I’m somewhat interested in getting VOIP; however, since I haven’t actually seen one connected (working), I’m having a bit of trouble making up my mind.
From what I could gather, I would be sent a device by the company that would be plugged into the router. Would the other end (if there is one) be plugged into the landline at all?
Also, where would the VOIP phone receiver be placed? Next to the router? Or could it be placed anywhere?
How many phones can I have running with VOIP? Ideally, we like to have two phones at our house. One upstairs, and the other downstairs.
Currently, my wireless router is sitting downstairs where the cable tv is hooked up. I wouldn’t mind having one phone set there, but I’d definitely like to have the other phone set upstairs.
Furthermore, although I’m on cable internet right now, but I’ll be switching back to DSL soon. I would then have two comptuer running on DSL. By adding VOIP, would it decrease the DSL speed/quality that I get on the two computers?
Oh… if possible, could I have a diagram of VOIP setup at home, so that I could understand it better.
In addition, VOIP seems very affordable at the moment in North America, is there any chance of prices going up in the near future (for some odd reason, although this doesn’t happen often)?
Basically the telephone adapter (TA) is where the phone connects, and you can use a splitter to run lines all over the house. If you are not going to use the landline you can hook the TA directly into one of the phone jacks and then all the jacks in the house come alive.
Well, I actually ordered Vonage on a test basis and never returned it. It helps when I'm travelling, I just pack it in my back, and as long as I have broadband (there's always an open wifi or something wherever i go ;)) I can make free phone calls, including international travel. :)
I started using Vonage two days ago and overall, I like it a lot. In terms of the product itself, their $40 premium unlimited plan is much cheaper than anything else in the market for the same range of features. I love the realtime online dashboard and voicemail access.
In terms of service quality, in the shorter conversations over the phone, there were no problems at all. In two other relatively longer calls I made, there was about a 5-second time interval when the receiver complained they didn't hear anything I had said in that interval... they heard the start of a statement and then the end and nothing in between.
Tofi... have you faced any such problems? Even though this isn't a significant concern, it was annoying to have to repeat what I had said. I'm gonna try and diagnose where the packet loss is occuring.
^^ Actually I have experienced that myself. For me there are a few variables. I have a cordless (2.4 ghz) on that line. And at all times i have 2 laptops on, both with wifi enabled. Then there is another phone, again 2.4 ghz which may/may not be getting used. I have not been able to recreate this issue. It could also be the internet services dying for a few seconds and the TA may have a low timeout threshold.
But as always home trgedies are never as critical as work stuff so it never got resolved. Anyhow if i find something I'll keep you posted.
hehe... I seem to have a similar config as yours... voice unit's connected to a wireless router and I have two cordless phones hooked onto it as well. I was just thinking about running a pingplotter session over a few days to observe more - but then again, it'll only get done when and if I have the time for it. For now I'll live with it.
One friend of mine who has Vonage was telling me that he has to reboot the system every 2-3 days, cz it "just hangs up". Sounds freaky. Do you guys notice any such issues?
nothing like that yet... no call hanging, choppy calls or drops.
I also notice no delays in my internet access speeds even though its going over two network segments.
Like I said, overall, I'm pretty satisfied with it but then again it's only been three days.
I also like the fact that I now have network based logical and physical separation from the public network to add to the firewall based protection.
