Hi,
We now have an AT&T landline for phone service and DSL. The DSL is about 1 MBPS and not very reliable; it gets flakey whenever it rains a lot.
So, 21st Century, maybe I'll sign up with Comcast for cable TV and 25 mbps data. One package comes with telephone service too, so we'd dump AT&T entirely.
Is cable phone service OK?
The option is to keep AT&T for phone (reliable after an earthquake?) and MonkeyBrains microwave for data; we're line-of-sight to them.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation
I've had Ooma for a year... love it, particularly its blacklisting ability :-) If the Internet goes down it forwards to my cellphone. ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Comcast is a play phone, not reliable, it can go down at any time for any reason, doesn't have to be a disaster, unless underqualified employees troubleshooting the neighborhood are considered a disaster.
In the old days, telco central offices had to have big batteries that would keep the phones working for some days after the lights went out. That's worth a lot in a pinch--it's saved quite a lot of lives, I expect.
We suffered through a lot of crap from Verizon in order to maintain copper POTS as well as FIOS for that reason. Their field folks were passable, but their office people couldn't find their posteriors with two hands, a map, street signs, marker buoys, radar, GPS, etc.
They eventually became so very incompetent that we decided that we couldn't trust them to maintain the batteries, so we switched to cable plus various cell phones for diversity. _BIG_ improvement in the agita level.
Verizon folks occasionally call us, and are a bit bemused by the howls of derisive laughter.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
We have one of each. Our phone line got so bad that DSL was no longer an option. Even the phone service was bad, but they laid a new drop from the pole, and it is better, now. The deal is that unless you have a massive ground on the buried line somewhere, the POTS copper wire will keep on working even if it is a bit noisy (hums, crackles, etc.) The POTS phone is powered from the central office (if you do, indeed, have real CO service and not from a neighborhood RT). So, in cases of wide-scale power outages, POTS from the CO will still work. The RT will work until the battery in the RT dies, then the phone Co. has to come out with a portable generator.
With cable, if the noise exceeds a certain amount, or there are reflections or attenuation, the cable-VOIP modem loses the digital link, and you have no dial tone. You can't even call them to report the outage (except by cell phone). In case of wide scale power outage, they will go kaput in about 8 hours when they batteries on the pole-mounted splitters and repeaters run down. Then they do the same drill as the phone co. except there are a LOT more of those boxes up on the poles to deal with. The cable-VOIP modem also has a backup battery, but you could rig a generator to it if you needed to make a call during an extended outage (if the cable backbone was still powered.)
On the other hand, when the cable-VOIP is working, which is a great majority of the time, the sound quality is excellent, sounds like a recording studio!
Jon
We have cablevision BOOL at work.
The only problems we have is:
1) severe echo/garble when using VOIP and the other end is a cell phone. Too many codec conversions screw up call clarity. 2) Modems need to be reset occasionaly. Probably from lighting strikes. 3) Phantom calls.It's really not quite Business class.
Cheers
On good days, maybe; but Comcast has a enviable record for unreliability and customer disservice. And of course, when your power fails, so does your phone...
-- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
'Tweren't me that you quoted. I have Ooma which rolls to my cellphone if the network goes down. So far, it hasn't happened. ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
That is pretty crappy speed even by DSL standards. Have you complained to the vendor? I used to have trouble in the winter, but I complained to the phone company about hum on the line and they cleaned up their act.
Note that Comcast will jitter up the data to make VOIP shitty. Of course, if you use the Comcast VOIP, those packets won't be jittery. Funny how that works.
DSL is great for VOIP. It is very low jitter. But at 1mbps, you can't support many users.
My crappy DSL is 1.5mbps (too far from the CO for better). You can check out your VOIP ability here:
Click on the holy land (California), pick the nearest city. Select VOIP. On the next page, select 32kbps G726 and try 4 users.
You need java to run the tests. I can do 4 simultaneous VOIP conversation at the highest bit rate of 32kbps with between 300uS to 800us of jitter. Basically broadcast quality. At 5 users, it degrades to 1ms of jitter.
I never heard of Monkey Brain. Sounds like fun. High set up cost, but the monthly rate looks good.
AT&T will let the copper die. They really don't want to put money in that system.
With a 64kb/s CODEC you can handle 12 or so simulatanous calls and more if you use a more efficient CODEC.
-- umop apisdn --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---
These are industry standard VOIP codecs. You use the standards, well unless you are Apple.;-)
I could handle more calls, but not at an acceptable jitter rate for that codec. VOIP is tricky in that if done right it is real time. Skype on the other hand does a lot of buffering. OK for quick calls, but after a while there is a noticeable delay.
The test only allows a 5 unit simulation.
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