 RickNYPremium
join:2000-11-02
Manorville, NY
 ·Optimum Online
| Vonage DigitalVoice Service Ahhh how nice to see a new VoIP forum! Anyway, has anyone out there tried VoIP service from Vonage yet? Ive had the service for about 3 weeks now, and all I can say is - excellent! I wrote a review of the service, in case anyone is interested, but never posted it because there wasnt an appropriate forum for doing so -- until now.. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask! Update since I wrote the review: I have issued a temporary suspend on my POTS service from Verizon, and the Vonage service IS my only phone service at home..
If you're interested in the service, you can visit them at »www.vonage.com
Rick
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Well, after reading a post a few days ago that someone had posted about this, I decided to order the Vonage Digital Voice Service yesterday, and today I am up and running with it.. In case anyone is unfamiliar with the service, basically, its a telephone line for your broadband connection. They currently offer two rate plans, the first being $19.95 for 500 outgoing minutes, the 2nd is $39.95 for unlimited calling. Both plans require a one year contract. Just a rundown on how the minutes work if you decide to opt for the cheaper plan 1) Toll free numbers do not count towards minutes 2) Calls forwarded to voice mail do not count towards minutes 3) Incoming calls do not count towards minutes 4) Calls dialed to other Vonage subscribers do not count towards minutes. 5) Checking your Vonage Voicemail does not count towards minutes.. Now, at first I was reluctant to sign up for the service because of the Terms of Service on their website stating that basically once you opted to sign up and used the service, there was no turning back for a year. After speaking to Alicia at Vonage, she readily agreed to allow me to back out of the contract within 30 days if I was totally unhappy, which I felt was fair considering the company is fairly new.
Now.. Here is the lowdown on the features that come with the service, as well as some of the downfalls of it. Most of the downfalls I can live with, and in fact, this may end up replacing my primary phone line, even though it is marketed as an alternative to a 2nd line:
1) Caller ID: Call waiting Caller ID service is provided, however - the Call ID is number only, no name, and will work with any phones that integrate Call ID. One of the downfalls here is that the date & time is not sent with each call, so all your calls show up as 'Jan 01 12:00 AM'.
2) Call Forwarding: The service comes with standard call forwarding, as well as enhanced call forwarding. The standard call forwarding will simply forward any calls to the number you want anytime the Vonage number is dialed. The enhanced allows you to set it to forward if the call is unanswered after a certain amount of time, or if the phone is busy (if, for example, you disabled call waiting with *70). The downfall with the Call Forwarding feature is that the ONLY way to enable it is through their website, so if you dont have access to the web where you are, you cant forward your calls.. Not too much of a biggy for me.
3) Call Waiting: Call waiting is provided with the service as well. No downfalls here, it works just like it does on your regular phone.
4) Voicemail: The voicemail system is pretty good, overall. There does not seem to be any limit to the number of messages, length of recorded messages, length of time that you can save messages for, etc. If you have a phone that incorporates a message waiting indicator for use with the telephone company's voice mail service, the phone will indicate when there are messages. You'll also get a stuttered dial tone when you pick up the phone to let you know. Voice mail is retrieved with either a local access number, or you can go to the website and play the voicemail in your browser. The voicemail systems keeps track of the call ID of the number that left the message, as well as date and time it was left. It also has an email alert option to notify you via email when you have messages. The email it sends includes the call ID information in the subject header.
5) Call ID Blocking for outgoing calls: You can block your number on Call ID devices by dialing *67 before the call, much as you can with a standard phone. Downside: If you are used to all-call blocking, you have to enable the feature prior to every call.
6) Three way calling: Included.. Works the same as a regular phone.
OK, thats all about the features.. I know a few people inquired about whether or not you could put more than one phone on the Cisco ATA186 device that hooks up to the router... Well, basically, I disconnected my POTS line from the rest of my phone jacks in my apartment, and simply plugged the Cisco into an existing jack, and all of my phones work normally in this scenario. I have 3 cordless phones, and one wired phone. They all ring as they are supposed to, and all are able to make calls normally.
Well, how is the quality of the calls? I was very surprised to see that the quality of the calls was excellent. The latency that one experiences when using a PC based software app such as Net2Phone is very very very minimal, and really not noticeable at all. I would rate the quality of the calls as better than a cell phone, but just shy of the quality I am used to with my Verizon service, but by all means totally acceptable for use on a daily basis.
You'll need a router in order to use the service, and your router has to be setup to act as a DHCP server, since there is no way to configure the Cisco device manually since Vonage password protected the whole box. (UPDATE: If you email Vonage and ask them to configure the device with a static LAN IP, they will - just supply them the IP you want to use, plus the gateway info and DNS info, and they will re-configure for you so that it does not require DHCP). I plugged it in to my Linksys BEFSR41, and the service was ready to go within 5 seconds.
One important thing to note about the Vonage service. You cannot dial 911.. At ALL. I found a local number to call for Suffolk County PD Emergency that I programmed into a speed dial to get around this limitation, but it IS an important limitation to consider. The other downfall to remember is that if you lose your Internet connection, you also lose your phone. Not a big deal for me since my Optimum Online service from Cablevision in NY has been extremely reliable, only going down 2 or 3 times in the past year and a half, and for no longer than 2 hrs..
I hope that answers some of your questions for those of you that were interested in knowing about this service and using it with OOL. If anyone has any other questions, I'll try to answer them the best I can.
Rick
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"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." |
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 saber11Check SixPremium
join:2000-06-09
Clayton, OH | It says it came with a cisco router, what kind of equipment do have, did you have to pay for the equipment? Also what kind of phones do you have to have?
Just curious more than anything.
Also if you are downloading or surfing while using VOIP with Vonage do you have any induced echo or packet loss?
Let us know the technicals.
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---"Gadget Bent"--- |
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| reply to RickNY
I just got off the phone with Alicia (Very helpful and she even knew what unix box as a router was  ) .
For the hardware all she said you need is a device that is DHCP enabled on your own network. So that the CISCO ATA186 can get an IP. The CISCO apparently has a LAN interface and a 2 rj11 ports( I think that's what the specs on the Cisco site said)
Oh yeah she also told me that the only port that needed to be opened on the firewall was 5060. (Doh I forgot to ask upd or tcp) I'm sure that I will figure it out.
I ordered the 19.95 plan and should get the hardware within the week. I will report back more once I get the service installed.
I had some difficulty enrolling on the website that had something to do with a cookie problem. Since I was using IE all I did was fire up Netscape and breezed through it.
/rant on
I despise Verizon for their "we MIGHT be there tomorrow or the next day but please call back between 10 am and 2pm, only from the phone which you would like the change the service on to schedule a visit" attitude and thus I do not have local service(or any of their services) at my house.
rant off/
I have a cable from Opt-Online and love it. Phone calls are via cell service. |
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RickNYPremium
join:2000-11-02
Manorville, NY Reviews:
·Optimum Online
| reply to RickNY
Signing up for the service cost me $54.00 or so total, which included the first months $19.95 service, $25 activation fee, and $10 shipping.. They ship you a box which includes the Cisco ATA186 Analog Interface, along with a manual on how to use the service.
The Cisco ATA186 allows you to plug in standard telephones, just as if you were plugging into a regular phone jack. You pick up the phone and hear a dial tone, same as normal. Dialing is all 11-digit dialing: 1+AreaCode+Phone Number, even in your own calling area. Heavy downloading or uploading did NOT induce any more echo or packet loss. I do notice that you notice a little bit of echo in the very beginning of the conversations: maybe for about 5 seconds.. It seems as though the network is making adjustments in those first few seconds of the call to reduce the echo, which it does do quite well.
Personally, I have 2 Panasonic 900Mhz cordless phones (1 digital, 1 analog), plus 1 Panasonic 2.4Ghz digital phone, plus one Lucent wired phone hooked up. You can hook up any standard phone.. I also have my computer modem hooked up to it (NOTE: the service will NOT accomodate modem data calls, however it is capable of faxing 2 or 3 pages at 9600 baud with no problems).
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"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." |
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RickNYPremium
join:2000-11-02
Manorville, NY Reviews:
·Optimum Online
| reply to nottoobright
said by nottoobright:
I have a cable from Opt-Online and love it. Phone calls are via cell service.
Where are you located? Just for your info, they told me about a week, but they shipped my equipment out the same day Airborne Express Ground and I received it the next day (They are in NJ, I am in NY). The customer service is very helpful there and respond quickly.
Also, as far as ports... 5060 UDP, although I initially didnt open the port, and was still able to make and receive phone calls. I also opened up Port 10000 since that seems to be some kind of Media port that is used as well, dont think its necessary to open it though.
Rick
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"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." |
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| reply to RickNY
I'm in NJ. My log in may be a bit misleading. Hope I dont get banned or anything. (Busted) LOL
Any how I'll let you know how it goes.
When I talked to them they would not commit to anything earlier than next week. I suspect it might be earlier than that
[text was edited by author 2002-04-24 17:35:49] |
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RickNYPremium
join:2000-11-02
Manorville, NY Reviews:
·Optimum Online
| reply to RickNY
Did they give you a phone number yet? Also, I placed my order over the website -- You'll need a username and password to view all your activity -- Did they set that up with you yet? If so, you can go to the website www.vonage.com and view your order status. Like I said, they shipped mine the same day Airborne Express Ground... They shipped from Edison, so you can be assured that the day they do ship it, you'll get it the following day.
They also emailed me confirmation with the new phone number and the tracking information, which I thought was very nice.
Rick
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"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." |
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| reply to RickNY
I got my phone number and I have been checking the site. Still says "processing". Oh well I wait. Maybe before the weekend. (Then again maybe not LOL) |
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| reply to RickNY
How is the quality for someone with an upload cap of 128kbps with a cable modem? |
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| That should be fine. They say you need at least 100 to be safe. But normal POTS line is 64k. Add in network traffic and a cap of 128k should do fine. You can download Net2Phone Commcenter and try it out to see if there is any lag before you splurge on this product. You can call toll free numbers for free with Commcenter to test it.
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Join Team Discovery!!
Check out my DSL Diary. |
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RickNYPremium
join:2000-11-02
Manorville, NY Reviews:
·Optimum Online
| said by Sir Joseph:
You can download Net2Phone Commcenter and try it out to see if there is any lag before you splurge on this product. You can call toll free numbers for free with Commcenter to test it.
1) Vonage calls for an upload of at least 90kbps, but if you're unsure, their website has a speed test to check your speeds to see if it is OK with the service.. Its at »secure.vonage.com/vonage-subscri···ction.do
2) The actual encoder used by the system is the ITU-T G.729a, which encodes at 8kbps.. The resulting quality is comparable to a 32kbps ADPCM codec.
3) I dont really know if you could compare any kind of PC-based software product with this.. The ATA186 is a dedicated hardware device that takes care of all the echo cancellation, latency corrections, etc -- I have yet to find a PC based product that even comes anywhere remotely close to the quality I have with the Vonage service and the ATA186..
Rick
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"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." |
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| reply to RickNY
Doh. Checked this AM an still processing
Oh well. They did not promise anything until next week. |
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| reply to RickNY
I've been seeking information about how international latency will affect the usefulness of this service. Does anyone here have experience with high levels of latency? (>200ms) on a connection through Vonage? |
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ags
join:2001-08-29
Alhambra, CA | can this service make
ip to ip call to non subsciber with own ata 186
by dialing
like 24*205*20*200# |
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RickNYPremium
join:2000-11-02
Manorville, NY Reviews:
·Optimum Online
| said by ags:
can this service make
ip to ip call to non subsciber with own ata 186
by dialing
like 24*205*20*200#
Well... Technically... The ATA186 is set up to run off a config file that is TFTPd to the device when you plug it in, but if you really wanted to, it is possible to reset the ATA186 to its defaults, set the parameters for it to make an IP to IP call, then when you were done, type in the TFTP server IP address again in the configuration of the ATA186 and it will re-program itself for Vonage, with its password and all --- But thats a royal pain in the ass.. So to answer your question, the Vonage service itself doesnt support it.
Rick
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"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." |
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| reply to RickNY
I got the notice that they shipped yesterday. (Friday) Thus I should get it on Monday.
can't wait |
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| reply to RickNY
GOT IT !!!!!
I started playing with it. Seems cool so far...I've only made one or 2 800 calls so far. Sound quality seems better than net2phone. More information as it becomes available.
I did not seem to have to make any changes to the firewall. But only time will tell. |
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| reply to RickNY
said by RickNY:
Also, as far as ports... 5060 UDP, although I initially didnt open the port, and was still able to make and receive phone calls. I also opened up Port 10000 since that seems to be some kind of Media port that is used as well, dont think its necessary to open it though.
Rick..... Any idea what port 10000 is for. I watched packets for a while and did not see anything for that port. Let me know! |
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RickNYPremium
join:2000-11-02
Manorville, NY Reviews:
·Optimum Online
| reply to RickNY
Nottoobright...
Did you read your IMs I have sent you?
In case you dont know how to get them.... You click the little yellow icon all the way at the top of your browser... I left you some info in there regarding the ports..
Rick
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"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." |
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| reply to RickNY
Looks like 10000 port is used during a phone call. |
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