VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

[shiny!]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

You'll have to make sure your Centurytel DSL line rate is decent say ~3 mbps and noone is going to be streaming videos while you talk. Check to see if someone in your area are getting good 3rd party voip (Obi, Vonage etc..) experience.

My CenturyLink DSL is 1.5 Mbs/896K. Most of the time I do actually get all that speed. Is that not fast enough?

Flowroute.com uses both the G.711 and G.729 codecs. G.729 is a compression codec that uses 60% less bandwidth. Do you think that would work OK?

It's only me here- nobody streaming videos or doing heavy bandwidth usage. I mainly surf the net and read, do email. I use a hosts file that blocks 99% of ads, so that saves bandwidth.

I might make 3-4 short calls a week, and receive that many at most. A friend calls me from Washington once a week and we yap for 30 minutes or so. The TIVO connects every day or two, but I can (hopefully) set it up to connect wirelessly through the computer. That's about it.

Was your Obi easy to configure?

[mfyahya]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

Thanks, mfyahya. I'm thinking about getting an unlocked Obihai SIP adapter and plugging it into my phone and router. That way I won't need to buy a special phone or install any software. Is there a special advantage to using a software PBX, assuming I could figure out how to set one up in Linux?

With a software PBX you can get tons of features, some useful (e.g. using skype or goog voice as channels, least cost routing, caller id lookup from multiple internet sources, multi conf calls) and many esoteric. The learning curve to set it up is somewhat steep, and probably not worth the effort unless you're interested in fiddling with this stuff. There are also ready made packages like this one http://incrediblepbx.com.
You can also set extensions for friends worldwide; apart from being free, you can use wideband codecs to get far superior voice quality than POTS. (usng proper headsets and not standard telephones)

Also, if your router allows it, you can set up Quality of Service (QoS) to prioritize your voip traffic and set netflix, youtube etc to bulk transfer settings.

[shiny!]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

With a software PBX you can get tons of features, some useful (e.g. using skype or goog voice as channels, least cost routing, caller id lookup from multiple internet sources, multi conf calls) and many esoteric. The learning curve to set it up is somewhat steep, and probably not worth the effort unless you're interested in fiddling with this stuff. There are also ready made packages like this one http://incrediblepbx.com.
You can also set extensions for friends worldwide; apart from being free, you can use wideband codecs to get far superior voice quality than POTS. (usng proper headsets and not standard telephones)

Also, if your router allows it, you can set up Quality of Service (QoS) to prioritize your voip traffic and set netflix, youtube etc to bulk transfer settings.

Thanks for explaining. It sounds very interesting, but probably overkill for my needs, given I use the phone so rarely. While I do use Linux, I'm not very technical. This is probably way over my head.

[doom&gloom]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

I would recommend a provider that uses standard voip protocols and doesn't lock you into using their device.
This would allow you for example to set up your smartphone to also make and receive calls over wifi with your voip line with an appropriate app (useful while travelling). Or even set up a software PBX if you're more adventurous.
There are many providers of varying quality. Two reliable ones I can recommend are axvoice and broadvoice

Note that you will lose your voip line during power failures since your modem and voip adapter run off the grid. There are also some issues around 911 calls. See this Wikipedia link . For phone hardware anything from Polycom is great quality.

When I was still running my business, I always maintained 'land lines' and did not go to VOIP for that reason. I figured better to pay a little more, but ensure if the net went down, my phone system was a backup, and if the phones went down my net was the backup. I will never forget when a switching station in the Chicago suburbs caught fire in the 80's and people in that region had NO phones for over 6 months! Businesses were resurting to using the old Motorola bricks as phone service.

Redundancy redundancy redundancy...

[raja]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

Have you looked in to Magic Jack ? I have never used it, but heard good things: http://www.magicjack.com/plus-v05/

I've had magicjack for about 3 years, and got a 2nd one for my daughter.
I get a lot of gapping . . . sound briefly cuts out. I don't know whether it's the cause of my ISP or the magicjack. It's tolerable . . . but sucks . . . kind of like cell phones.

I hate cell phones. I don't own one, but when cell-phone users call me, half the time I can't understand what they are saying. Cell phones may be an advancement in convenience, but they are a definite downgrade in quality of life.

[shiny!]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

I've had magicjack for about 3 years, and got a 2nd one for my daughter.
I get a lot of gapping . . . sound briefly cuts out. I don't know whether it's the cause of my ISP or the magicjack. It's tolerable . . . but sucks . . . kind of like cell phones.

I hate cell phones. I don't own one, but when cell-phone users call me, half the time I can't understand what they are saying. Cell phones may be an advancement in convenience, but they are a definite downgrade in quality of life.

You don't own a cell phone either? I thought I was the last human on earth to not have one.

Going to get one, though, just to have for an emergency. Finally found a company that doesn't charge an arm and a leg for a pre-paid phone that will seldom if ever be used. Ting.com

[shiny!]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

OK. Thanks to everybody's input I now know that VOIP works. Here's what I'm gonna do:

Get a wireless connector for the TIVO, set it up and make sure it works. Then get:

Obi202 VOIP Phone Adapter with Router

paired with a VOIP plan from Vitelity.com and/or Flowroute.com

The Obi gets great reviews on Newegg and Amazon. It's unlocked, so I can use it with just about any provider.

Both Vitelity and Flowroute get good reviews for call quality, tech support, and customer service. They're cheap, they don't sell customer data, and don't require long-term contracts. It should cost less than $8.00/month, tops.

If it works out, I'll port my phone number over and drop CenturyLink phone service.

For another $6.00/mth I can also have a cellphone from ting.com to use in case of emergency. It was someone here at iTulip who recommended Ting. Wish I remembered who it was so I could thank him.

Thanks again. You guys are awesome!

[Fiat Currency]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

For another $6.00/mth I can also have a cellphone from ting.com to use in case of emergency.

Just in case you didn't know ... all cellphones are capable of making 911 calls without a service plan. Depending on how you define an "emergency" you can get any old used cell phone for free (or $20) and it will call 911. Telcos don't tell you this, as the "glovebox" customer segment would disappear overnight.

[shiny!]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

Just in case you didn't know ... all cellphones are capable of making 911 calls without a service plan. Depending on how you define an "emergency" you can get any old used cell phone for free (or $20) and it will call 911. Telcos don't tell you this, as the "glovebox" customer segment would disappear overnight.

That's good to know, but the emergency most likely to happen would be the car breaking down somewhere, with me needing to call for a tow and a ride. Will 911 handle that?

[Fiat Currency]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

That's good to know, but the emergency most likely to happen would be the car breaking down somewhere, with me needing to call for a tow and a ride. Will 911 handle that?

I'm going to guess no - but I can't speak for the USA rules on that. In Canada a lot of 911 operators will connect you out of kindness (just say I only have 911 emergency calling on my phone) and to get you out of their call queue. However, they are not obligated to do so. I occasionally watch Jay Leno and he has a 911 call segment - I am often flabbergasted and amused at what people do call 911 for - so you could do worse. Based on what you've said - you probably are in the classic "glovebox" segment characterized by low cost monthly plans and minimal, if not zero, minute usage most months.

Good luck with your choices. VoIP has come a long way since I first did product creation with it. I have no doubt your choices will serve you well.

[shiny!]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

I'm going to guess no - but I can't speak for the USA rules on that. In Canada a lot of 911 operators will connect you out of kindness (just say I only have 911 emergency calling on my phone) and to get you out of their call queue. However, they are not obligated to do so. I occasionally watch Jay Leno and he has a 911 call segment - I am often flabbergasted and amused at what people do call 911 for - so you could do worse. Based on what you've said - you probably are in the classic "glovebox" segment characterized by low cost monthly plans and minimal, if not zero, minute usage most months.

Good luck with your choices. VoIP has come a long way since I first did product creation with it. I have no doubt your choices will serve you well.

Thanks. The nice thing about Ting is that an activated phone is only $6 per month. Small amounts of calls, texts or data only cost $3 additional.

[javaljav]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

My CenturyLink DSL is 1.5 Mbs/896K. Most of the time I do actually get all that speed. Is that not fast enough?

...

Was your Obi easy to configure?

Speed is not the only issue, Packet loss, Jitter, Round Trip Time all matters to different degrees. The codec rate is just a guideline, so I would still be unsure how the experience is going to be. Obi is just $40 - worth trying before cutting the current line.

Obi is quite easy to configure and they have a good support forum on the web. I have 2 google voice lines configured on it.

[shiny!]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

Thanks, javaljav!

[evangellydonut]

Re: VOIP: Yea or Nea? Your advice requested...

From an engineering perspective, Skype is not the same as VOIP... dedicated VOIP service has a quality-of-service guarantee on its own protocol which doesn't happen with Skype, which uses a standard network protocol like UDP over IP... QoS is not new, but only recently became big, and requires support at all the network backbones, which is probably why VoIP wasn't that great initially... a more reasonable comparison to VoIP is your cell phone in good reception environment...