November 3, 2008 - I have used several VOIP phone services, mainly to save money. When they work they are ok....less than perfect, but considering the savings I can deal with an occasional service outage. Problem I have is that service outages are too regular and too prolonged. Can anyone offer suggestions for a solid provider at a good price?
Responses:
I use Vonage for like 15 bucks a month and it always works good if your Internet connection is on. When it gets off it wont work of course and its kinda hard to get it back on, long time waiting to connect to internet again. Summary is that VOIP is still not perfect no matter which provider you use.
I have and still do use VoIP with many different VoIP providers. Researching and testing VoIP is what I do.
Overall, I have good results with almost all services I use.
From my experience (and generally speaking), most VoIP problems are not typically due to the VoIP providers themselves. But rather the VoIP equipment used, and problems with users local networks and configurations. Where most VoIP services fall short (way short) is in the customer service dept, not in the functionality of the VoIP service itself.
I have had periodic outages too. But, inevitably the problems are from my ISP and not the VoIP services themselves.
I have learned to configure my own VoIP ATA phone adapters and Softphones.
When I first started using my Linksys ATA's I had frequent VoIP drop-outs. Then, I learned how to do proper 'Port Forwarding" and "Port Triggering" on my local network Router. NAT-Routers is some of the biggest headaches VoIP services have to deal with. The job of a NAT-Router is to protect your network from the external world. They try to block everything outside your network. The trick of VoiP is to traverse NAT-Routers without the essential SIP ports being blocked that VoIP requires to reliably function.
Wireless networks can also affect your VoIP connections. There are various forms of RFI interference that effects Wireless routers, which in turn will affect your VoIP, if connected over a wireless link. And, if using a cordless phone to connect to the VoIP adapter, then there are the issues of cordless phone RFI issues too....
I guess the point I'm getting at is that VoIP providers (generally speaking) can't always be labeled as good or bad based on quality of VoIP service. There are just so many other factors that also effect quality of service of VoIP. One thing is for sure (other than equipment and network problems), if you don't have reliable ISP, you will never have reliable VoIP.
All that said, there is one major factor of a VoIP service that will directly impact your voice quality and reliability. Where are their proxy servers located? The farther a VoIP proxy server is from you, the greater the likelyhood of dropped packets, echo, and delays, and packet jitter. You can test your link quality by periodically "Pinging" your VoIP servers. The ping results should be consistent with very little "jitter" in ping times and no loss of packets. Ping results should never be more than 100ms delayed. On average, mine are in the 60 - 70 millisecond range.
For example if I ping my primary VoIP service provider, CallCentric (in USA) at their ping address: "ping.callcentric.com", from here in Canada, (using command line syntax: "ping ping.callcentric.com") then my ping response is only 62ms with only 1ms jitter and no packet loss. That is a good ping response for VoIP.
If I ping Les.net, another VoIP provider here in Canada at their VoIP address: "did.voip.les.net", (using syntax: "ping did.voip.les.net"), my average ping response is 72ms with 1ms jitter and no packet losses. This is also reasonably good response (they are about 2000 miles away). So, pinging your VoIP provider will give you a periodic snap-shot of how your Internet connection is doing.- I've been using vonage for over 5 years now without any problem.
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Are different voip systems cross compatible?
EXPERTS: please help: The only ISP in this place seems to block the VOIP services :(?
