Any thoughts about "Voice over IP" services ?

[Samsonid]

Hello group,

A few questions:

Is Voice over IP a good idea?

Any repotable companies out there?
(Have you heard anything good (bad) about Vonage)?

What equipment is needed ?
(I hear about the Cisco-ATA 186. Is it Ok ?)

Do you know anything about the D-Link DVG-1120M/H/S ?


Thanks

 

[spidey07]

The way I see it (and this is just industry speculation backed by some facts) is Avaya and Cisco just about have the right solution for voice over IP to work.

But it still is a very complex solution that is just now becoming of age.

 

[madwok]

At work , we use Avaya PBX ( G3r ) and Avaya Cajun/Cisco 6500 switches . Work great with one remote call center location ( 5 miles away ) with one T3 for both data and voice over ip for the last 18 month along with one separate T1 as backup. You can not tell any different in term of voice quality wise . I was skeptical at first but the technology is here and it save us lots of money from buying another PBX / T1 voice line . Currently we process about 30,000 calls on a light day without any prob on this T3 .

I don't know much about vonage since we are strictly Avaya shop voice wise

 

[Soybomb]

I've heard good things about vonage, just be sure your connection stays at a reasonably low latency.

 

[Fiveohhh]

I'm curious about Vonage too if anyone has an opinion on it

 

[wlee]

I have Vonage. The quality varies quite a bit. Some calls have that NASA "Vox" half-duplex like sound. Others are super clear. Better than any regular phone call. I *THINK* that prob has to do with the equipment where the VoIP---->PSTN Termination is for that particular call. E.G., I've made in-state calls that sound TERRIBLE, while a call to California is pristine. They have been p*ssing off a few customers recently because they have declared them to be "business" users when in fact they are just a "chatty" family. The prob is that they have a policy of auto-switching you to the higher priced biz package and you're "guilty until proven inocent" ( Translation to plain English: "Unlimited" really means no more than 3000mins. ) Have a look at DSLReports VoIP Forum for more info. All that being said, it does work fairly well, and *I* personally have had no service/billing issues. It will save you $$$ if you're currently paying more than $45+ in long distance.

 

[Nikepete]

I looked into this service but so far I'm still hesitating to sign up for several reasons:

1/I'm running a FTP server and what would happen to the voice quality under relatively heavy traffic ?
2/How about voice quality when I download some large files ?
3/I probably have to switch to cordless phones for all other phones in the house to share the connection. I'm having 4 different phone outlets now and this could be a burden.