I did likewise about five years ago... the AT&T long-distance monthly minimum was almost always more than what we actually used, even at their high per-minute rate.
Currently we have our primary line SWIPed to use Pioneer Telephone for long distance service. No monthly minimum if you accept e-billing and pay via a credit card. We've had monthly bills as low as $0.15.
My wife's business line is SWIPed to "no long distance carrier" and works as you'd expect - if she accidentally dials an out-of-area call on that line she gets a "You have not selected a long-distance provider" intercept recording.
One of these days I'll have to try out a VOIP call-termination provider... I've got Asterisk running on our firewall system and an analog-phone-to-SIP adapter hooked up to our second in-house line.
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Depending on your "provider", "local long distance" may be as little as 15 miles or as much as 30 miles (roughly). Opting out of long distance service will save the charges attached to what you have now; true long distance call attempts will result in a pre-recorded message noting that service is not available (do not remember the wording). Replace that with a pre-paid calling card similar to the MCI card that Costco / Sams' Club has sold - rate is under 3 cents per minute and no extra BS charges. Rechargeable over phone via credit card. Note "one cent" and similar cards charge roughly 50 cents to *place* the call - which means one MUST make *ONE* call for the maximum time to get close to the (falsely) advertised rates. Those "gotchas" are -*never* disclosed.
Does the same recorded message come up for local long distance? If not, did they jack up your LLD rate? Thing is in our area it's nearly impossible to decipher from a phone number whether this will be a LLD or local call.
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We use 1019898, it's 10c for the first minute to connect, then 2c or so to many places in Europe. No monthly charge. Intra-US it's roughly the same AFAIK but I don't know because there we use CostCo phone cards. Sprint, Verizon, whatever is the best deal.
The audio quality is excellent, definitely not VoIP. I wonder how they do that for 2c/min. Sometimes they have specials to Southern Europe for
0.5c/min. Blows me away.
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Question is: Do those minute rates remain the same after dropping LD?
They are usually disclosed but in the smallest and thinnest fonts they can get away with. Like those TV ads that end with a super fast blur talker "Special restrictions apply ... bla bla blubb wheeeeee brumble bla blubb".
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The "regular" consumer 3346s don't know anything about QoS, but the "enterprise" models (which is just a software change -- you can upgrade a 3346 to a 3346-ENT for some amount of money, although it's rather more than the difference in price between buying a 3346 and 3346-ENT as such originally) do. See:
formatting link
The 3346s have reasonably decent routing capabilities built-in.
Plenty of people have reboot/hang problems with DD-WRT firmware too, although the proclivity for it to do so seems to vary somewhat from one router to another (e.g., some of the problems appear to be in the hardware drivers, which change with router hardware, of course).
That being said, IMHO DD-WRT is noticeably above average in quality than what most D-Link & Netgear "consumer grade" routers get you.
...or in the operating system itself: Vista supports QoS natively, and I would have to imagine that Linux distributions do too.
But if you're going to have more than one computer sharing an Internet connection, sticking QoS in the router is definitely the way to go.
Yes, Linux has that capability. Individual applications can set a QoS on the sockets that they create. Also, it's possible to use the kernel's packet-filtering feature to set (or clear, or modify) a QoS on packets going through the kernel, regardless of whether the packets are locally originated on that system or are being routed.
I agree... it's best to have QoS and bandwidth management at the "choke point" on the uplink, to ensure proper transmit pacing and bandwidth sharing and prioritization.
The Linux Advanced Traffic Shaping documentation shows a good approach. Packets can be tagged with a QoS (for the benefit of applications which haven't been upgraded to set the QoS on their socket), and can then be sorted into multiple transmit queues based on QoS, port, whether they're ACKs, etc. The amount of bandwidth allowed to each transmit queue can be set individually, and the actual handoff of the packets to the Ethernet hardware can be "paced" to ensure that the system doesn't transmit data faster than the uplink can transfer it (this prevents the DSL or cable modem from ending up with a big, congested transmit buffer).
I currently use an old Pentium 200 system, running Linux, as my network-edge system - it prioritizes/NATs/routes packets for my home net, runs email and web servers, and has a small Asterisk VOIP server running. It's probably underpowered for the demand but works surprisingly well.
Similar setups can no doubt be built on *BSD and other Unix-type operating systems.
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The ones shipped with the 5 IP "sticky" static IP by SBC lacked QoS. I just checked.
Yeah, but you can't do NAT *AND* 5 "sticky" IP's at the same time in the 3346. All the one's I've had to deal with were setup for the 5 IP's. Since NAT was required, it had to be done in an external router. It is a fairly decent router, but only if you use it with a single IP.
I have considerable experience with DD-WRT. I use in my coffee shop hot spot customers routers, some of my biz customers, at home, in the office, and wherever I can convince someone. Even with the current v24 firmware, I sometimes find some service going comatose. Usually after some table overflows. Choice of hardware does make a difference, but creative configuration and adding services is what I find breaks things. I kinda cheat and have the watchdog timer reboot the router just before midnight.
Yep. I've had less trouble with DD-WRT than with the stock firmware. However, I'm willing to tolerate the occasional hang for the features offered. It's also not the features that get my attention. It's the ability to save configuration files that will work on any of the DD-WRT v24 compatible routers. Instead of stocking a dozen different spares for various customers, I only need to carry one spare router, as long as it's loaded with DD-WRT v24.
Yep. There was also a stand along QoS box that could be added in series with the WAN connection, that would do the trick. Unfortunately, there are some router firmware mutations that claim QoS features, but offer minimal configuration options. It can become really complex as in:
or which is somewhat easier to read.
Also, one of the reasons that VoIP providers sell or give away VoIP routers is to make it easy to add QoS to a customers systems. Flatly, without QoS working, VoIP sounds awful. The vendors know this, but don't seem to make much effort to inform the customers of the problem. When I install a VoIP system (or service), one test is to upload a big file while yacking on the phones. If the voice quality is unaffected, it's working. To avoid the possiblity of having the other side of the conversation become the performance limiting factor, I use various online testers:
I wouldn't mind having a stand along QoS "appliance". Dlink had such a product at one time, but couldn't figure out how to use or sell it. It's discontinued but can still be found. Digging...
Bottom line: You need QoS to make VoIP work right. Lots of ways to get it.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
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You've provided a lot of good information here... thanks!
Do you have any experience with OpenWRT? That's what I started playing with, after reading about how OpenWRT and DD-WRT were once mroe of less the same, DD-WRT went (somewhat) commercial, OpenWRT guys don't want to even admit DD-WRT exists, etc... Hence, I've never actually used DD-WRT myself (whereas I have 2 boxes running OpenWRT).
That makes a lot of sense. How do your coffee shops work? You get everything set up and running for them, maintain it, and charge them a flat monthly fee for the service? Or the coffee shops are charging per hour (or whatever) and you get a cut?
Other than playing with it, not much. The original versions lacked a GUI interface, which limited configuration to users with a clue. I needed something that I could give to a user. Since then, a GUI has been added as:
I saw no reason to go back and try OpenWRT again, so have no experience with this arrangement.
They're very similar under the web GUI. Both had the Linksys Linux GPL code base as a starting point.
There are a few tricks to setting up a coffee shop router. Email if you want details.
I suspect that you think I have it all nicely organized, working smoothly, and profitable. On the contrary. It's a bunch of pain in the posterior friends and customers[1] that want absolutely nothing to do with free Wi-Fi, but find that their shops need Wi-Fi or the customers will leave. None of them charge for the service except that Wi-Fi users are expected to buy something while in the shop. Enforcing that restriction has been a big problem. I have dealt with billing systems at several coffee shops, but they were dropped after a few months of complaints and "issues". I also have problems with the neighbors using the bandwidth during business hours.
I've implemented an assortment of hardware and software band-aids to control access and abuse, but the owners don't want to spend 1 millisecond on administration, so they've all failed. For example, I was asked to setup some kind to ticket system which would give the user 1 hour of free Wi-Fi for each purchase. I already had such a RADIUS server based system running, so it was fairly easy to demonstrate. Just one problem. It would be nice if the login and password were printed on the customers receipt and that the RADIUS server was integrated with the cash register. All I needed was approval from the POS vendor. It's now been 6 months, the customer keeps asking about the ticket system, I keep reminding him that he needs to call the vendor and get approval, and nothing ever happens because he doesn't consider it important. Oh well.
Of course, if the system goes down, and the coffee shop empties from customers, I get the panic emergency drop everything the sky is falling phone call. I had prostate surgery last year. A few days later, I got sweet talked into doing a service call to replace a smoked router (power glitch) while dragging a urine bag and while still drugged. I don't need any more such "mission critical" coffee shop customers.
As for my charges, only the doctors pay worse than the coffee shops. It doesn't matter what I bill them, they all want to negotiate the bill, and only pay the back billing when they need me to do something. Free Wi-Fi and coffee shops are not the road to riches.
[1] The difference between friends and customers is that the customers pay their bills. Otherwise, they're the same.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Don't worry, once word gets around eventually you'll get the Starbucks franchise! :-)
Just kidding... plus they already use T-Mobile or some other well-known commercial entity, if I'm not mistaken.
I'd be tempted to do something like have, e.g., a few thousand passcodes pre-generated and print them out on little stickers a sheet at a time. When someone buys coffee, the cashier hands them one of the stickers, your authentication server notes the time it's first used and gives them their hour (or whatever) of time. Not as sophisticated as integrating it with POS, but pretty foolproof and easy? (Of course, you know they're going to wait until they're done to only 5 passcodes to call you up to tell you they don't know how to print more of them, and could you please come on down and do it? :-) )
I don't blame you!
Hopefully you tack on the usual 1.5%/month late fee?
You haven't met the local fools, er... customers. I suggested something like a days worth of pre-printed passwords. Lots of problems. The coffee shop owner doesn't want his staff to spend one extra millisecond dealing with the wireless. That's why he wanted it printed on the cash register receipt. An extra step that takes perhaps 10 seconds to issue a ticket from a roll of pre-printed stickers, will add up to perhaps a several hours per week of "wasted" time.
The owners also want some kind of club card for regular users. If they have to pass out stickers or cards, they want to reduce the hassle for their regular coffee addicts. It's easy enough to do in the RADIUS server, but still a mess to administrate.
Huh? Everyone else blames me for everything. Why should you be any different? Don't worry (much) about it. I accept the blame graciously.
One of the nice things about being a consultant and working for myself is that I can pick and/or dump my customers. Sometimes I goof, but after 35 years, I've gotten fairly good at guessing how they operate. This was one where I guessed wrong.
Nope. I cheat them on the initial billing, assume that they'll pay late, and give them a discount on the next billif they pay on time. If I forget to overbill, then I tack on the late fees on the next bill. That works fairly well but is difficult to keep straight whom I should be cheating and when. My (stated) policy is never to lie to the customer. If they ask about how I invoice, they get it exactly as I just described it. Most have no reaction, and continue to pay late as usual. Oh well. Customer training is not taught in the skools.
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Yes they can. They can just set the COS on the line to no LD/PIC access. It'll either jump to reorder or play a message that LD access on the line is disabled, to dial 101+ or what have you.
Interesting. That's going over a VoIP gateway somewhere I'm sure. Vonage also has other plans that cover more of Europe for a relatively small fee per month of unlimited usage.
And the Vonage devices do enforce QOS. I've got a Linksys RT31P2 and I can tell it how much bandwidth I want for the VoIP connection. I run mine at the full 90kbps and have absolutely fantastic quality on the connection. No echo, no compandored sideband sound, it's just like a regular telephone line.
"Local long distance" is a part of the local service you pay for in thebase rate, and you cannot "opt out" of that unless you ditch a local phoneline service.
Minute rates remain the same after dropping LD because your basic "flat rate" service covers local long distance as a non-divisable part of the contract.
The Lifeline telephone service is local only, and no options like caller ID are availible. It is intended to provide telephone service for low income & disabled people. It is $14.58 a month in Florida.
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It could be VoIP. If they have good BW, good QoS and a SLA to back it up. Most likely though is they buy the minutes wholesale or from a wholesaler. These guys will buy a million minutes from a LD provider. Pennies and fraction of pennies add up when you are dealing with millions. Plus their overhead can be real low so they dont have to make much on a per minute basis.
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