Re: VOIP - What Works? What Doesn't?

["Bob La Londe" <none@xxxxxxxx>]

"Robert Macy" <robert.a.macy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:c5b5ea37-6eac-4a90-a9cf-351628b64106@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On Mar 23, 6:13 pm, "Bob La Londe" <n...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I've been playing with voice over IP telephone service for the last
>> couple
>> days.  I've had a plain old Magic Jack plugged into a USB port on my desk
>> computer for a while now (2 years maybe).  I use it as a spare line, and
>> for
>> the tackle and mold making sideline business.  It works pretty decent.
>> Sometimes its a little tinny sounding, but as long as my Internet works
>> it
>> seems to work.  Since I upgraded my internet service a while back it has
>> worked much better.
>>
>> Well, I decided to check out 8x8.  They are a service claiming to provide
>> professional grade VOIP services.  I know of businesses much larger than
>> mine who are using them.  So far I am not impressed.  They setup my
>> account
>> wrong, and they couldn't fix it.  They had to send me another piece of
>> VOIP
>> equipment to get it to work the way they set it up.  Its so I can send
>> faxes
>> using an ordinary analog fax machine over their VOIP service.  It doesn't
>> work.  (I haven't had an actual fax machine hooked up in years for my
>> business, but I need to test everything.)
>>
>> They claimed to make some adjustments to their compression codecs, and it
>> supposedly tested in both directions, but I never received a test fax.
>> When
>> I tested further just to make sure hardware was good I plugged both the
>> fax
>> machine and the fax modem into a plain old telephone service (POTS) line.
>> Both pieces of equipment worked fine on POTS.  Then on a lark I decided
>> to
>> plug the fax modem into the Magic Jack.  I don't figure there was a
>> snowball's chance in heck of that working, but amazingly it did.  Then
>> back
>> to the VOIP port from 8x8.  No joy.  Call goes through, I can hear the
>> fax
>> tones, but it fails every time.
>>
>> Sadly I must conclude that 8x8 is not quite were they need to be just yet
>> for me to recommend them to my customers.  If they want a cheap phone
>> line
>> for occasional use I think a Magic Jack would be a better choice.
>>
>> I've got three 8x8 VOIP adaptors sitting in my communications room right
>> now.  All different models.
>
> I was told would be very dissatisfied with VOIP *if* your link is
> satellite. Reason is that satellite links tend to 'lump' the packets
> into very noticeable delays for speech.

Satellite also has huge ping times compared to other services.  It doesn't
work really well for internet access to security video either for the same
reason.