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Jason Strauss
12-03-2009, 8:58 PM
I’m always amazed at how many “computer guys” are on this forum given its primary purpose. I suppose it has something to do with yearning to work with “non-technical” material as a hobby…fascinating and refreshing!

Anyway, here’s my situation - and bear in mind that I am not a “computer guy” – so take it easy on the tech speak:

I’m tired of paying nearly $100 a month for a land line that we hardly use and crappy DSL service from Verizon (we have no other choice of provider). So, I’m thinking of going completely wireless. I can get Cricket mobile broadband (3G) for $40/month after a $25 activation fee. I live in NW Indiana near Chicago and the cell service is excellent almost everywhere. Cricket’s map confirms that we’re covered. I do NOT edit movies, game on the internet, download or upload large files of anything, or spend countless hours surfing unless you count a few marathon sessions on the Creek!:p

Does anyone out there use wireless 3G as their primary home internet connection? Along the same lines, does anyone use this type of service with VoIP? VoIP service recommendations? Pros, cons, advice, anything will help.

Now, off to the shop to work on Christmas cutting boards…

Oh, and thanks for the help!

Jim Becker
12-03-2009, 9:06 PM
There are a couple of things you have to be careful about with 3G for your provider. One is monthly "caps" on how much bandwidth you can use before they either start hitting you for overage charges and/or start throttling your connection speed. The second is that the speed isn't necessarily as stable and doesn't work well with real-time applications like VoIP. (I'm in that business and do know something about it... ;) ) Services like Skype will work, but real-time traffic can be affected greatly by delay (latency) and the excessive variance in delay. (jitter) These networks, like most other consumer access solutions, are only "best effort" and it's really easy to step on a phone call with some other transmission and make it less than pleasant.

I happen to have a Sprint 3G aircard for access when I'm traveling. It works and sometimes it's actually faster than my almost 3mb DSL at home. But it's not consistent, even when stationary. If you can live with that for your Internet access and depend upon cell service for your phone, there's nothing holding you back. But really...make sure you understand any caps. They can really bite you hard. You would be surprised at just how much data you can move with just general web browsing and email!

4G, like Clear's WiMax that's been installed in some major metropolitan areas is a whole different ballgame. And LTE, which is where VZ and ATT will be going for 4G as a next step from their current (and different) 3G technologies will offer similar benefits. But that's at least a year and probably much more away for most folks.

Mitchell Andrus
12-03-2009, 9:06 PM
I'm setting up new home in NC (moving from NJ soon). The wire is dead for now as I'm only spending a week at a time there. I got the 3G bug from Verizon to stay connected and I love it. 5 gigs a month... I can't even begin to scratch that. I also don't do videos, movies, etc. With the 3G thingy, a virtual fax machine and a cell phone I'm thinking that I don't need any wires.

It's fast. I've got Fios in NJ and I'm spoilt, but happy with the 3G speed.
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paul cottingham
12-03-2009, 9:12 PM
Be very careful, as many providers block the ports needed for voip. Also, make damn sure your voip setup has a reliable way of making 911 location services work. Its a real problem.

I have set voip up for a few clients, and it is often trickier than one might imagine.

Jason Strauss
12-03-2009, 9:12 PM
One is monthly "caps" on how much bandwidth you can use before they either start hitting you for overage charges and/or start throttling your connection speed.

Jim,

Cricket states that they will "limit" you if you exceed 5GB. With my stated usage, do you think I'd be okay?

Alternatively, is there a way to improve my DSL performance on my side of the line?

Jim Becker
12-03-2009, 9:36 PM
Cricket states that they will "limit" you if you exceed 5GB. With my stated usage, do you think I'd be okay?

Hard to say. I have no doubt I blow 5gb away very quickly. But it's hard to measure on your own.


Alternatively, is there a way to improve my DSL performance on my side of the line?

Not really. DSL's limiting factors are your distance from the DSLAM in the Central Office or their Remote Terminal off that CO, the size/gage of the copper wire and the condition of the wire. Older cable plants can really limit DSL performance and older cable plants are pretty much the norm these days. VZ isn't putting any money in to the copper plant outside of emergency maintenance, more or less. Rather, they are investing in FTTH (fiber to the home...their FiOS service) where they feel they can make money from the additional content they can deliver via that means. The one benefit of fiber is that it can support significantly higher bandwidth and speeds...something necessary for multiple streams of HD content as well as higher and higher speed Internet access.

That said, there are sometimes some small optimizations you can do within your operating system as well as your router to insure that they are not limiting your performance with the access you have. But in general, your DSL performance is all about the three things I mentioned above.

Jason Strauss
12-03-2009, 9:50 PM
Hard to say. I have no doubt I blow 5gb away very quickly. But it's hard to measure on your own.



Not really. DSL's limiting factors are your distance from the DSLAM in the Central Office or their Remote Terminal off that CO, the size/gage of the copper wire and the condition of the wire. Older cable plants can really limit DSL performance and older cable plants are pretty much the norm these days. VZ isn't putting any money in to the copper plant outside of emergency maintenance, more or less. Rather, they are investing in FTTH (fiber to the home...their FiOS service) where they feel they can make money from the additional content they can deliver via that means. The one benefit of fiber is that it can support significantly higher bandwidth and speeds...something necessary for multiple streams of HD content as well as higher and higher speed Internet access.

That said, there are sometimes some small optimizations you can do within your operating system as well as your router to insure that they are not limiting your performance with the access you have. But in general, your DSL performance is all about the three things I mentioned above.

Thanks, Jim. I suppose it's one of those things where I won't know unless I try. I seems that the saving factor is that Cricket is a 'pay as you go' service. If it doesn't work well at home, I can always keep it for my work laptop.

Tom Veatch
12-03-2009, 10:09 PM
Jason, first let me say I know absolutely nothing about Cricket mobile broadband and cannot comment. I do use a wireless broadband internet connection - there's a directional antenna mounted on the house that points toward a local broadcast antenna (No it's not a satellite!). The service provider is an outfit called Pixius. I use a VoIP telephone over that link. The VoIP service is by an outfit called Packet8 or 8x8, a Vonage competitor.

I'm well pleased with both the internet connection and telephone service. My landline telephone is a bare minimum, local calls only service from AT&T, and have seriously considered dropping that service.

I would drop the landline immediately except on rare occasions we lose the internet connection until we manually reboot the router. Not sure what's causing the problem, and it's not frequent enough to be more than a minor irritant. But due to conditions of health and the potential need for immediate 911 service, the wife has laid an emphatic veto on dropping the landline.

Matt Meiser
12-03-2009, 10:45 PM
It sounds like what Tom is using is a wireless internet service provider or WISP which its quite different from 3G. It can actually perform much better than 3G in the hands of a competent provider (the one here is not and their customer service is even worse.) It usually runs at 900MHz, 2.4GHz or 5.8GHz.

I've been using 3G for about 4 years now because DSL and cable aren't available here. Its worked great for us but when Sprint implemented the 5gb cap I was forced to switch to a commercial provider that uses Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T's networks under contract with no cap but at a very high cost. High enough that if T1 line costs fall over the next year the way they did this year we will seriously look at that for next year.

My provider will not support VOIP over 3G because the latency and speed variation is too great. When I had Sprint, using it for VOIP was explicitly banned in the TOS.

4G is now available in the Chicago area from Clear. You might check to see if you are in range.

Matt Meiser
12-03-2009, 10:51 PM
VZ isn't putting any money in to the copper plant outside of emergency maintenance, more or less. Rather, they are investing in FTTH (fiber to the home...their FiOS service) where they feel they can make money from the additional content they can deliver via that means.

Or selling off large portions of their service to Frontier. That's the plan here. They were QUITE upset that I filed a complaint with the Michigan Public Service Commission this past spring about our unusable land line and included detail that one of their techs shared with me about the really poor condition of some cable near us. They had to replace a few hundred yards of aerial cable and I heard nothing but complaints about how much it was costing them.

Frontier claims they are going to invest in improvements immediately but we'll see.

Mitchell Andrus
12-04-2009, 1:04 AM
Perhaps I'm missing something... Isn't Voip just about the same as making a call on the telephone line?

So... why stick a computer into the equation? Why not just plug in a phone the way my grandpappy did it?
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Mike Henderson
12-04-2009, 1:38 AM
Perhaps I'm missing something... Isn't Voip just about the same as making a call on the telephone line?

So... why stick a computer into the equation? Why not just plug in a phone the way my grandpappy did it?
.
Nope, VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is about converting the voice to digital and putting it across your broadband connection, using the Internet Protocol (IP). Some processor does the conversion back and forth between digital and analog. A personal computer is one way to do it, but other systems have dedicated processors in the access box.

Your "voice" in digital is then carried across the Internet to an Interface unit which is connected to the plain old telephone system (POTS) in the area you're calling. You voice is then converted to analog and the POTS system carries your voice to the person you're calling. Their voice is the inverse.

So to use VOIP, you must have a broadband connection.

Mike

Tom Veatch
12-04-2009, 1:53 AM
Perhaps I'm missing something... Isn't Voip just about the same as making a call on the telephone line?

So... why stick a computer into the equation? Why not just plug in a phone the way my grandpappy did it?
.

The reason VoIP is attractive to me is:
1) Caller ID, Voice Mail, Call Waiting, and Unlimited long distance service at no extra cost all of which are extra cost options with our local landline service provider.
2) Virtual telephone number(s) in most exchanges in all US area codes (friends and family can call the virtual telephone number as a local number)
3) Inbound toll-free telephone number for use in those exchanges that don't support the virtual number.
4) Telemarketer/Political Pollsters, etc. haven't found our VoIP telephone number. (Yet)
5) The monthly bill is less when the extra cost items and long distance charges are added to the base cost of the landline service.

(The above points may be service provider dependent)

Since all of my family and many close friends are at the far end of a long distance telephone call, and since I absolutely refuse to own a cell phone, the VoIP service meets my needs quite well.

Matt Meiser
12-04-2009, 8:21 AM
Add "Get away from a crappy landline provider that could care less if your phone works but charges royally for it." One of my landlines costs over $60/mo and that doesn't include long distance. The other is about $40 and doesn't have any features and limited calling--200 calls which we don't come close to.

If T1's drop enough (and we'd still have to let Verizon provide the copper for that but would be using a different carrier) we'll put in a T1 for our internet and switch to VOIP. Unfortunately we'll still have to keep a landline for the alarm and for a back door for the provider to get into the router but can cut the services on that line back to virtually nothing.

My company is looking at a VOIP service that would tie all of us who work remotely together just like a regular office--multiline conferencing, paging, call transfers, ability to see if someone is on the line, etc.

Mitchell Andrus
12-04-2009, 9:40 AM
So to use VOIP, you must have a broadband connection.


So you're tied to a phone line (to the computer) and you get free long distance.

I make long distance calls on my cell at no charge with no phone line - on the beach. If I had a smart phone, I could get faxes and emails too.

I don't see an advantage. At least for me.

If I told my kids they have to go to Voip and turn in their cells, I'd have to sleep with one eye open.
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Mike Henderson
12-04-2009, 12:03 PM
So you're tied to a phone line (to the computer) and you get free long distance.

I make long distance calls on my cell at no charge with no phone line - on the beach. If I had a smart phone, I could get faxes and emails too.

I don't see an advantage. At least for me.

If I told my kids they have to go to Voip and turn in their cells, I'd have to sleep with one eye open.
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You're right, of course. There are a couple of advantages to a VOIP system but they're not huge.

1. Let's say you live in Stirling, NJ and have relatives in California. They don't have cell phones with free long distance or VOIP and you'd like to make it easy for them to call you. You can get a VOIP phone with a California area code. When they call you, they're making a local call but it rings in your home.

2. You have a business in Stirling, NJ but want to establish a "presence" in Chicago. You can get a VOIP phone with a Chicago area code. People in Chicago can call you with a local call and you ship your product to them.

3. You can do the same thing in foreign countries. For example, you can have a phone number for London or a city in India, for business or family. Usually, international phone calls are not free on a cell phone.

VOIP can't be "free". To interface between the Internet and the local phone company, somebody has to install a gateway in the local area. So for your California relatives, there must be a gateway installed in their area code, and the company has to get a group of phone numbers assigned to it (which it then assigns one phone number to you). Also, the local phone company charges the gateway owner to complete calls over its network.

All that has to be paid for so the VOIP company has to charge you something (or there has to be some advertising model that works).

The other alternative is something like Skype where the call is really made only over the Internet (both caller and receiver have to have an Internet connection). Since these calls only use the Internet, and do not access the local telephone company, no charges are incurred. But you're limited in who you can call - just people with an Internet connection and the proper software.

In the early days of VOIP, delay was a serious problem (it's much less now), and I used to recommend the same thing to people - just get a cell phone with unlimited long distance instead of VOIP.

Mike

[Oh, one more thing. You can generally take your VOIP phone anywhere in the world (where you can get an Internet connection) and it will work exactly the same as it does in your home. This is a serious problem for 911 service and the VOIP providers have been required to identify your primary location and route 911 calls to the proper place.]

Scott Donley
12-04-2009, 12:18 PM
Mike, #1 and #2 can be done using Google Voice at no charge to you. Works pretty slick really.

Mike Henderson
12-04-2009, 12:22 PM
Mike, #1 and #2 can be done using Google Voice at no charge to you. Works pretty slick really.
Yep, I never said there weren't other ways to do it, just that you could do it with VOIP.

Mike

paul cottingham
12-04-2009, 2:22 PM
If you have your own voip server like asterisk, you can put a voip phone in a relatives home, and make calls across the Internet, just like calling another extension on a key system. Tricky, but very doable, we have used this trick to stay in touch with clients while on vacation, they call our office, and it rings through to our hotel room. Of course, latency can be horrible, so it winds up sounding like a skype call.

But in general, you need a voip provider, and they go out of business with shocking regularity. But there are ways around it.

Paul

Jamie Buxton
12-04-2009, 3:12 PM
...Alternatively, is there a way to improve my DSL performance on my side of the line?...


I was having difficulty with my DSL. It gave slow performance, and would occasionally just halt in the middle of a youtube video. The phone company came out and tested the line to the edge of my house, and said it was fine. I ran a direct line from the edge of my house to the computer, and it worked performed properly. This pointed to troubles inside my house. One turned out to be an old phone. DSL uses frequencies higher than our ears hear. I think the old phone was shorting those high frequencies out. Radio Shack and the like offer filters and splitters that prevent the old phone from doing that. Another issue may have been the phone wiring in the house, which ran all over the place. There's no telling what reflections may have been there. I started to eliminate stubs, but eventually decided that was too difficult; I couldn't tell what wire was in use and what was not. So I put in new phone wiring, just to the outlets I use. Fortunately, all the wiring in my house is in the crawl space, so it is easily accessable. My DSL now works just like it is supposed to. Some of these fixes may help you.

paul cottingham
12-04-2009, 3:59 PM
If all the phone outlets in your house are daisy chained, DSL will be unhappy. If yoou "home run " them all, it will work much better. Glad you were able to fix it.

Curt Harms
12-05-2009, 7:20 PM
I've been running DSL on a 2nd line and it's worked great for years. (We live less than a mile from the Central office & have pretty new lines). We never used the 2nd line and couldn't get a dry loop so we had the DSL service moved to the 1st line. DSL didn't work. Ran a phone line from the network interface box to the DSL "modem". It worked great! Oh, oh. The problem turned out to be a phone line in the shop/basement. I asked a buddy about running a phone line next to a bundle of Romex. He said it shouldn't be a problem. It wasn't--for voice. Phone lines running in the same bundle as Romex set up some sort of interference with the DSL signal in the phone line. Disconnected that phone line and life is fine once again. I just rerouted the phone line away from the electric lines.

Peter Stahl
12-06-2009, 12:48 PM
Is there a special grade of wire to use for phone lines/DSL? When my house was done they used what looks like cat5 cable but they didn't home run any of it. Any online sources for good prices on wire and connectors?
What do you use where the all connect together, some type of terminal box in a garage/basement?
Is a wired home network worth doing or is wireless just as good?

paul cottingham
12-06-2009, 2:25 PM
Is there a special grade of wire to use for phone lines/DSL? When my house was done they used what looks like cat5 cable but they didn't home run any of it. Any online sources for good prices on wire and connectors?
What do you use where the all connect together, some type of terminal box in a garage/basement?
Is a wired home network worth doing or is wireless just as good?

I have wired my whole house with cat5E and run dsl for my internet. Every line is a home run, so I can use any drop for either phone or network. I have a minimum of 2 drops per room. They all terminate into a Leviton media box in my basement. It was a hassle, as my house is 60 years old, but well worth it. If you run phone lines as a daisy chain, it will eventually give you grief, and you cannot run network across it. I only used cat5E not cat6, and am totally pleased.

Wireless is slower, and has too many easy exploits available for me to ever be comfortable with it.

my opinion and my experience.

Paul

Jim Becker
12-06-2009, 9:16 PM
The service provider is an outfit called Pixius.

Yes, this is not 3G or 4G wireless.

http://www.pixiuswireless.com/how_it_works.php

Dan Mitchell
12-07-2009, 9:21 PM
Hard to say. I have no doubt I blow 5gb away very quickly. But it's hard to measure on your own.


I have Comcast cable as my ISP & I DL a lot. They recently imposed a 250 gig/mo limit. I have a program called Bandwidth Monitor which runs in the background, recording your upload & download bandwidth use http://www.bwmonitor.com/ It has a free trial, you might run it for a few days & see what your actual usage is before deciding.

Assuming the 5 gig figure is per month, that seems absurdly low to me.

On the VOIP issue, I've recently gotten on the waiting list for a new, free VOIP service Google is rolling out, called Google Voice. Details are a bit sketchy at the moment, but you can sign up for an "Invite" here: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?passive=true&service=grandcentral&ltmpl=bluebar&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fvoice%2Fac count%2Fsignin%2F%3Fprev%3D%252F&gsessionid=Umzc6MkqLA_ezjEihVNavA

Matt Meiser
12-07-2009, 9:57 PM
Google Voice isn't VOIP its a single contact number call routing system. Its pretty cool--I got an invite a few months ago. You can load your contact list and determine which number(s) to route a call to, or even send someone straight to voicemail. The voicemail system has a speech-to-text engine that will send the you an email transcript, but that's pretty poor IMHO. For outgoing calls you can get free nationwide long distance by typing in the number and selecting the phone you want to use. They system then calls you and connects you to that number.

Biggest problem is that you need to give everyone your new number. I realized after I chose my number that I should have chose an exchange in the same city as our corporate office. But I did get a really easy to remember number.

Dan Mitchell
12-07-2009, 10:00 PM
Google Voice isn't VOIP its a single contact number call routing system. Its pretty cool--I got an invite a few months ago. You can load your contact list and determine which number(s) to route a call to, or even send someone straight to voicemail. The voicemail system has a speech-to-text engine that will send the you an email transcript, but that's pretty poor IMHO. For outgoing calls you can get free nationwide long distance by typing in the number and selecting the phone you want to use. They system then calls you and connects you to that number.

Biggest problem is that you need to give everyone your new number. I realized after I chose my number that I should have chose an exchange in the same city as our corporate office. But I did get a really easy to remember number.

Matt - Is it possible to use it to eliminate the need for a local phone service provider? That's my interest in it.

Matt Meiser
12-07-2009, 10:03 PM
Matt - Is it possible to use it to eliminate the need for a local phone service provider? That's my interest in it.

No different than using your cell phone. And you might as well just give your cell phone number out if that's your only reason for using it. People would just be calling your Google Voice number which would forward to your cell.

Dan Mitchell
12-07-2009, 10:47 PM
No different than using your cell phone.

Cell service isn't great here, and for a number of reasons which don't bear going into, my cell number is actually in an area code in another state. I guess my question is, if I set up one of these accounts & someone calls whatever number I have assigned to it, will the phone on my desk (& those elsewhere in the house) ring, and will I be able to make local & long distance calls from those phones in the "usual manner"? Is it necessary for the computer to be on?

Matt Meiser
12-07-2009, 11:05 PM
Yes, but those phones have to have service provided by someone else. Google isn't providing the actual phone service. To call out, if you don't use the computer to dial, you are using your own long distance.

Dan Mitchell
12-07-2009, 11:27 PM
Yes, but those phones have to have service provided by someone else. Google isn't providing the actual phone service. To call out, if you don't use the computer to dial, you are using your own long distance.

I'm actually more concerned about local service. Will the Google service replace local service?

Thanks for the info.

Matt Meiser
12-07-2009, 11:34 PM
Not really sure how else to explain it. Its not phone service. Its a number and voicemail system that will forward calls to whatever phones you have but those phones have to have service from someone else--a cell phone company, a traditional phone company, cable company, another VOIP provider, etc. It won't do anything to make a service-less phone work.

Dan Mitchell
12-07-2009, 11:44 PM
That answers my question, thanks, Matt

Gene Howe
12-08-2009, 9:03 AM
Frontier claims they are going to invest in improvements immediately but we'll see.

Service standards probably vary region by region within the same company, but I've had excellent experience with Frontiernet and frontier's land line service here in northern AZ.