So I decided to go back to VOIP after looking at our phone bills again. (Currently ~$42/month, long distance extra, obviously).
I decided after my poor experience with Vonage (and their PISS POOR Indian tech service), I'd go with AT&T's Callvantage service. $20/month + 4cents/minute long distance.
The stuff arrived a few days ago, and today I decided I'd make it all go. I put the voice adapter behind the firewall, made it the DMZ host to speed network traffic to it, and plugged in a phone line. Pick up the phone, bingo - dialtone. Now, to make it go throughtout my entire house.
I check my directions and it says I need to unplug the phone line from Ma Bell. I walk outside, there's the box. No, there's two boxes. Hmmm. Well, I open both, and disconnect all three phone lines. (3 phone lines? wtf?) I then walk back inside, check a phone that was plugged into Ma Bell. It's dead. Perfect.
I walk upstairs, take the VOIP line, and plug it into the wall. I then check phones plugged into two other phone receptacles. Nothing. I plug the VOIP line back into a phone. Dial tone. Plug it back into the wall. Nothing.
Turns out, the room with the VOIP has it's own physical phone line (thus the 3rd phone line running into the house). So I have to splice the VOIP phone line into the first physical line (once I find it) so that the whole house can have VOIP.
I go to Radio Shack, buy a faceplate and 50' of 4-wire phone wire (what my house uses). I then go up to the un-finished attic (95 degrees outside, hotter inside). Sweat. Sweat. Sweat. Finally I find other cables in the house, and run the phone wire down to them.
Long story short, I drilled a hole, installed a new faceplate, connected some wires, spliced some others and got VOIP everywhere. Finally. a 30 minute installed turned into a 4 hour project.
Call quality is great, wife-approved even. Having in the whole house with E911 service is great, happiness is here.
VOIP Part 2
I've been using Vonage for about 3 months now. Just have it running to my office, so hasn't been fully tested. But so far, there's only been one issue for me. When I call my insurance agent's office, I hear myself echo back to me. They don't hear it. Haven't had that problem with anyone else that I've called. Wacky wierd. I'm wondering if they have some VOIP thing running too that's wackin' mine out. Dunno. Don't call them enough to worry about it. I've made many many long distance and local calls on it so far and it's been fine. Biggest hang up was the VERY unreliable service I was getting from my ISP. For the first two months of testing, every day at 11:00am, my service would go out. Would stay out for 1 to 5 hours each day. Had nothing to do with Vonage, but, it was still a pain. Caused me to not dump my land lines. The ISP stuff seems to be cleared up though, so, I've started the number transfer. And from there, I'll dump it through the rest of the house. I will end up with two voice lines and one fax when all is said and done. I didn't do all the DMZ stuff. I just put them behind my Linux firewall. Didn't have to forward ports or anything. I don't have DHCP running, so I had to manually configure them with IP addresses and stuff. They make that easy though. Just plug a phone in and program it with the keypad on the phone. Manual shows you how. So, that's where I'm at with my VOIP at home experience.
Edited By Cakedaddy on 1122165321
Edited By Cakedaddy on 1122165321
I got Time Warner's VOIP plan a couple weeks ago, and dumped the POTS line completely.
$40/month, free long distance, free caller id/call waiting/caller id block/etc.
TW technician did all the installing for free, including installing a new double phone jack near my cable modem, which they also upgraded.
No problems so far.
$40/month, free long distance, free caller id/call waiting/caller id block/etc.
TW technician did all the installing for free, including installing a new double phone jack near my cable modem, which they also upgraded.
No problems so far.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
Yeah, the telcos' plan is to fire back with FTTH (fiber to the home) so they can provide tv and super high-speed Internet (30+mpbs with 2+mpbs upstream).And oh yeah... when I asked, the tech said that about 6k people in this area have dumped POTS for TW VOIP.
Does not bode well for local phone companies. All of the wires to maintain, and a lot fewer customers paying for it.
Too bad it will all go wireless eventually.
It's not me, it's someone else.
We had that echoy thing a LOT, which is why we dropped Vonage. I dunno if ATT uses a better adapter, or if our Internet connection has just improved, but so far so good.But so far, there's only been one issue for me. When I call my insurance agent's office, I hear myself echo back to me. They don't hear it. Haven't had that problem with anyone else that I've called. Wacky wierd. I'm wondering if they have some VOIP thing running too that's wackin' mine out.
...
I didn't do all the DMZ stuff. I just put them behind my Linux firewall. Didn't have to forward ports or anything. I don't have DHCP running, so I had to manually configure them with IP addresses and stuff. They make that easy though. Just plug a phone in and program it with the keypad on the phone. Manual shows you how. So, that's where I'm at with my VOIP at home experience.
As for the DMZ stuff, I didn't put my Vonage one in the DMZ, so it's possible that contributed to the echo. I relied purely on the port forwarding (which the AT&T did automatically as well), but decided to go DMZ since I've heard it's more reliable.
It's not me, it's someone else.
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mbilderback
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TheCatt wrote:Yeah, the telcos' plan is to fire back with FTTH (fiber to the home) so they can provide tv and super high-speed Internet (30+mpbs with 2+mpbs upstream).
Today I cancelled my cable (crappy TVMax was my only choice, bleagh) and went with ATT Uverse TV & DSL service. The install is 4/18, but I'm told it's FTTH, and I was able to cancel my home phone in the process.
I'm thinking VOIP (cell phone is more than I want to pay, I'm trying to save money here not pay more), and was wondering how you like the ATT Callvantage after a year and a half? And Cake, has Vonage improved?
I've got a real phone I wouldn't mind using, but it'd be cool if I could also choose to run an ap on my computer to use my VOIP, too, so I can use my Bluetooth headset (which I have a USB dongle for so I can use it as a computer headset). Any idea if either of your services does something like that?
Edited By TPRJones on 1176421914
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
I still like AT&T Callvantage. At $25/month (nationwide long distance included), it's great.
The only thing I don't like is that every time the power goes out, they make you listen to a recorded message and press 1 to confirm your street address (for 911).
Don't know if it does anything computery, since I'm not interested in that.
The only thing I don't like is that every time the power goes out, they make you listen to a recorded message and press 1 to confirm your street address (for 911).
Don't know if it does anything computery, since I'm not interested in that.
It's not me, it's someone else.
Same as I have now for DSL, 'cause I'm not signing up for anything extra (I think 1.5M/1M). But the high end package is nice and fast (6M/1M), and they'll be pushing 400 channels of TV through the fiber at me, so the fat pipe potential is there if you pay for it.
I answered my question above, at least about Vonage. All Vonage packages include the option to use a software progam on your computer to make calls, and it looks like it'll work with my Bluetooth headset. Coolio. As long as Cake doesn't tell me that Vonage has started to suck since he signed up I think it'll be a good way to go. At least the price is right ($14.99 is nice and cheap).
Oh, the ATT Uverse TV thing comes with a free DVR that can handle up to four shows at once. As long as the recording software is as cool and flexible as my TiVo, its going to rock. I just hope it does actor/director/keyword wishlists, I do a lot with those.
I answered my question above, at least about Vonage. All Vonage packages include the option to use a software progam on your computer to make calls, and it looks like it'll work with my Bluetooth headset. Coolio. As long as Cake doesn't tell me that Vonage has started to suck since he signed up I think it'll be a good way to go. At least the price is right ($14.99 is nice and cheap).
Oh, the ATT Uverse TV thing comes with a free DVR that can handle up to four shows at once. As long as the recording software is as cool and flexible as my TiVo, its going to rock. I just hope it does actor/director/keyword wishlists, I do a lot with those.
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
Uh oh ... is that likely?
EDIT: Holy crap ... okay, thanks for the heads up there. That sounds like a mess. Maybe cheaper isn't better.
Edited By TPRJones on 1176432923
EDIT: Holy crap ... okay, thanks for the heads up there. That sounds like a mess. Maybe cheaper isn't better.
Edited By TPRJones on 1176432923
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
Vonage has been great for me. The early issues were 100% with my ISP, not with vonage. Happy customer here. Along with the PC phone, they have a wireless phone. It will connect to your wireless Network and works anywhere in your house. Big deal for most people cause cordless phones have been around for a long time! Cool thing is, you can take it to any hot spot anywhere, and it will connect. You can then make and receive phone calls as if you were at home. So, if you travel alot, you can take your number with you on the road. I think that's REALLY cool. But I have no need for it right now.
Currently, the biggest issue I have is faxing. There are times when I've had to retry a fax up to 5 times before it would go. 85% of the time, it goes on the first try. 13% on the second or third. Don't know if that's vonage, or just a faxing thing. I think it's vonage though.
Lastly, make sure you get a UPS to keep your Network up. Otherwise, you have no phone when the power goes out.
Don't have time to read all of the above posts, so if you need more info, I'll post it later. Hope this helps.
Currently, the biggest issue I have is faxing. There are times when I've had to retry a fax up to 5 times before it would go. 85% of the time, it goes on the first try. 13% on the second or third. Don't know if that's vonage, or just a faxing thing. I think it's vonage though.
Lastly, make sure you get a UPS to keep your Network up. Otherwise, you have no phone when the power goes out.
Don't have time to read all of the above posts, so if you need more info, I'll post it later. Hope this helps.