[138138] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: What vexes VoIP users?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bret Palsson)
Mon Feb 28 14:11:50 2011
From: Bret Palsson <bret@getjive.com>
In-Reply-To: <18237.1298918263@localhost>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:11:39 -0700
To: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Since our company is a VoIP company, I will chime in to this topic.
Let's start off with the definitions so everyone is on the same page:
vex |veks|
verb [ trans. ]
make (someone) feel annoyed, frustrated, or worried, esp. with trivial =
matters : the memory of the conversation still vexed him | [as adj. ] ( =
vexing)the most vexing questions for policymakers.]
Alright, now that that's out of the way...
I am only referring to small medium business and some enterprise (Those =
are all our customers, we do not do residential)
- Seemingly complex.
- Worried about the "What if the internet goes down" scenario.
- Call quality.
- Price
- Location
- Outages
Responses:
- Seemingly complex... Very true. Most VoIP companies, both hosted and =
on premises are difficult/time consuming to setup and make work they way =
you want it.=20
- What if the internet goes down. This one is a challenge. POTS actually =
have issues too, but when analog phone service goes down, there is no =
light on the phone indicating that the phones are not working so many =
customers perceive there is a problem. With the FCC mandating all POTS =
move to a VoIP backend (which for long hauls, is mostly already true) =
POTS will experience the same downtime as the internet.=20
However as we all know, the internet is built to tolerate outages.=20
For most people they don't understand how the internet actually works.
- Call quality... If a VoIP company pays for good bandwidth and =
maintains good relationships with peers, the only concern is the =
last-mile(=46rom the CO to location). Now there is much more that plays =
in quality, ie. codec selection, voice buffer, locality to the pbx.
- Price... Believe it or not people are worried about paying less for =
better service. Who would have thought?
- Location... Location is super important both in the last mile and PBX.
- Last mile:
In older locations the copper in the ground is aged, if =
you can't get fiber and your stuck using T1, lines, then hopefully you =
are in a location that keeps the copper in the ground properly =
maintained. If you are in older locations, which one of our offices are, =
there are remedies, you can contact your bandwidth provider and have =
them do a head to head test using a BERD (bit error rate detector) and =
they can find the problem. But that's a whole other topic.
-PBX:
Some people believe that on premise is the best location =
for a PBX, this may or may not be true. I happen to believe that keeping =
it off premise is the way to go. You get up-time, redundancy, locality, =
and mobility. You just plug in your phone and your phone is up and =
running. Move offices.. got bandwidth? Your good to go. No equipment to =
worry about, say a power outage happens, your voicemail still works =
people call in and are in call queues and have no clue you are down. =
Feels more like POTS with an enterprise backend.
-Outages: If the internet does fail, most providers offer WAN =
survivability. The customer plugs in phone lines into the router and if =
the internet goes down, they can make emergency calls or calls to the =
world limited by the number of lines the router can accept and are =
plugged in of course. Now in all our experience going on 7 years now, =
90% of the time WAN outages happen, guess what also dies, the POTS! Who =
would have thought that when cables get cut, that the phone lines were =
also part of the cables?
There you go, some common worries, with some answers to hopefully sooth =
the vexed VoIP user.
Bret Palsson
Sr. Network & Systems Administrator
www.getjive.com
On Feb 28, 2011, at 11:37 AM, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:29:08 EST, Bret Clark said:
>> On 02/28/2011 01:17 PM, Leigh Porter wrote:
>>> VoIP at the last mile is just too niche at the moment. It's for =
people on this list, not my mother.
>=20
>> Baloney...if that was the case, then all these ILEC's wouldn't be=20
>> whining about POT's lines decreasing exponentially year over year!
>=20
> I do believe that the ILEC's are mostly losing POTS lines to cell =
phones, not
> to VoIP. I myself have a cell phone but no POTS service at my home =
address. On
> the other hand, I *am* seeing a metric ton of Vonage and Magic Jack =
ads on TV
> these days - if VoIP is "too niche", how are those two making any =
money?
>=20
