internet VOiP phones anyone?

Rebecca

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Feb 28, 2002
Posts
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Loc
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
I rarely come to this forum and my search only came up with Jim's cute little computer phone...

Does anyone here use those Vonnage, Verizon etc. internet phone services? If so, I have some basic questions like:

I have cable internet and a router between husband's and my computer. I think it's fairly straightforward to get the computer guy to come and make sure we have all the right stuff in computer/router to make one internet phone work (it would plug into router, right?), but if we want all of the extensions in house to be internet, is it a big deal to modify telephone wiring to do this? I would never try it myself, but are we talking modifications at the jack, or would it involve surface mounting and fishing new wires?

Can cell phones work with this system? i.e. same phone # etc. or are the two systems entirely different. This question shows you how little I get it.

Thank you for whatever light you can shed here.

Rebecca
 
I'm about to take the plunge myself with digital phone service. We chose SunRocket, cause it was cheap, came with new free phones, allows my wife to call the UK for only 3 cents a minute, and there's a 30 day garuntee. The new phones basically plug directly in to our interenet connection. I'm curious to how good the quality will be, but if it's good enough then'll I'll probably be shaving $30-40 a month of my total communications bill at home (fingers crossed).

Cell phones won't work either since they rely on a cellular phone system to communicate. There are a few aftermarket products that let you cradle your cell phone and just use normal handsets in the house that run off the cell phone, but it doesn't work the other way around.

And as far as changing the phone jacks in your house to be all internet, unfortunately computer data wires are much different than phone wires. Most residential phone wiring consists of 2 or 3 pair (4 or six wires) per cable, and each phone line uses a pair. Computer network cables are usually 4 pair (8 wires) in a cable. In addition, unlike phones which can daisy chain one after another, each network connection needs to plug directly into a central hub or switch - in other words you can't have just one long cable with multiple jacks strung on it, each jack needs its own cable that leads all the way back to the server or hub. Techincally, you could have multiple hubs in the house to reduce the total amount of wiring (i.e. a hub for downstairs and a hub for upstairs).

Fun stuff, huh? So yeah, to answer your question it would involve fishing new wires. Of course you could always get a wireless router - performance suffers a little, and you're slightly more exposed to the outside world, but you can be anywhere in the house. I use both personally - computers in my home office plug into the router, and my laptop roams free. I'm still trying to convince the wife to let me install a hub in the recliner. How cool would that be.
 
Rebecca, I haven't actually used it but I have studied them at work. Yes the router has a phone jack (or two) on them. You simply plug your phone into the router. In the currently available layouts they are more appropriate for a second line in a house or if you only have one phone you could hook up a cordless to it. It is conceviable that you could wire out of the phone jack and hook it up to the house wiring. This would be not be something I would recommend the average homowner try, unless they are familiar and comfortable with the tel wiring in their house. As to fishing wire, it would depend on where the router is located in relation to existing phone wiring. Each house would have to be evaluated seperately....Don't know if this helps....VOIP technology works, but at the individual consumer level it still has some kinks to work out.

James
 
Our frame shop lines use this technology, as does our house. We have been using it for about 5-6 years now and highly recommend it. There is virtually no difference, with large savings.

We are using the solution from our cable company, but friends of ours use Vonage and are very happy.

For Vonage, a small box plugs into one of the free ports on your router. (some routers have Vonage built in already) From there, you can plug the phone jack into a telephone - or you can run it back to a nearby wall jack if you wish to provide dialtone to the rest of the house through the existing wiring.

If you plug it into the wall jack to provide dialtone to the rest of the house, it's important to disconnect your former company's wire. (even though you shut off the service from the local bell, there may still be power on the wires) You can do this at the network interface (often a gray box), where the service enters your home. Often it's just a matter of disconnecting the red and green wires, or unplugging an RJ test plug.

In most cases, you can even keep your existing phone number.

It has a few kinks, but in general... Good stuff


Mike
 
I am always for technology, but when it comes to a business lifeline, I am a bit hesitant.

What happens if their servers are busy or down?? It happens with any Internet company, not to mention accounts being hacked, worms, virii and other problems attacking their servers? Are they redundant enough? No one can really tell.

I don't ever recall having my phone service down. But I know lots of times when I couldn't get to a website, for any of the above reasons.
 
Thanks everyone, every little bit of explaination helps.

Mike, does Vonage have more cutting edge technology re how internet phones can be integrated into regular phone lines than other providers? The system you and James describe sound quite different.

Rebecca
 
Vonage gives you a box that provides a dial tone as you have now. The cable company solution here (COX) comes out to the house/business and mounts their box outside - where the service enters the building. (or in the phone room, if you have one)

The Cox cable company solution isn't effected by viri or bandwidth issues, because it uses a dedicated channel of its own that runs at a different frequency than analog cable/digital cable/on demand/cable internet/video services. Their solution generally has a higher "mission critical" priority than POTS (plain old telephone service) with a 1 hour response time. (regular phone service repair is often within 24+ hours) We have other businesses in the plaza here using it, with a total of more than 30 lines. It is very much modelled after regular phone service, with the same offerings.

Vonage shares your internet bandwidth, but is pretty darned reliable too. I rate it acceptable for home use, but probably wouldn't use it for business. They provide a web page where you can control the line, including re-routing the calls to a cell phone or alternate number. You can even have it try several numbers to "find" you, or go to voicemail. Vonage has more "toys" (features), and lower rates. They'll also let you have a foreign exchange in an other state or calling area for $5 more per month. (for example if you have family in Hawaii, you can have a local phone # in THEIR area that rings at your house when dialed - so they don't have to call long distance)

Hopefully I didn't just confuse the issue more


Mike

PS: If you have a house or commercial alarm, special considerations may have to be made with vonage. In that case, it should be wired so the alarm panel is the first device to receive the signal. Alarm panels will disconnect the rest of the phones when they need to dial out, and have to be wired accordingly.
 
I keep MCI for regular phone service (local, long distance) but had installed a VOIP secondary line (and number) for my international calls. Some odd interuptions if conversing for more than one hour at a time and less soun quality is to be expected though from VOIP.

[ 01-07-2006, 08:51 PM: Message edited by: Whynot ]
 
Ah, is that a common experience, less sound quality with VOiP?

This is why I hate cells - drives me nuts to have blank spots, fade in fade out. Though Rick says a cell docking station can solve this problem in the house (if I understood his and their description correctly).

Mike I'll call our local cable company and see if they offer such services - that would be the ideal solution.

Rebecca
 
Two years ago I set up a VoIP phone system for a company with offices in Denver, CO and Salt Lake City, UT. This phone system was and is used for the connection of the two offices.

VoIP phones send digital signals out whereas standard phones send out analog signals. Some VoIP service provider provide a box for each phone or the whole system that allow you to use your standard phones with a VoIP service. These boxes are digital-analog converters. They take the 1's znd 0's of a digital signal and convert them into the varying voltage signal of analog.

A true VoIP phone can be taken with you any where in the world. You plug it into a high-speed internet port and make your call. If someone dials your number, and your pluged-in, your phone will ring. IP phones can also contain a switch/hub where you can plug in a computer so it can also access to the internet.

The quality of VoIP calls is based on the quality of the network wiring, router, and bandwidth load on the line at the time of the call. You must use a high speed internet connection for good quality. But it is not perfect. Just like sometime when you make LD call on a std phone you can get a bad connection - lots of static, etc. The virus are out and about in force fling around the world they eat up so much band width that you VoIP cal can be degraded.

Calls between VoIP phones are free. What you pay for when you get one of these services is the connection from the internet back to the phone system where your call leaves the internet and touches a std phone on the other end. This is why VoIP phone calls are so cheap. When you call England for example, the call travels free across the internet to England then it meets a computer in England in the local calling area. When the call leaves this computer and meets the phone company's wire you pay a toll charge.

Today we are in a transitionary period where both VoIP phones and Std Phones must co-exist. In the future all phone will be VoIP and all calls will be free. This why the phone companies are all getting into the internet business and long distance gets cheaper and cheaper everyday. Today the internet does not have enough bandwidth to handle this so we waiting.
 
So I got my SunRocket kit in the mail the other day and at about 10PM I opened the box and started setting it up. I was up till 1AM getting it to work.

The instructions were very simple - if your setup looks like this, plug it in this way. Otherwise, plug it in this way instead. Well, I happen to have a static IP address and run a webserver, so if it hadn't been for other users on the internet posting their gripes about the product I never would have gotten it to work at all. I've called their tech support twice and both times I waited about 25 minutes on hold before getting to talk to a rep. Lovely.

The last time I called it was because, unbeknownce to me, they automatically updated the software that runs on their "gizmo" (the device you plug your phone into) and changed my network settings, so all of a sudden my webserver popped off the internet. Nice. They fixed it by sending out another "update" to my box, but it sure leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

As Mark said, these VOIP services are still in their infancy. I've got 20 days left with this company, but I think I might try switching to a different service from a bigger, more established company (so I can get more professional crappy service I guess). :rolleyes:
 
In my previous job with TELUS (which I left last fall) I studied VOIP. I still stand that in todays environment I would not use it as my primary phone service. If your internet goes down you do not have phone, period. It is getting better, quickly. As stated above, we will see VOIP only service in the future. Bear in mind that North American infrastructure is fairly technically advanced compared to much of the rest of the world (not all of it, but much of it). What may work here may not work in another country. One phenomenon that seems to be affecting telco's revenues is cell phone technology.....but it is hard to get high speed thru that.
VOIP as a secondary line will work, as a primary line....well you just don't have a backup. Yes it works, but yes it has its problems. If you expect crystal clear speech, you, your destination, and every jump in between better be in A1 shape!

James
 
I've decided to return my phones.. if it wasn't for the fact that I run a webserver, it wouldn't be a big deal. But if I want good voice quality, I basically have to fully dedicate my DSL to the phone, and therefore I can't browse the web or serve pages while I'm on the phone.

And their throttling option blows chunks - I either partially cripple my connection for the phone ALL THE TIME (even when I'm not on a call), or when I'm using the phone it dedicates ALL of my bandwidth to the phone.

And if I don't throttle it, its drops a call as soon as I connect to the network (I remote desktop to home all the time, especially when I'm on the phone with my wife fixing a problem on her computer).

So no VOIP for me.

What I can't understand is why I'm still at the same download and upload speeds (784/128) after 7 years of having DSL. Sure I can get more, but I'd have to pay more. Lame... </rant>
 
It isn't that you need extreme bandwidth to provide VOIP, It is that Voip packets need to have absolute priority on the pipe, routers and everything in between the calls. In a bigger business setting it is common to provide a T1, which is only 1.54 Mhz. That consists of 24 - 64K channels and a bit of overhead. In the typical setup that means 23 voice quality channels and one data control channel...(Getting a little geeky for some framers I'm thinking!). Those channels can be used for voice or data. People who are aware of ISDN will probably recognize that is is 2 - 64K channels with a bit of overhead. The biggest difference between these setups and VOIP setups is that T1/T3 is dedicated to end to end communications. You don't (normally) share your channel with anyone else for the duration of the call.

I say normally because some of the discount telcos will actually take that 64K channel and split it down, 2 - 32k calls, 4 - 16K calls, etc...The less bandwidth the poorer the quality..It all has to do with sound sampling. The bigger the sample the better the reproduction. (Same idea works for MP3 ripping).

There is technology that will mark VOIP packets as priority, and put them to the front of the delivery queue. It really isn't economical yet for the small business / homowner setup. Big businesses sure, but it costs real $.

We are really sitting on the cusp of a major technology change for common telephone practice. The game is changing! The rules are changing! The phone company I work for is rolling out television over ADSL. I have seen it, it works...(if you aren't to far away from the office). It actually looks great! They have to push your bandwidth way up and so far it only is available for a maximum of 2 settop boxes (or 2 TV's) per DSL connection......15 years ago who would have thunk?

James

PS..are your eyes glazed over yet?
 
In the UK I use SKYPE - dual phone at work - allows VOIP and normal calls - same at home - works perfectly - with very good sound quality. If you have a smart mobile or PDA you can add SKYPE to that (must have windows mobile version 5) and link via WiFi - free calls from your mobile "if" you can find a hot spot - this works well at home where I have a wifi gateway. Problem with all these systems seems to be that you can only contact other system members for free - or pay the additional charge to get onto the normal phone system - this still seems to offer considerable savings.
 
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