Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Residential VOIP



Rumors
VOIP companies like Vonage have been around for awhile, but friends have told me horror stories such as incurring long distance charges to call a neighbor or being forced to use a new phone number.  Also, I have had VOIP at my workplace and the quality had been horrendous at times.  Worst of all, local 911 service is not included!

Setup
My local phone company just began offering residential VOIP as a "digital phone service".  It consists of a Linksys Internet Phone adapter that plugs into my wireless router.  Although the adapter also includes 2 phone jacks, only one jack is live; the second is reserved for a second line.

The phone wire coming into my house consists of three colored wire pairs, which normally are used for a first line (blue-white pairs), second line (green pairs), and an alarm system priority line (orange pairs).  The phone company rewired my green pairs to handle the DSL line, disconnected the blue-white pairs from the phone company, and also disconnected the orange pair from the alarm system.

Inside the house where I have the DSL modem, wireless router and VOIP adapter, I have 2 phone jacks in the wall.  The first jack is connected to the green pairs, which connect to the DSL line outside.  The second jack is just like every other jack in the house -- it is connected to the blue-white pairs.

The green-pair jack is connected to the DSL modem input.  The modem output goes into my wireless router's input, and the VOIP adapter is connected to a network connection on the router.  The phone jack on the VOIP adapter is fed back into the blue-white jack to distribute the phone signal throughout the house.

Although the VOIP adapter pulls it's own IP address from the router, after initial setup, the VOIP adapter does not need to be accessible on the public Internet.  No public ports need to be forwarded through my router to the VOIP adapter.

The Alarm System
Old home alarm systems and fax machines can be tricky. The VOIP voltage output may not be strong enough to receive faxes or to make a priority call from the alarm system. In fact, many experts do not recommend connecting alarm systems to VOIP lines.

In regards to my printer/fax machine, I am one of the lucky ones. My printer can still receive faxes after hooking it into the VOIP line.

Before I had my house rewired as described above, I tried going the "single jack" route and not use any of the house jacks, since my phone is a cordless model with multiple handsets. The next day, the trouble light was lit on my alarm keypad because the alarm system could not find a dial tone. I cleared the trouble light, but the light came back on again later. Although I canceled my alarm monitoring service years ago, the alarm system continues to periodically checks for a dial tone and notes a problem if one is not found. After feeding the VOIP output back into the house jacks as described above, the dial tone check passes and the trouble light no longer comes on.

Note that if I still had a monitoring service, the orange wires would need to be reconnected and I would need to perform additional tests:
"The thing to do is to take a phone off the hook and leave it off for at least one minute (if you still hear dial tone, press the # key on the phone to make it stop, but leave the phone off the hook while you make the following test). THEN test the alarm to see if it can 'phone home.'"
Another thing to think about with a monitoring service connected to VOIP is that even if you make it past the tests, what do you plan to do in the case of a power outage?  The alarm will continue to function for awhile due to the battery that is connected to it.  Unless the DSL modem, router, and VOIP adapter are all connected to a UPS (uninterruptible power supply), the alarm trouble light will come back on again.

Many of the newer alarm systems connect to monitoring services via satellite, cellular, or broadband, so telephone connectivity is not necessary.  Again, you may need a UPS for broadband-based monitoring.

Voice Quality
Bandwidth congestion is noted as the reason for voice quality issues.  If your call is choppy to the person you are talking to, this indicates upstream bandwidth congestion.  If your call is choppy to you, this indicates downstream bandwidth congestion.  P2P programs, viruses, worms, and Spyware can all contribute to bandwidth congestion.

If I use a P2P/torrent downloader, even on a fast 6mbps connection, the VOIP connection may become choppy and/or the alarm system will show the trouble light since it cannot get a clear dial-tone.  Enabling VOIP as your bandwidth's highest priority in the router's QoS (Quality of Service) settings (and P2P as the lowest priority) has fixed this for the most part.

Reality
Long distance is free, I get to keep my old phone number, most of the time the quality is great, and the VOIP service includes voice mail (superior to any phone answering machine) and a web interface to view call logs and change VOIP settings.  The web interface is also used to configure local 911 access.

Best of all, I previously paid $74 a month for 3mbps DSL and an enhanced local telephone (POTS) service.  I also paid a $7 monthly fee and 7-cents-per-minute for Sprint long distance.  I now pay $67 a month for 6mbps DSL and VOIP with long distance included.