Thread: VOIP

Yes, the good old telephone over the internet thing. I recently changed over to VOIP for my home phone and can now make calls (local, national, and some international) for nothing (well, there's a $10 a month service fee). Calls to cell phones are still charged, but that's nothing new I guess.

The uptake of VOIP in Australia has been limited. A lot of people don't really know it exists, and those that do have to face Australia's weird ISP fixation on capping data use. On top of that, until fairly recently decent internet service has been limited to cities. For example, despite living only 80kms from Brisbane (the Capital city of Queensland) I can still only get ADSL1 (though I've jiggered it so I can get around 16Mbps download speeds now).

Anyway, I'm interested to know whether many of the non-Australians (and Aussies for that matter) on the forum use VOIP? And what kind of hardware/internet do you have? For example, I've got a 16Mbps download/ 1Mbps upload connection with 100Gig a month data limit and I use an AVM Fritz!box 7390 modem/router/dect/voip all in one thingy.

James.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

For example, despite living only 80kms from Brisbane (the Capital city of Queensland) I can still only get ADSL1 (though I've jiggered it so I can get around 16Mbps download speeds now).

Not on Voip but I wanna know how you did that. I'm on ADSL2 with only 5Mbps & I'm only 5kms from the exchange.

Hi Jimbo, I started using VOIP about 8 years ago, I am with vonage and your Internet speed is more than enough. I think you only need around 100kbs :

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r285...eds-for-Vonage
I live in Canada and with current plan can call 60 countries for free... Or for what I pay monthly, but it is a flat fee, no matter who I call and how long the conversation is. Hope this helps.

Originally Posted by onimaru55

Not on Voip but I wanna know how you did that. I'm on ADSL2 with only 5Mbps & I'm only 5kms from the exchange.

I had a chat with my (non Telstra) ISP one day. The exchange here is ADSL2+ enabled but the company that owns the exchange (whose name rhymes with belstra) does not let their competitors (who rent the exchange off them) utilise that capability. But they can do some jiggery-pokery with "compression algorithms" so that their customers can in fact get ADSL2 line speeds. In my case it worked spectacularly well ,and overnight my internet speed increased around 11-fold.

I'd suggest having a word with whoever your ISP is Oz. I know there are physical limits on speed because of attenuation and other technical things to do with the lines, but perhaps they can do something.

James.

Well, in this part of the country I'm lucky I'm not using tin cans to communicate with. For years I had the only ASDL Service available which was 1.3/550K. Now I have a roaring 6MPBS/8500K. I'm using Ooma VOIP and when I first got it I still had the old service and it just didn't work it was too slow. With my current service outgoing is fine but incoming still has on and off issues with dropped calls or just bad connections. From what I can see you need 10MPBS/1MPBS for a really reliable connection. My only other alternative is Comcast and a cable modem which I'm not about to do.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Well, in this part of the country I'm lucky I'm not using tin cans to communicate with.

Ah yes, here we call those tin cans the Abbott Internet.

I use VOIP occasionally.

The area i live is covered with somewhat ok 4G network. Usually it works well (just checked: 5 Mbps upload/48 Mbps download). Limitless data.
14.95€/month.
However, usually in the summer when there's lot of folks around (tourists, summer residents etc) speeds get really slow or stuck sometimes.

We had voip at home for about 7 or 8 years after canceling our regular land-line.
Seeing as we all just use our cell-phones these days, I cancelled our subscription 6 months ago.

It did work fine though, no complaints there.
Cheap too.

Our isp delivers our internet access via our cable-tv system.
Works a charm, and the speed is awesome.
Right now we are on 25Mbps up and 110 Mbps down.
To someone who started out with a 3.4kbps USRobotics modem, that is screaming fast

Before I got fibre to the home (which is faster than a well honed razor through a 14 year old's peach fuzz), I had adsl2. I had 2 phone lines installed which met at a linux box connected to wifi router. One plan was only 10 gig a month and the other was unlimited. The linux box directed traffic to the unlimited plan for torrents etc, but used both for web browsing, skype etc, effectively giving me twice the speed when needed. One could use this technology if required but instead pair 3 or more phone lines and internet plans, dep on budget. Personally I couldn't justify paying for more than 2 lines & plans. Overall cost me about 130 per month.

Overall its actually cheaper now I only have the single fibre connection through telstra (about $90 per month) but limited to 200gig, which is more than enough for me. One of the perks of being so close to the city. I get 100MBs down limited by telstra, speed test shows 90MBs down and 6Mbs up. When downloading a well shared torrent I see actual rates of up to 8MBs down. 1 gig download can come down in only a few minutes.

Good ol' VoIP. Yep, I got it. I also troubleshoot and build DID's for a living amongst many, many other things. S, here are some basics without going into detail and hijacking the thread.

A typical terrestrial link using VoIP will use a codec of G711 by default which uses a lot of bandwidth as it's capable of doing VVoIP (Video Voice over IP) and is also required for faxes. I have tested this codec with sustained speeds of 1MBps (Down and Up). To help conserve bandwidth (or for people who use satellite internet / VoIP) we typically use G729a codec that will sustain 25kbps down and up for a call. The calls are perfectly fine. These are preferred codecs in the US so other countries may vary but the codecs will work the same. If you play with codecs just remember if anything fails just revert it back. G711 is pretty much wide open... take as much as you need my VoIP friend and the others will cap it for bandwidth or other purposes. You can also call your provider and ask what codecs they support and go from there.

Latency, if your internet is getting latency at or above 700ms your call will go to hell. There is no Purgatory. Just Hell or Heaven.

Check your router. Quality of Service (QoS). Look to see what port your VoIP is using. Log into your router and if applicable, set your QoS for that port for VoIP priority if not there should be an option for router wide Q0S that has QoS for the entire router. Most home routers like Netgear simply have a drop down for VoIP making it easy. Other people that use something like Cisco be sure to prioritize your UDP traffic on the router. Failure to prioritize the UDP (VoIP) traffic (packets) will make the VoIP calls fight tooth and nail for bandwidth. Think of it like this, you're about to meet a friend for lunch and need directions. As you are talking to your friend on the VoIP you start surfing the internet... and so is everyone else in the house including someone that might be streaming a TV show or movie. If there is not enough bandwidth the call will crackle; fade, delay, or just flat drop because it can't make up for dropped packets. By prioritizing (QoS) this will ensure they VoIP call takes the HIGHEST priority over ALL traffic and will kick everything else down until it's desired bandwidth is achieved. Check your router QoS. Routers do not auto detect VoIP calls.

We typically will not sell a link any smaller than 128k symmetrical that uses VoIP. If you desire fax over IP we push 512k symmetrical as the G711 codec comes into play. For everyone here that has listed bandwidth at or above 1MBps you should be fine.