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I have DSL and home telephone etc but am becoming more and more interested in Vonage. My local phone service costs about 50 bucks a month so the 25 bucks Vonage is asking for sounds sweeter. One problem, though. I also have my high speed internet through Bellsouth DSL. Can I have DSL but NOT local phone service?

I would just do cable internet but can't because the satellite lines are making use of the installed cable jacks atm. (Fronm Dish to multiplexer to cable lines to jacks)

Any tips?

You'd have to ask your local tech people to see if they offer "dry lines", but chances are they don't because BellSouth sucks balls.

-Adam

ps. Ask them if the person you talk to if they work for BellSouth or if they work for "CallTech". Chances are they work for CallTech.

We had Vonage for about a year. The first few months were fine but after awhile the call quality got worse and worse and there were continual problems with the router.

Martrae wrote:We had Vonage for about a year. The first few months were fine but after awhile the call quality got worse and worse and there were continual problems with the router.

Thats your ISP, or the fact you run skype, games, and downloads on a capped line.

I had no issues with Vonage for 2 years of usage. Occasionally the calls would have latency issues but that was few and far between,

lyion wrote:

Martrae wrote:We had Vonage for about a year. The first few months were fine but after awhile the call quality got worse and worse and there were continual problems with the router.

Thats your ISP, or the fact you run skype, games, and downloads on a capped line.

I had no issues with Vonage for 2 years of usage. Occasionally the calls would have latency issues but that was few and far between,

i honestly think people are fucking retarded to think a non SLA service is going to magically replace a real telephone solution

Tikker wrote:

lyion wrote:

Martrae wrote:We had Vonage for about a year. The first few months were fine but after awhile the call quality got worse and worse and there were continual problems with the router.

Thats your ISP, or the fact you run skype, games, and downloads on a capped line.

I had no issues with Vonage for 2 years of usage. Occasionally the calls would have latency issues but that was few and far between,

i honestly think people are fucking retarded to think a non SLA service is going to magically replace a real telephone solution

Can you explain that in laymans terms?

Look, I don't use the telephone that often, maybe once a day at best. I don't care about quality, a fucking soupcan on a string would do. lol I just was wondering if it was possible to have DSL WITHOUT local service. In other words, cut out Bellsouth completely except for the DSL--can this be done or do you have to have local landline to have DSL?

And...will I need some kind of wireless adapters to get all of the phones in my house to work? (Upstairs etc?)

Thanks!

As far as I am aware, you still need some kind of normal land line in order to get DSL. Basically, they are reclaiming a couple of the wires that are unused in your phone line in order to provide DSL signal. If you don't have a turned up phone line, no DSL. So, don't think you'll be able to do it.

Oh, and as for what Tikker is talking about, a SLA = Service Level Agreement. Basically, it's the promise from whoever provides a given service as to what percentage of the time it will be up, what the quality of that service will be, etc. Phone lines actually have an pretty strong SLA, by law, pretty much. If your phone line goes down, they have to move pretty quick on fixing it. Even if you just have degraded service, they come out and work on it. The best SLAs are for business-class circuits, such as full T-1s, etc. At those levels, you get agreements like 1 free day of service for every 1 minute of downtime, period, if not a better deal than that. Of course, you pay for such things.

Vonage, on the other hand, offers no SLA for their service, that I'm aware of anyway. You get what you get, period. If it's bad, well, they'll tell you talk to your DSL provider. They are under no obligation to repair your issue rapidly, and if you have extended periods without phone service, tough shit for you. For some people it works fine, and the cheaper cost is a draw. But be aware, you're giving up any guarantee of reliability if you go that way.

-Arlos

lyion wrote:

Martrae wrote:We had Vonage for about a year. The first few months were fine but after awhile the call quality got worse and worse and there were continual problems with the router.

Thats your ISP, or the fact you run skype, games, and downloads on a capped line.

You are somewhat correct. Never ran skype or downloads. Games, yes. The problems continued after we moved from Ohio to NC, though, so it wasn't the ISP. Dropped Vonage and got a new router and all problems disappeared.

The router they send you is a cheap one so be aware of potential problems with it.

Ouchyfish wrote:Can you explain that in laymans terms?

POTS (plain old telephone system) is 100ish years old. the technology is very well known, supported, documented, etc

essentially it's a VERY stable service (99.999% uptime is generally the absolute minimum standard that telco's aim for). pots is also self powered (you don't have to plug in anything to power at your end) so it'll continue to work in a power outage

it's also circuit switched, meaning that your wire is your wire all the way from your house to the CO

the SLA thing I was referring to goes like this (arlos hit a peice of it)

Internet service is pretty much universal in that it's a best effort service

IE, if your dsl/cable is flaky you can complain all you like, but you have no written guarantee it'll be back in service within XXX hours/days/weeks


part of what Martrae is complaining about is commmon too


you need to know a fair amount about QoS to get all your shit working, and most folks don't

telco stuff however is pretty much by law regarded as a utility, so gets high priority repair (as well as uptime)


all that being said, VoIP can work fantastic, and maybe you'll never have an issue with it





as for the DSL and no local line, a lot of telco's sell dry loop service

ie, you pay reduced rate to rent cable pair, and then just subscribe to their DSL

it's generally not all that much cheaper than subscribing to local service =\


vonage over cable makes a bit more sense in that regards, but cable is more prone to overloading of nodes than DSL is

Thanks all.

So I'm fucked basically...=\

bah!

It's free to try Vonage, there isn't a contract and most people have no issues.

Granted, VOIP is not on par with the switched U.S. POTS system that we've had running since the stone ages, but it's also not nearly that far off.

I ran Vonage for two years and the only issue I ever ran into was a few blips of latency problems.. That's where it took a few seconds for the call to sync up.

I'd still be running it except I have a work line into my house now.

Ouchyfish wrote:Thanks all.

So I'm fucked basically...=\

bah!

you can try it and see what you think of it

some people say they can tell the difference, some say you can't at all

you'll also get some loonies who will say it's better omfg!

everything eventually will go to some sort of packet switched network

circuit switched is just a dying breed

I've used Vonage since they first launched so I still pay $14.99. The only problems I have had is when I had torrents running downloading ISO images.

Tossica wrote:I've used Vonage since they first launched so I still pay $14.99. The only problems I have had is when I had torrents running downloading ISO images.

if you set up the QoS on your router properly, that shouldn't really be a problem either

Tikker wrote:

Tossica wrote:I've used Vonage since they first launched so I still pay $14.99. The only problems I have had is when I had torrents running downloading ISO images.

if you set up the QoS on your router properly, that shouldn't really be a problem either

Right. I had the vonage router hanging off of my firewall and the QOS does not work that way. I had to put vonage router in front of the firewall and turn off NAT I believe to get everything to work right.

well, you'd have to do QoS on both devices the first way you described

Tikker wrote:well, you'd have to do QoS on both devices the first way you described

My firewall doesn't do QOS.

Tossica wrote:

Tikker wrote:well, you'd have to do QoS on both devices the first way you described

My firewall doesn't do QOS.

really?

that sucks

what do you have for a firewall?

Tikker wrote:

Tossica wrote:

Tikker wrote:well, you'd have to do QoS on both devices the first way you described

My firewall doesn't do QOS.

really?

that sucks

what do you have for a firewall?

Watchguard Firebox III