Considering VOIP For Your Home, Home Office, or Business needs?

IF you are considering VOIP for voice I found an interesting tool to test your DSL or cable line. It is offered by VoIP Review. Link to the tool is: http://www.voipreview.org/voipspeedtester.aspx

This tool will test your DSL or cable line for speed, “Jitter”, and “packet loss”. Speed will indicate how many VoIP lines your current connection will support. Jitter is a measure if the steadiness of the line transmissions. Packet loss is the accuracy of the data transmissions. Below are the results from my home office:
The upload speed is 285 kbs which is within the spec for a VoIP line. Jitteriness and packet loss are not issues for my line. This result is no surprise as I enjoy; a DSL line that rarely is “down” and good voice quality using Vonage.

I doubt that I could support 4 VoIP lines effectively with a 285kbs download speed as indicated in the above "advanced results" (I have 1 Vonage and 1 analog in the office).
“DSL reports” http://www.dslreports.com/ is the gold standard for broadband Internet connectivity information. Among many information assets they have a comprehensive set of tools to test your Internet connection. They also have very good info on broadband line providers.

VoIP is a real effective and cost saving choice provided you find the right vendor that meets your expectations and specific line conditions. I use Vonage and was lucky that I have had only a few minor glitches in the last 4 years. The set-up for my office network is:
Note: I don’t use the routers capability to prioritize voice traffic over data traffic. To use this feature I would have to connect the Linksys router to the DSL modem, let the Linksys manage the PPOE authentication, and connect the Microsoft router to allow for wireless connectivity. When I got the Vonage service I already had the MN-700 hooked up and it was working well. I did not have the confidence that the Linksys would be trouble free providing the PPOE logons. If I am on a Vonage call, doing some sort of download, and get some voice distortion I just pause the network traffic this solves the issue. This is not a perfect solution, just a practical one! If I have more frequent voice quality issues I would bit the bullet and make the Linksys work as the gateway router.

So if you want to save some money, take advantage of VoIP features (many more than an analog phone line), don't want to install a PBX, and most of this post was "techno babble" contact me (stuart@911computer-rescue.com, or click on the toll free "call me!" box on my home page 911computer-rescue.com.