All About VoIP/Meeting notes for 2015-08-17

The meeting on Monday, 17 August 2015 was All About VoIP.

Discussion Questions

• What are you using?
• What do you like about VoIP? What do you not like?
• What providers do you use?
• What works better with PSTN? With VoIP?
• What are the pros and cons?

Arbitrary Comments

• What can we do with Teksavvy?
• Vonage vs ITSP? (Unlimitel, VoIP.ms) vs ISP (Teksavvy, Rogers) vs MagicJack
• MagicJack is an ATA? You need internet
  • You can get a USB dongle as well (don't work under Linux)
  • It is reliable enough for faxing
  • $10 extra per year for a Canadian number
  • $50/year + tax ($70 for the device)
  • Berleine spends $32/year for a US number and service
  • Unlimited minutes
  • Call quality can suffer if the internet is busy

• Magicjack and Vonage are in the same space

• VoiP.ms and Unlimitel
  • $1/month for the DID, $1.50 for Emergency 911
  • Unlimited minutes

• Magicjack and Vonage are in the same space

• VoIP.ms: $1 + $1.50 for Emergency 911 + 1c/minute per calls
  • You can buy a home package for $3.50 per month
  • You can have subaccounts
  • You can have many calls running simultaneously

• Fongo
  • Free phone number, free calls, free voicemail, pay to send texts
  • Freephoneline.ca is the same but for desktops
  • How far can you get on a wifi phone?
  • Sometimes quality is an issue

• SIP phones

• The Working Centre
  • One PSTN line + voip lines + Norstar systems
  • Use an ATA to convert VoIP.ms to analogue
  • This does not work perfectly all the time (eg long tones)

• Brendan has tried to switch to all VoIP
  • How do you trunk calls between buildings that use different systems?
  • Idea: just map lines to phones so you can use Norstar handsets
  • How can you receive calls in multiple locations?
    • Voip.ms makes this easy
    • You can use follow-me settings in Asterisk

• Faxing and virtual faxing
  • Doesn't work so well on VoIP
  • VoIP wants to break up packets, but faxes want a continuous

• Cheapest SIP phone: Grandstream GXP1400 (similar: GXP1405)

• Why VoIP?
  • Cost: $40 for a PSTN line. VoIP can be cheaper
  • Can use the same phone number for many calls
  • We trust everything that goes over the internet
  • Very configurable for free

• Why not VoIP?
  • Depends on power to work. Don't have blackouts!
  • Can't run faxing (reliably), DSL modems
  • Can't use analog modems
  • Can be reliability problems
  • Security concerns
  • Should have quality of service to ensure good performance
  • Need upload bandwidth (16k-64kbps up per call depending on codec)
  • Rollovers can be an issue between POTS and VoIP, depending on provider
  • Costs more in terms of IT time

• You can do voip via internet addresses

• Older ADSL lines provide 700kbps up

• Bell VDSL is broken? Fibernetics does it right?

• Execulink is a provider that does PSTN rollovers right
• Can you do anything more with commercial VoIP than with regular Bell?
  • Maybe. It depends on what the provider provides.

• Hiding callerID : easy

• Is this obsolete because of cellphones?
  • The numbers are different
  • Not as configurable
  • But your cellphone works in a blackout (modulo batteries)

• You can't run your own cellphone service (in Canada)
  • Compare to radio, community cable

• SIP clients for cellphones?
  • SIPSimple?
  • You can register to a local asterisk account
  • Ring groups on VoIP.ms
  • How can you make phones ring in certain locations only?
    • Put a sip client on their phones
    • Put Asterisk

• What Asterisk systems can be configured by Thursday?
  • PBX in a Flash
  • Elastix

• Cheap analog phones?

Acronym Fun

• ADSL : Asymmetric Digital Subsriber Line - High-speed Internet over an analog phone line
• ATA : Analog Telephone Adapter - Turns VoIP into PSTN lines.
• DID : Direct Inward Dialing - A phone number
• FXO : Foreign Exchange Office - Port that is on the phone. In asterisk, you use a port of this type when you want to integrate a PSTN line. Wikipedia:Fxo
• FXS : Foreign Exchange Service - Provides a dialtone. This can be from the wall, or the ports on an ATA
• Hunt groups: Choose which order phones will ring
• ISP : Internet Service Provider
• ITSP : Internet Telephony Service Provider - The company that provides VoIP service
• MWI: Message Waiting Indicator - The light that shows when you have voicemail
• PBX : Private Branch Exchange - the device that routes phone calls
• PSTN/POTS : Public Switched Telephone Network / Plain Old Telephone Service - A "Real" phone line
• QoS: Quality of Service - prefer sending packets to phones rather than Bittorrents
• Rollovers: First call a POTS line, then call a VoIP line with a different provider
• SIP : Session Initiation Protocol - VoIP protocol. There are others (eg IAX)
• VDSL : Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line - ADSL on steroids
• VoIP : Voice over Internet Protocol - The trendy thing.
• VoIP registration: What phone will ring when you make a call to the number?