would someone want to send data via analog methods when a digital one is available, right? Oh yeh, faxes/creditcard machines/atms/alarms/firepanels/etc. There are solutions available. Unfortunately for the home consumer level products these probably are either not built into their systems, or they lack the ability to enable or configure them to mesh with the other end of the VoIP tunnel. On the higher end equipment, such as Cisco IAD style VoIP devices (routers with FXS cards basically), settings on the FXS ports can be tweaked to amplify the modem signal (boosting the gain and adding a DC offset voltage), altering filters and setting up special pass-throughs (fax T38 relay/mgcp modem passthrough), and special compression algorigthms can be applied to lines designated to be modem-type devices. Once this is done, however, that is all that line will be able to do, as voice itself is now not the intended data and is filtered out as a side-affect. The other end of the VoIP net, where/if it goes out to the POTS network (trunking gateways) must also understand these features so they can take the digitally packetized modem packets and re-assemble them correctly into a decent modem type noise for the POTs lines. For buisness grade, where the network is setup specifically for VoIP traffic, this type of traffic is expected, it is still sometimes difficult to get it working with 100% of the devices out there, and most modem devices will still only operate at a max around 33.6k. If you are using skyp/vonage/other consumer bring-your-own connection, good luck with that.
Tm
disclaimer: no, I dont work for Cisco, however I do work for a business-class VoIP provider that uses cisco equipment for its structured network, setup and QOS'd specifically for this type of stuff, including the end loop circuits (T1) and devices (IADs) at our customers' sites.
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
It's a common misconception (even among VOIP providers) that you can run modem conversations over VOIP lines. You cannot. Modems rely on a statically behaving line quality. VOIP, by design, will have changing echo, changing line delays (very disturbing for a modem) and even changing sound quality. This will annoy your modem, even at lower baud rates. I've seen setups where even 9600 baud fax receiving would not work, while codec (711u), echo cancellation (off), jitter buffer (low, medium, high, very high), dynamic jitter buffer correction (off) were all carefully tuned. Yes, you could receive some faxes, or almost all, or even hardly any faxes would get lost but you would lose connections at random times - very annoying if your faxed document is large enough. This is with two different VOIP providers, with two different VOIP ATAs, even telling the VOIP company we were going to use the line for faxing and having tech support commenting on our ATA setup. I should add that this was an international operating law firm, so they would receive rather large documents (50+ pages) over international phone lines, which makes it a perfect test setup.
;-)
After a lot of trial-and-error, they chose to get a POTS fax line and all their faxing problems were gone instantly.
There is, however, one exception to the above. You can use the T38 protocol to send faxes over VOIP, but *both* sides should support that. T38 is basically a protocol that interprets the faxing information at the modem (ATA) side, sends it over IP to the provider, who re-creates the buzzing your modem made originally. This also means that T38 is a property of your ATA, not a fax machine property (unless off course you have a real IP fax that has it's own internal SIP configuration). VOIP providers that tell you "your fax should have T38" are wrong - like telling "your car should have asphalt" when you ask if it's safe to drive 50Km/h on a certain road. And here's the caveat: there are not that many VOIP providers that do support T38 - they may not even know what it is, what it does and why you would need it - hence the common "yes, you can fax as long as your fax had T38".
Well, if your VOIP provider tells you your fax should have T38, you can be pretty sure that your fax will not work. And neither will your alarm system. Or your BBS
my other sig is a 500 page novel
But, obviously you shouldn't use phone lines for alarms, either way. It should be a dedicated monitored line, so the alarm company will know when somebody cuts your line. In earlier times, this used to be ridiculously expensive. These days, all you need is GPRS/GSM. The company I work for do it even better, we connect it directly through your broadband-connection (NOT through VoIP), with a backup-system through GPRS/GSM cell-phone (and yeah, batteries for backup).
I have Vonage and a home security system that has to seize the line to call out. All you have to do to make it work is go outside to the box where you phone line comes in and create a loopback. Plug the line from your router into a phone jack rather than the phone itself and, voila, not only will your home security system work but you also get dialtone to every jack in your home.
VOIP requires a connection to an IP network. Even those offered by cable co's that don't actually send the voice service over the public internet require an IP network, and that means the customer needs electrical power and their connection device to be plugged in and online for them to have dial tone.
VOIP will always be less than ideal for this reason. Anything from a dog biting through the coax line to the cleaning lady not connecting things back correctly can knock out your dial tone(I've had both situations come up with customers). Wiring to a POTS line is generally going to be more resilient to problems such as this(not completely foolproof, but a bit closer).
I work for a VOIP provider doing tech support, and I can tell you... if you truly need an alarm system connected to your phone, don't get VOIP unless you also get a seperate POTS line for the alarm. VOIP is a wonderful replacement for POTS for everyday voice communications, but as an emergency link to the outside world, it blows.
Hello PDFs via email
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
This post made me finally sign up and submit. This is it.
...in Enumclaw.
Lovely. My Captcha was "trough."
If anybody in Canada is having a problem with this using Primus, you should give them a call and see if they can't fix it for you. I have never had such a good experience with a *phone* company, of all things.
;-)
When I was having some line quality problems with their long distance, I called them and was immediately handed off to a tech who was able to test the line and resolve the problem for me (probably just changed my routing protocol, but still...). Whenever I've had other problems (questions about billing, or extra services or what have you) I am talking with a human within minutes after dialing. No "Annie the Automated Attendant" or voice mail hell. Their techs have even called me back to make sure that things working correctly!
I was initially interested in Primus because of the price of the service, but being able to talk to humans who could *do something* about the issue has made me a loyal customer. (Don't get the idea that I'm having problems all the time, because I'm not... But it's nice to get someone on the line when you do.)
Disclaimer: I have no relationship to Primus except that I pay them CDN$80/month when I used to pay Bell $120...
Curse you plastic mold maker!
Aside from the malfunctioning issue, a VOIP line hooked into a security system is not all bad. Consider this, I have my VOIP router, cable modem, and security system on a UPS so if power goes out, the system stays up and I can still make calls (obviously, if the power outage goes beyond the local level the cable would be out). Now, if a would be thief were to target my house, he/she might think "hey, this guy has a security system, I had better cut the phone line and the power. In this case my alarm would still be active, and the thief may think he/she has more time because he snipped the phone line, but in reality the call to e911 was placed.
I have ADT. I have Vonage. I have UPS providing broadband and voip adapter power.
ADT said it wouldn't work - it works just fine.
If it's not working for people, they're probably not installing it in the beginning of the loop properly.
If you already have an alarm system, then you disconnect the line lead going into the security system, reconnect the voip line, and instantly all the phones in the house are wired to voip.
And a burglar can cut my phone line (they do know do to that), and the alarm will still go off. Still take his picture. Still email it out of the house so he can steal all the computers. Still calls the police to come get him.
Most burglars cut the tel line, I don't think I've ever heard of one cutting the cable line before breaking in.
You're asking the wrong question. Why must we pay $38/month for phone service that is the same as what we had 30 years ago that cost $13? I don't want any new service, just the same price.
Sunrocket lets me pay $17/month AND get all the bells and whistles that are available. I don't want to blame them for the poor connectivity of DSL or Cable Modem. It isn't their fault that Comcast can't keep their DNS working more than 15 minutes at a time. I'm exaggerating of course, but I did have 2 disconnects last night on a single call less than 30 min apart.
A few years ago when I switched from POTS to VoIP, I discovered my security system couldn't connect over VoIP. The security monitoring service offered to install an IP solution for $300 or switch to a cellular for $200 + $25 addition per month. Don't forget the $200 installation fee for either. I got out and got a barking dog doorbell. False alarms don't get the Police or Fire guys to my door. I didn't encourage the security company to rape even more customers for items that ought to cost $20. The installation fee didn't bother me, but a tiny A2D converter with an RJ45 doesn't cost $300!
BTW, you are correct about the quality of POTS lines, but exactly who is measuring that quality? Not the phone company, they only deal with it when you complain. I always had the idea there would be a $75 charge if **they** decided the problem wasn't on their side.
I don't have the equipment to measure POTS quality either.
First hit for "internet alarm monitoring" on Google shows at least one company with a broadband adapter:
https://nextalarm.com/abn.jsp
Sent from my iPhone
We have the same in the U.S., but most people just throw the little paper that comes with consumer electronics in the bin. I've seen some phones that don't even list the REN on the little paper, too.
Since the homeowner is (for the last couple of decades now) responsible for their inside wiring, there's no guarantee that everyone's phone wiring is carrying the full signal at every jack, either.
Fortunately, there are ring voltage amplifiers for sale which should solve this problem. I haven't tried them with the system in question, so YMMV.
Analog phone lines, referred to as POTS lines (Plain Old Telephone Service) get converted to digital lines at the Central Office. The CODEC they use is G.711 which converts the analog to digital bits with *no* compression and each voice channel takes up 56kb/s of bandwidth (64kb w/overhead).
The problem we had in the early 90's in setting up VoIP was with fax machines and modems. For voice calls, we could use the G.729a CODEC (which uses 12kb/s) and the customer wouldn't notice any discernible change in voice quality, however, we found out pretty quick that Fax and Modem communications don't compress. We've all experienced voice calls that have been over-compressed that it sounds very 'tinny' like you're talking to a voice synthesizer rather than a fellow human being; satellite phones are the worst for that.
The easy answer is to have the CODEC or DAC auto-detect the FAX or modem communication and set it to "do not compress" and have it use the g.711 codec instead. Problem solved. However, for consumer VoIP, using the G.711 codec immediately bumps the bandwidth requirements to 3-4x the amount required by a voice call, and the consumer systems start dropping packets. Most packet drops on voice calls will go unnoticed as each packet holds ~10ms of voice. When transmitting fax/modem data, the loss of a single packet requires error correction on the fax or modem, which slows the transmission rate. The loss of too many packets will call the transmission to just drop because of too many transmission errors.
Point is, Fax and modem communications are fundamentally incompatible with VoIP. It is technology that was created to transmit data over analog lines. The solution is to put an Ethernet jack in the fax machine or the alarm system.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I have been running some form of voip for at least seven years.
The service started with net2phone with a soft phone to asterisk (trixbox) with an adtran TA 750.
Here is what I learned.
1. VOIP is not cheap. There are cheap ways to implement it, but it is not cheap.
2. VOIP provides flexibility at costs, that were once unheard of.
3. It does not matter if your install is a business or a home, reliability is the key. Reliability costs money.
Knowing this... Keep the system as traditional pots to the perimiter of the pbx.
Softphones are not reliable. They can be handy, but they have many issues.
PSTN Hardphones as we know them have been around since the 1960's ( I live in St. Louis, we were the first to have touch tone.) It is a proven technology with a simple interface.
Use an T1 phone channel bank (Adtran etc.) and the pbx will be rock solid reliable within the house/business.
Next in reliability is an ATA, they usually work fine, but you introduce tcpip issues into the mix. On an internal network this is usually not a problem as long as you have a good switch on the network.
Voip Phones - again they work fine, IFF you buy the models intended for business use. Note - for home use, the costs of three or four of these phones, will easily match the costs of a T1 card and a TA750 off of ebay with 24 channels, and a couple of multiline pots busness phones.
Once you have a working system you can work on the issue of Faxing. My current setup has a HP Fax laser printer hooked to the channel bank. It is on extension 1111. It is for sending faxes only. For incoming faxes, I have hyla fax running with iaxmodem on extension 1100. Hylafax is configured to email each rax received from the outside to me and my wife and then store the tiff file on my server as a timestamped file. The cool part is that my fax machine can be used to call extension 1100 and I can scan bills and documents. Hylafax just sends these files to the fileserver in a directory for bills.
The problem is that this works MOST of the time. My DIDs for teliax is set at ULAW. If the internet conditions are ok, then the incoming fax comes in. I will be trying t.38 soon. Outgoing faxes are configured as ulaw with voicepulse teliax.
Now part about alarm systems. I use Alarm.com. Their system works with the 2way pager networks and works very well. They use the ge concord panel.
Although they do not advertise it, you can self install the professional system instead of the comsumer system.
If you already have a hard wired system, just make sure that your control panels are 4 wires.
Order the system ($300), then go on ebay and look for superbus 2000 parts and ge concord parts. I bought an extra firealarm, two adt control panels, and 15 wireless window sensors for $220. That added to my existing 6 zones, is quite nice.
The costs for alarm.com are comparable to a conventional alarm company and if you install it yourself, there is no contract.
If you have a Primus VoIP line and you plan to hook up a security system, fax machine, tivo, satellite dish, or anything else that uses a modem to it there are 2 things you can do to avoid most of these problems, #1 get a UPS for your cable/dsl modem and the the VoIP box so power interruptions are not an issue until they are LONG interruptions. #2 call Primus and tell them you want to use a fax on that line so they change the codec to one that eats up more internet bandwidth but gives quality sufficient to use a modem over it.
When I signed up for DSL, they didn't offer it naked, so I had to get a measured-rate POTS line to go along with it. I used it for fax reception and got a Vonage box for voice service.
When I got an alarm, it was a happy coincidence - I hooked the RJ31X jack for the alarm up to that POTS line along with the fax modem. So our alarm system isn't dependent on the Internet or Vonage being up.
If it weren't for that, I probably would have opted for the GSM module available for our alarm. But the monthly service cost for that probably equals or exceeds the cost of the POTS line running along side the DSL, and that can at least serve an extra purpose.
When I switched over to VoIP I insisted on getting the cellular backup system installed for my alarm system.
Does anyone really believe that their internet provider is that reliable. When I was trying to decide if I wanted to go with VIOP for my home phone service, one of the first things that i considered was my alarm system, then the in case of emergency factor. I am provided internet via cable provider. Although their track record is pretty good with reliability, they are not perfect. With this question fresh in my mind I contacted Vonage with a question. How do they normally handle situations such as mine. Their response was simple, and what I was expecting. For Emergencies, use or rely on your cell phone or a land line. For Home Security, only rely on a Land Line. They were upfront, and honest regarding this issue. So now I have 2 VOIP lines, one for Phone and one for Fax. A Land Line for my security system with a cell backup. A cheap hard line phone that requires no electricity, and all of my critical equipment (Modem, Routers, VIOP Adapter ect..) are hooked into a dedicated UPS. It is just a mind numbing thought that there are so many people out there that blindly venture into situations like this. I guess that is what happens when we now live in a world where kids and young adults have been taught that there are really no consequences anymore. Someone will fix it for you. DumbAssessssssss
I use vonage and my alarm calls the alarm co just fine. but I have my bandwidth selector in the vonage account all the way on "BEST quality"
works for us!
That one's IP will be down at the same time you need 911 or an alarm service. A standby prepaid cell phone with a couple of bucks in its account covers the 911 need, and the alarm service is superfluous. If an intruder bothers to cut one's cable TV line, he'll cut the phone line too.
Absolutely correct. the additional latency really confuses modem based devices. One area that you really cannot get around is the problem where a PSTN connection is required for satellite desktop boxes. They just do not like Vonage as a faux PSTN connection.
Tisha Hayes
This, ironically, reminds me of old Telebit modems in the past. Sort of. Bear with me.
Telebit had some of the first high speed modems I ever recall seeing (19.2 kbps back when I had a 2400 bps modem on my computer). They managed this by letting the modems talk to each other with half-duplex. This had a fairly obvious negative impact on latency, but if you were running a simple one-way transmission protocol, the bulk transfer rates were impressive (for the time).
The problem was that the file transfer protocols in use at the time - XMODEM, Kermit and UUCP-g, didn't play that. So the Telebits had a special register in them which would make them perform protocol endpoint emulation. If you were going to use UUCP-g over your dialup connection, then when the transfer actually started, the Telebit on your end would ack all of your packets for you, send just the data across the link, and the remote modem would eat all of the acks coming from the remote machine.