The explicitly mentioned mdadm so they are not using the "raid" on the cards (anyway, at that price it almost always is software raid implemented in the driver).
With the linux md software raid you can kick off background scans. Read the md(4) man page and linux/Documentation/md.txt for the gory details. There is a lot of good stuff in there.
I love Linux software raid. It has been fast and robust.
You can get them to change the codec you use to a less bit-hungry one. That has helped a few people I know who have Vonage.
You can test your connection to see how it will behave http://testyourvoip.com/ and you can try different codecs to see what the difference is. Try it a few times throughout the day to try to characterize your line better.
-ben
Re:Hmm HDTV Still Cripled...
on
A Look at IPTV
·
· Score: 1
The site is somewhat geared to testing your connection for video confercing, but it is still pretty useful.
-ben
Test your connection first...
on
Vonage IPO
·
· Score: 4, Informative
VoIP is cool stuff and can save you a bundle on your phone bills (if you make many long-distance calls). BUT make sure your internet connection is good enough for it. It's not just about throughput, you need low latency and low jitter as well. Anyway, try your connection out at http://testyourvoip.com/ a few different times of the day and make sure it is worth your time.
My Dad and a couple of co-workers have Vonage and they all love it. Unfortunately my DSL is pretty much at the limit of the distance from the local telephone CO so my line is not up as much as I want my phone to be... ah well.
TIA is pretty damn impressive, but they certainly don't get all of it.
1: There is more to the internet than the web 2: They don't do a lot of dynamic pages... so a lot of forums will probably be ignored (not that that necesarilly loses anything useful;-) 3: They only get images if you request it 4: Sites can request that they not be spidered (robots.txt) etc.
The new IKEA near Boston has them, and I have seen them elsewhere (perhaps at other IKEAs)... I have never noticed a smell, but that may be the strict cleaning the bathrooms get.
If you want, you can run a free VoIP quality test at http://testyourvoip.com/. So if you have wireless, or want to place a VoIP call over your Cell data link (for whatever perverse reason) you can check your quality before setting it all up if you have a web browser with Java enabled.
But if you are seriously concerned about your line, try http://testyourvoip.com/. It is a free service and allows you to keep a history of performance so you can try a few times and see if the service degrades at any particular time.
"Now there's one less reason for your friends to switch to Gentoo!" should perhaps be "Now there's one less reason for your friends NOT to switch to Gentoo!".
If you are at all interested in this service (or one of the alternate offerings from the other VoIP providers) then make sure your line can support a VoIP call by using this free service: ahref=http://testyourvoip.com/http://testyourvoip. com/>.
Also you can roll your own with the Asterix software, and some cheap hardware... (URL:http://asterix.org/). There are companies who you can pay to bridge to the phone network calls from an Asterix server.
I dunno how AOL will handle this, but e911 works with Vonage... sort of.
The deal is that you tell Vonage where the "phone" is and they will send that information with the 911 call. The trouble occurs if you move the adapter and forget to tell Vonage and then call 911.
Then there is the uglier question about VoIP reliability vs. Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). Lots of things need to work in order to place a VoIP call (power for the adapter, power for your internet infrastructure, the cable/DSL, etc.). However, if you used to have a phone line into the house, that line can still place 911 calls. So keep a plain old phone connected to it for emergencies (hell, paint it red too!).
"As this guy said, sat-based Internet SUCK HARD for VoIP being that it is so latent."
Latency is bad, but you can get decent VoIP calls as long as the jitter isn't too bad. Jitter really kills you. The latency is just annoying for the people talking, but you can get used to it.
The best answer is to test your connection. http://testyourvoip.com/ offers a free service that places a sample call from Java to a bunch of locations of your choice around the world. Then you can look at the call quality (reported in industry standard MOS) as well as detailed reasons for quality degradation.
"Find an ISP that doesn't have those restrictions and use them instead."
Check out your current ISP with http://www.testyourvoip.com/. It places a call in Java to test out your connection's ability to handle a good quality VoIP call. But it will also tell you if your provider is blocking VoIP specific ports.
Surprisingly there are a bunch of low cost carriers who route their calls over VoIP when going overseas so they can fit more calls into the same pipe. A lot of said countries are in the third world. Of course, whether you can get decent IP service when you don't have leased T1s is a different story:-)
Anyway, you can test your VoIP quality from anywhere with IP and a Java-enabled browser at http://testyourvoip.com/ if you are concerned about your IP quality not being up to snuff, or if you want to see how it is and you are in the wilds of Africa... but have IP connectivity.
Also useful for checking your connection to see if it can handle VoIP: testyourvoip.com (the site has had an overhaul... some interesting new features)
To find out how your net connection is for VoIP try the free service http://testyourvoip.com/. The detailed stats can tell you about delays, dropouts, perceived quality and much, much, more. Try it at several times of the day (and week) to get a good picture of your connection.
Before you waste time trying to get VoIP (or paying for VoIP from a provider) going it is worth testing your connection to see if it can support VoIP calls at a reasonable quality. You might want to test your line at various times during the day... I get crappier calls in the evening.
Anyway, http://testyourvoip.com/ provides a decent free testing serice just using a web browser.
My two issues with VoIP are quality (which you can test using free sites such as http://testyourvoip.com/). Mine isn't too bad... but...
I am always concerned about safety. My phone works when the power is out and is Federally mandated to be up more than 99.999% of the time. VoIP has no such requirements. The counter-argument is that if you have a cell phone then that will work if the power is out.
The cool thing about VoIP phones (in this case Vonage, but I don't think that matters) is their geographical independence. My Dad took his to Greece on vacation and coordinated his house sale over the VoIP phone (so it was a local call for the other parties). It also turned out to be cheaper to make calls over the VoIP phone (via the US, so paying Vonage's low long distance rate to Greece) than it was to make local calls from the hotel!
And now he has moved from the US to the UK, but took his Vonage box with him, I can call his old local number and it rings in England!
Oh, and the other neat thing is that his voicemail messages get emailed to him.
Before you download and configure this, test your connection out so see if it can handle VoIP. You can also play with different codecs to see if one is better than the other over your connection.
Slashdot Mirror
The explicitly mentioned mdadm so they are not using the "raid" on the cards (anyway, at that price it almost always is software raid implemented in the driver).
With the linux md software raid you can kick off background scans. Read the md(4) man page and linux/Documentation/md.txt for the gory details. There is a lot of good stuff in there.
I love Linux software raid. It has been fast and robust.
You can get them to change the codec you use to a less bit-hungry one. That has helped a few people I know who have Vonage.
You can test your connection to see how it will behave http://testyourvoip.com/ and you can try different codecs to see what the difference is. Try it a few times throughout the day to try to characterize your line better.
-ben
You can test your current bandwidth with the free website: http://testyouripvideo.com/
The site is somewhat geared to testing your connection for video confercing, but it is still pretty useful.
-ben
VoIP is cool stuff and can save you a bundle on your phone bills (if you make many long-distance calls). BUT make sure your internet connection is good enough for it. It's not just about throughput, you need low latency and low jitter as well. Anyway, try your connection out at http://testyourvoip.com/ a few different times of the day and make sure it is worth your time.
My Dad and a couple of co-workers have Vonage and they all love it. Unfortunately my DSL is pretty much at the limit of the distance from the local telephone CO so my line is not up as much as I want my phone to be... ah well.
-ben
For some value of entire.
;-)
TIA is pretty damn impressive, but they certainly don't get all of it.
1: There is more to the internet than the web
2: They don't do a lot of dynamic pages... so a lot of forums will probably be ignored (not that that necesarilly loses anything useful
3: They only get images if you request it
4: Sites can request that they not be spidered (robots.txt)
etc.
-ben
The new IKEA near Boston has them, and I have seen them elsewhere (perhaps at other IKEAs)... I have never noticed a smell, but that may be the strict cleaning the bathrooms get.
-ben
If you want, you can run a free VoIP quality test at http://testyourvoip.com/. So if you have wireless, or want to place a VoIP call over your Cell data link (for whatever perverse reason) you can check your quality before setting it all up if you have a web browser with Java enabled.
-ben
Heh.
But if you are seriously concerned about your line, try http://testyourvoip.com/. It is a free service and allows you to keep a history of performance so you can try a few times and see if the service degrades at any particular time.
-ben
Clearly they just did (break it).
-ben
"Now there's one less reason for your friends to switch to Gentoo!" should perhaps be "Now there's one less reason for your friends NOT to switch to Gentoo!".
-ben
NASA page: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/20jun_moon illusion.htm
If you are at all interested in this service (or one of the alternate offerings from the other VoIP providers) then make sure your line can support a VoIP call by using this free service: ahref=http://testyourvoip.com/http://testyourvoip. com/>.
Also you can roll your own with the Asterix software, and some cheap hardware... (URL:http://asterix.org/). There are companies who you can pay to bridge to the phone network calls from an Asterix server.
-ben
I dunno how AOL will handle this, but e911 works with Vonage... sort of.
The deal is that you tell Vonage where the "phone" is and they will send that information with the 911 call. The trouble occurs if you move the adapter and forget to tell Vonage and then call 911.
Then there is the uglier question about VoIP reliability vs. Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). Lots of things need to work in order to place a VoIP call (power for the adapter, power for your internet infrastructure, the cable/DSL, etc.). However, if you used to have a phone line into the house, that line can still place 911 calls. So keep a plain old phone connected to it for emergencies (hell, paint it red too!).
-ben
Make sure your connection is up for it:
http://testyourvoip.com/
Wikipedia VoIP Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voip
Given the US has stupid patents already and the Linux development still continues there... I am not convinced how expert this "expert" is.
-ben
Oh, like what "DVD Jon" did last August: http://nanocrew.net/blog/apple/revairtunes.html
-ben
"As this guy said, sat-based Internet SUCK HARD for VoIP being that it is so latent."
Latency is bad, but you can get decent VoIP calls as long as the jitter isn't too bad. Jitter really kills you. The latency is just annoying for the people talking, but you can get used to it.
The best answer is to test your connection. http://testyourvoip.com/ offers a free service that places a sample call from Java to a bunch of locations of your choice around the world. Then you can look at the call quality (reported in industry standard MOS) as well as detailed reasons for quality degradation.
Hope that helps.
-ben
"Find an ISP that doesn't have those restrictions and use them instead."
Check out your current ISP with http://www.testyourvoip.com/. It places a call in Java to test out your connection's ability to handle a good quality VoIP call. But it will also tell you if your provider is blocking VoIP specific ports.
-ben
Surprisingly there are a bunch of low cost carriers who route their calls over VoIP when going overseas so they can fit more calls into the same pipe. A lot of said countries are in the third world. Of course, whether you can get decent IP service when you don't have leased T1s is a different story :-)
Anyway, you can test your VoIP quality from anywhere with IP and a Java-enabled browser at http://testyourvoip.com/ if you are concerned about your IP quality not being up to snuff, or if you want to see how it is and you are in the wilds of Africa... but have IP connectivity.
-ben
Also useful for checking your connection to see if it can handle VoIP: testyourvoip.com (the site has had an overhaul... some interesting new features)
-ben
To find out how your net connection is for VoIP try the free service http://testyourvoip.com/. The detailed stats can tell you about delays, dropouts, perceived quality and much, much, more. Try it at several times of the day (and week) to get a good picture of your connection.
-ben
Before you waste time trying to get VoIP (or paying for VoIP from a provider) going it is worth testing your connection to see if it can support VoIP calls at a reasonable quality. You might want to test your line at various times during the day... I get crappier calls in the evening.
Anyway, http://testyourvoip.com/ provides a decent free testing serice just using a web browser.
-ben
My two issues with VoIP are quality (which you can test using free sites such as http://testyourvoip.com/). Mine isn't too bad... but...
I am always concerned about safety. My phone works when the power is out and is Federally mandated to be up more than 99.999% of the time. VoIP has no such requirements. The counter-argument is that if you have a cell phone then that will work if the power is out.
The cool thing about VoIP phones (in this case Vonage, but I don't think that matters) is their geographical independence. My Dad took his to Greece on vacation and coordinated his house sale over the VoIP phone (so it was a local call for the other parties). It also turned out to be cheaper to make calls over the VoIP phone (via the US, so paying Vonage's low long distance rate to Greece) than it was to make local calls from the hotel!
And now he has moved from the US to the UK, but took his Vonage box with him, I can call his old local number and it rings in England!
Oh, and the other neat thing is that his voicemail messages get emailed to him.
-ben
I would be interested to see the MOS scores over the link.
Check out http://testyourvoip.com/ to get detailed analysis of a VoIP call.
-ben
Before you download and configure this, test your connection out so see if it can handle VoIP. You can also play with different codecs to see if one is better than the other over your connection.
-ben