Voice Over IP

[Meester Turner]

We've got an Avaya phone system in our office, and we're looking at giving someone at home VoIP access on it - She's got a Virgin 2Mb broadband package. She'll be getting an actual hardware phone, not using a PC-based software phone.

Has anyone got any experience of how well (or not!) this would work?

Cheers Guys!

[rossco555]

I think you/she may well have a problem with choppy sound on the upbound link on 2 Meg. I tried running Draytel, admittedly on a high bandwidth codec, and it just would'nt work without upgrading a tier.

Rossco555

[broadbandbug]

I would think that providing she is doing nothing else when on the phone it may well work Ok.. But if she is sending email etc at the same time it will go choppy.

We have a Sipgate VOIP Service running on our ADSL 1.5Mb/s Connection and that works fine.. But we do have 430Kb/s Upstream whereas VM 2Mb/s only has 256Kb/s

[kpanchev]

Depending on what protocols and codecs she'll be using, the 2mbit/200kbit connection does not sound like a reasonable solution. For example SIP with ulaw will need approx 100 kbits up/down stream, other codecs might have even higher bandwidth requirements. And if she has a PC or two connected to the internet, the upload bandwidth will be gone.

A way of solving this is using ToS/QoS, if her router and your system supports it.

[m419]

I tried out Voip and thought it was complete waste of time, your experiences may vary.

The sound quality was poor and sometimes when you hear the dial tone, and you press digits, it didnt respond. And I also noticed an 0845 number on the bill which was called lasting 25 minutes and when I called to see what number it was,it sounded like a dial up internet access line. And no vonage didnt refund me.

So I wouldn't just use it just yet,I will give it quite some time to improve before i use it again.

[broadbandbug]

Originally Posted by m419

I tried out Voip and thought it was complete waste of time, your experiences may vary.

The sound quality was poor and sometimes when you hear the dial tone, and you press digits, it didnt respond. And I also noticed an 0845 number on the bill which was called lasting 25 minutes and when I called to see what number it was,it sounded like a dial up internet access line. And no vonage didnt refund me.

So I wouldn't just use it just yet,I will give it quite some time to improve before i use it again.

I don't agree.. Have been using Sipgate VoIP for a few years now.. And it is very reliable and decent quality.

[altis]

I use a Linksys WIP300 wireless IP phone running G.711 over a 54mbps WiFi link to a router and thence via VPN over a VM 2mbps connection, through the London Teleport, out onto ANOther backbone and eventually into the office on an ADSL line, through another VPN router and into a Linux box running Asterisk.

It works fine!

[Graham M]

No reason why it shouldn't work fine, it's all about balancing line-quality and available bandwidth