Question: What do you think about VoIP service?

I have U-verse phone service and have no complaints. I really can't tell a difference from the traditional land line that I used to have.

Check out Ooma. I have had it for 3 years and wouldn't trade it. http://www.ooma.com

When I bought it I paid for the Ooma box and have not paid a dime since. I think now you have to pay monthly fees of some kind that is about $5/mo.

I have several people that I talk to on a regular basis that use Vonage, Skype, and/or MagicJack for regular phone service as an alternative to land-line service. As far as I know they're all pleased with it and I've never really noticed any major issues when speaking with them on the phone. I've really only used Vonage enough personally to have an opinion on the reliability and call quality. Right now I've got Comcast's phone service but I'm not paying for it; my company foots the bill for my phone and internet. If I felt the need to have an additional, land-line alternative phone line and were to pay for it myself then I would use Vonage without hesitation.

I think what services a Vo and an IP perform on each other behind closed doors is their own business. Who am I to judge?

I've been with Vonage since 2004, their service has improved greatly over the years and is 100% dependent on your Bandwidth to your home

I've used it on DSL (works OK) and multiple different cable providers (mostly great). As long as you have enough bandwidth it works great.

Pros
Cheap
Reliable (my Vonage service hasn't gone down in years, though my internet has which of course causes it to go out)
Portable - I have two houses and carry my vonage box back and forth to both, I use it as my home office line and it's great that it is so easy to take my home office with me. And I get to be "in my office" wherever I am
feature packed everything you get from all the traditional phone players and a lot of other cool stuff. Voicemails stored in the cloud. Virtual numbers - I lived in AL for a time and covered AL,TN, GA in a Sales job I had "local" numbers in every state which allowed my customers to assume I was in fact "local". Auto forwarding/co ringing cell phone - favorite feature I have this on by default. Call my office and both my phones ring so I can decide how I want to answer or if I am out of the office just on my cell


Cons
Only one I can think of is that I occasionally have trouble with Conference calls. Sometimes vonage just doesn't play well with some of the touch tone systems (to enter pass codes and such) I can usually work through it. Also if I am leading a WebEx while a big email attachment is coming in and my kids are streaming youtube/netflix you can get what's known as "Darth Vader Voice" for a few minutes as the bandwidth gets saturated. I switched to a QoS Router and have given all priority to Vonage to solve this issue

Jon said:

I've been with Vonage since 2004, their service has improved greatly over the years and is 100% dependent on your Bandwidth to your home

I've used it on DSL (works OK) and multiple different cable providers (mostly great). As long as you have enough bandwidth it works great.

Pros
Cheap
Reliable (my Vonage service hasn't gone down in years, though my internet has which of course causes it to go out)
Portable - I have two houses and carry my vonage box back and forth to both, I use it as my home office line and it's great that it is so easy to take my home office with me. And I get to be "in my office" wherever I am
feature packed everything you get from all the traditional phone players and a lot of other cool stuff. Voicemails stored in the cloud. Virtual numbers - I lived in AL for a time and covered AL,TN, GA in a Sales job I had "local" numbers in every state which allowed my customers to assume I was in fact "local". Auto forwarding/co ringing cell phone - favorite feature I have this on by default. Call my office and both my phones ring so I can decide how I want to answer or if I am out of the office just on my cell


Cons
Only one I can think of is that I occasionally have trouble with Conference calls. Sometimes vonage just doesn't play well with some of the touch tone systems (to enter pass codes and such) I can usually work through it. Also if I am leading a WebEx while a big email attachment is coming in and my kids are streaming youtube/netflix you can get what's known as "Darth Vader Voice" for a few minutes as the bandwidth gets saturated. I switched to a QoS Router and have given all priority to Vonage to solve this issue

Click to expand...

That's probably the most important thing to remember when using VoIP services. You really need something to control your bandwidth usage to ensure that your VoIP has enough to work no matter what else is going on in the network.

You can buy a good router with QoS (Quality of Service) functionality to take care of that. However, if you're the least bit technically inclined and have or can cheaply get an older but running PC with two or three NICs (Network Cards), a better option is to set up an Untangle Server. The basic package/software/OS is free, although they do have some optional subscription services, and it will give you excellent QoS as well as extra Virus and Mal-Ware protection for your whole network. It also has several other features that many people could and/or should use: creating a separate, segregated wifi network for guests; allowing simple yet secure VPN access to your home computers via the internet; protocol control (limiting or prohibiting certain types of network activity, such as file-sharing or instant messaging, for example); web-content filtering (no porn or gambling sites, for example); ad-blocking; and a few other things. You can also set it to bypass traffic for certain devices like DVRs and game consoles that often don't like to play nice with SOHO routers. I know I sound like a salesman here but this is one of those products that I recommend whenever I get the chance; it's that good.

uafan4life said:

That's probably the most important thing to remember when using VoIP services. You really need something to control your bandwidth usage to ensure that your VoIP has enough to work no matter what else is going on in the network.

Click to expand...

Good point! I always use this diagram to make sure I am utilizing the bandwidth adequately:

uafan4life said:

That's probably the most important thing to remember when using VoIP services. You really need something to control your bandwidth usage to ensure that your VoIP has enough to work no matter what else is going on in the network.

You can buy a good router with QoS (Quality of Service) functionality to take care of that. However, if you're the least bit technically inclined and have or can cheaply get an older but running PC with two or three NICs (Network Cards), a better option is to set up an Untangle Server. The basic package/software/OS is free, although they do have some optional subscription services, and it will give you excellent QoS as well as extra Virus and Mal-Ware protection for your whole network. It also has several other features that many people could and/or should use: creating a separate, segregated wifi network for guests; allowing simple yet secure VPN access to your home computers via the internet; protocol control (limiting or prohibiting certain types of network activity, such as file-sharing or instant messaging, for example); web-content filtering (no porn or gambling sites, for example); ad-blocking; and a few other things. You can also set it to bypass traffic for certain devices like DVRs and game consoles that often don't like to play nice with SOHO routers. I know I sound like a salesman here but this is one of those products that I recommend whenever I get the chance; it's that good.

Click to expand...

can you run Untangle in a VM?

rizolltizide said:

I think what services a Vo and an IP perform on each other behind closed doors is their own business. Who am I to judge?

Click to expand...

Wow......I can't believe this has gone ignored. Well, this just shows that you are a first class person.

rizolltizide said:

I think what services a Vo and an IP perform on each other behind closed doors is their own business. Who am I to judge?

Click to expand...

So...are saying you don't like our President?:cool2:

We have VoIP bundled w/ our cable and internet services, and it works just fine, and saved us $75/ a month to AT&T.

If your house has an alarm system, they may have to do a little work getting everything working properly, but if tell them what brand of alarm you have, they can tell you up front whether or not they can make it work.

Only thing i could add is 911 service is mapped to your device, so you need to keep that in mind if you port your equipment.

Jon said:

can you run Untangle in a VM?

Click to expand...

You can and I have before. I prefer having it's own box, though, since if for any reason the VM box is down your entire internet connection is down. It's a linux system, debian iirc. You just want to make sure that your hardware and hardware emulation are compatible with the base kernel that's used in the current version and that you have good NICs. I only recommend using NICs with Intel chipsets. When running as a VM, you'll want dedicated NICs for Untangle. They're hard to find, but if you find any of the old Dual 10/100 Intel NICs they work great. (Because of the OSI layers it attaches to you can have random network issues with some chipsets, hence the Intel-only recommendation to be sure to avoid issues.) You don't need gigabit since you're pretty much just dealing with traffic to and from the internet which is much slower than 100Mbit. You have to have at least two NICs but, if you have room in the system, more NICs equals more flexibility.

It'll run on pretty much anything, though, especially for smaller business or home networks. I've built a couple, one for my parents and one for some friends of our who have a B&B, out of mini-itx Atom systems and they work great. They, of course, didn't need many LAN connections. I have eight NICs in mine (seven in use) but I basically run three web-servers. If you have two NICs it'll set up an "External" and an "Internal" connection. If you have a third NIC then it gets automatically set as "DMZ". At four or more it begins using the typical linux designations of "eth3", "eth4", etc. The External is for the internet connection and Internal is typically for your most protected LAN. DMZ is always recommended to be used as a DMZ. If you need two separate LANs but don't want a DMZ then you'll want four NICs and you'll just not use the DMZ connection.

I mentioned that I have eight NICs in my Untangle. That gives me up to seven internal LAN connections but I'm only currently using six of them. I'm running it on an old Dell PowerEdge 2850 with dual integrated Intel NICs and three of those Dual 10/100 Intel NICs I mentioned. On my server I have the connections set up like this: External is for Internet (of course), the Internal is for my primary home LAN, the DMZ is for my segregated "guest" wifi connection, eth3 is for my segregated and protected "bench" LAN for working on computers and not having to worry about them spreading little nasties to any of my other systems, eth4 is linked to a public static IP for my personal Exchange server, eth5 is linked to a public static IP for my LAMP server, eth6 is linked to a public static IP for my VM/Development "test" server, and eth7 is currently unused. I've got a business class internet connection which gives me 8 public static IPs and lots of bandwidth. I still do a little web/email hosting, web design, and consulting on the side in addition to my software development work which is why I "need" all that equipment. Of course, I could probably get away with a lot less but I'm a geek and I like my toys. :biggrin2:

What do I think about a thread that is titled in code that I don't understand due to my lack of opportunity of education? Not a lot and frankly I don't appreciate being spoken too like that!!!!