Voip Not ready for Satellite Broadband yet

[Watermonkey 0]

So I just got my VOIP router in the mail today and I immediately tried a couple calls on it. We've got Wildblue satellite internet, 1.0M download, 200K upload. I tested out the upload speed today and it came back with 237kbps at toast.net, so the bandwidth is there, but the far end couldn't hear half of what I was saying. I heard pretty much everything from the far end, so that worked all right. I'm going to call the company, voip.com tomorrow and see if they have any suggestions on how to tweek it, but I'm not holding out much hope. I fear it's going back from whence it came. Anyone else have any experience with VOIP?

[rvalkass 5]

I set a VOIP system up for a friend, and when we tested it, it worked perfectly. A few weeks later, however, they said that the system had stopped working completely - no-one could hear anything at either end when phoning people. It took me a while to figure it out, but the cause was their fax machine. It didn't stop calls coming in or going out, but did stop the actual voice from moving around. Unplugging it during a call allowed you to hear everything crystal clear. Plug it back in and everything went silent. It had all the filters and everything else attached, nothing wrong with the setup at all.Also, VOIP phones are very sensitive to interference, in my experience. Try not to use it near your PC, near a wireless router or any sort of large electrical appliance and see if that helps. If not, phone the company that made the phone who will more than likely have a troubleshooting sheet where they can simply read off what has caused the problem in the past. Finally, if you can get hold of a wired VOIP phone (assuming yours is wireless) or vice verca, see if that makes a difference.

[jamers 0]

So I just got my VOIP router in the mail today and I immediately tried a couple calls on it. We've got Wildblue satellite internet, 1.0M download, 200K upload. I tested out the upload speed today and it came back with 237kbps at toast.net, so the bandwidth is there, but the far end couldn't hear half of what I was saying. I heard pretty much everything from the far end, so that worked all right. I'm going to call the company, voip.com tomorrow and see if they have any suggestions on how to tweek it, but I'm not holding out much hope. I fear it's going back from whence it came. Anyone else have any experience with VOIP?

Where do you live and what kind of modem did you get?
I have had great service with my VIOP package. I live in Gatineau, Quebec and I took great pleasure in dumping BELL and Videotron to get my phone rolled into one package with internet access. I recently had my free cable disconnected and that is one of the reasons I went with a new service. I wasn't going to pay almost 100 dollars for phone, TV and internet. Now I get better internet service with much higher speeds than Videotron plus a Canada wide free unlimited long distance with 2 lines, call waiting, call display and all the "*" services for free. For TV, I have found quite a few places on the internet to get free TV and movies on demand, no commercials, no stupid little logos or PIPs flying all over my screen anymore and I can pause M.A.S.H. or whatever I'm watching while I go get a beer or other attitude adjustments. To quote Bill Gates talking about availability of traditionaly broadcast media, "we will laugh at what we had". ...I think I'll go watch some Pink Panther" cartoons, maybe the one where he cuts everything in half with the power saw.

[iGuest 3]

VoIp will have many issues if your ISP is a Satellite system. Any VoIP service should be able to tell you that. The Latency is to high, even if you have good pings. I work with VoIP everyday as my job. Even a cable system or DSL would have problems if the latency was bad, but satellite is going to be very bad.-sean

[karlosvalencia 0]

Where do you live and what kind of modem did you get?I have had great service with my VIOP package. I live in Gatineau, Quebec and I took great pleasure in dumping BELL and Videotron to get my phone rolled into one package with internet access. I recently had my free cable disconnected and that is one of the reasons I went with a new service. I wasn't going to pay almost 100 dollars for phone, TV and internet. Now I get better internet service with much higher speeds than Videotron plus a Canada wide free unlimited long distance with 2 lines, call waiting, call display and all the "*" services for free. For TV, I have found quite a few places on the internet to get free TV and movies on demand, no commercials, no stupid little logos or PIPs flying all over my screen anymore and I can pause M.A.S.H. or whatever I'm watching while I go get a beer or other attitude adjustments. To quote Bill Gates talking about availability of traditionaly broadcast media, "we will laugh at what we had". ...I think I'll go watch some Pink Panther" cartoons, maybe the one where he cuts everything in half with the power saw.

Just curious. Who did you go with who wasn't Bell or Videotron? on the other hand,talking about freebies. What IP TV sites would you recommend?

[etycto 0]

i've had the best experience with my VOIP i have vonage i use to have bellsouth it was pretty cheep like 25 a month but we could not make any long distance calls, no caller id, and voice mail was for and extra cost. but when we got vonage we could call anywhere in the US and som european nations it's seven dollars more than bellsouth but the extra features like voicemail caller ID and many more is worth that seven dollars.

[georgebaileyster 0]

The first question would be 'why do you need a dedicated VoIp router'? in essence, voice over internet protocol are nothing more than data packets, which in turn should be transmitted at a given speed for a given quality. Any network is only as fast as its slowest link. Thus you should first understand the nature of your connection.So called 'high speed internet over satellite' is made up from three main service providers two in europe and one in the USA. In turn, any one can be a re-seller for these companies and either rent space on the operators NOC (network operations centre aka ground station) or, buy their own and rent space onthe same satellite. How these operators configure the ground staion allocations is the main issue.People will argue that if you calculate the speed of light and then account for the distance traveled to the satellite and back again (they sit some 35,000 miles above the equator) then you have this inherent delay; well you have the same delay here on earth accounting for the number of routers, switches, servers et al you need to traverse to get the page you want not to mentiion thedistances involved on a cumulative basis.The dedicated voip router is just another delay in the system. If you were to use a softphone i.e one on your desktop and send straight to the modem, you take out one more set of processing along the way. Here in Botswana we run on DSL but we can NEVER get above 1k download during the and 35k at night even when we are paying for 512k, simply because they don't have a clue how to configure the thing.Start by going to http://www.mycooltools.com/ and using the tools there, test your connection and, regardless of what results are displayed, try skype, i-call and any others you come across at differing times, but also play with the ports you use. Their are many to choose from and most are never used in normal life, for instance try 119 or 463 which are common usage for usenet etc. but you may find your provider blocks all but the usual 60 and 25. Also, with satellite, your antenna (dish) to odu the thing that fits on the end of the arm, are a crucial balance in the math of satellite connections. Check what size dish you have, if it is just 90cm or 1.2m then consider changing to 2.4 (people will say you can't go this big on Ku band which is what you will be on but again not true. This in itself will make your link far more efficient and increase the allimportant gain which voip is dependant upon..... Gain, Gain, and Gain again......

[Watermonkey 0]

The first question would be 'why do you need a dedicated VoIp router'? in essence, voice over internet protocol are nothing more than data packets, which in turn should be transmitted at a given speed for a given quality. Any network is only as fast as its slowest link. Thus you should first understand the nature of your connection.

Speed isn't the issue. It's latency. My round trip ping (latency) is over a second now. It's been slowly increasing over the years for some reason. VOIP router is necessary unless you want to use the microphone and speakers that are built in to or plugged into your computer. I prefer to keep the VOIP part in the background and use the phone like a traditional land line. Call me old fashioned.

So called 'high speed internet over satellite' is made up from three main service providers two in europe and one in the USA. In turn, any one can be a re-seller for these companies and either rent space on the operators NOC (network operations centre aka ground station) or, buy their own and rent space onthe same satellite. How these operators configure the ground staion allocations is the main issue.

Not true. There are two main providers in the states and probably others I don't know of. The two are Wildblue and Hughesnet. If I were to buy today, I'd buy Hughesnet because they have a better value. Wildblue owns one of the two satellites it uses and leases the other one from a Canadian satellite company. Hughesnet owns its bird. Japan operates a space-based internet service that blows anything in N. America away speed wise. I don't know what their latency is like, but when you're talking about some 90,000 miles round trip (four trips) plus your ultimate destination, you're going to have a minimum latency built in no matter what. Add all the routers and other hardware including light to electric and back converters, etc., and all sites will take noticeably longer to access than if you eliminated that ground to space link.

People will argue that if you calculate the speed of light and then account for the distance traveled to the satellite and back again (they sit some 35,000 miles above the equator) then you have this inherent delay; well you have the same delay here on earth accounting for the number of routers, switches, servers et al you need to traverse to get the page you want not to mentiion thedistances involved on a cumulative basis.

As explained above, plus 22,300 miles above the equator at sea level, to be exact. This is a substantial increase in distance and adds, for me, anywhere from 700ms to 1200ms delay.

The dedicated voip router is just another delay in the system. If you were to use a softphone i.e one on your desktop and send straight to the modem, you take out one more set of processing along the way. Here in Botswana we run on DSL but we can NEVER get above 1k download during the and 35k at night even when we are paying for 512k, simply because they don't have a clue how to configure the thing.
Start by going to http://www.mycooltools.com/ and using the tools there, test your connection and, regardless of what results are displayed, try skype, i-call and any others you come across at differing times, but also play with the ports you use. Their are many to choose from and most are never used in normal life, for instance try 119 or 463 which are common usage for usenet etc. but you may find your provider blocks all but the usual 60 and 25. Also, with satellite, your antenna (dish) to odu the thing that fits on the end of the arm, are a crucial balance in the math of satellite connections. Check what size dish you have, if it is just 90cm or 1.2m then consider changing to 2.4 (people will say you can't go this big on Ku band which is what you will be on but again not true. This in itself will make your link far more efficient and increase the allimportant gain which voip is dependant upon..... Gain, Gain, and Gain again......

It's true that increasing the size of the dish to, say, 2m would add a lot of stability to the system, but it wouldn't affect the delay one bit and I'd still be limited to the bandwidth and usage package (FAP: Fair Access Policy) I'm paying for. I'd be interested in increasing the stability and decreasing the weather fading, but the cost of an antenna this size, not to mention the installation logistics, would be enormous compared to the small benefit and I still wouldn't be able to use VOIP.

I canceled our land line phone a year ago when I had to buy a GSM phone for work. I bought a two set cordless phone that can link to a cell phone via bluetooth. That works out pretty well.