[138140] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: What vexes VoIP users?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Mon Feb 28 14:28:48 2011
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
In-Reply-To: <6D8BB8D2-3401-45C2-8E4C-3E1FA41502C1@getjive.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 11:25:48 -0800
To: Bret Palsson <bret@getjive.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Another vexation for VOIP in the SMB environment is that it rarely works =
particularly
well (if at all) in light of a multiple-external-address NAT pool.
You simply have to map all of your VOIP phones in such a way that they =
consistently
get the same external IP every time or shit breaks badly.
Owen
On Feb 28, 2011, at 11:11 AM, Bret Palsson wrote:
> Since our company is a VoIP company, I will chime in to this topic.
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> Let's start off with the definitions so everyone is on the same page:
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> 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.]
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> Alright, now that that's out of the way...
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> 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
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> 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.
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> -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.
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> -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?
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> There you go, some common worries, with some answers to hopefully =
sooth the vexed VoIP user.
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> Bret Palsson
> Sr. Network & Systems Administrator
> www.getjive.com
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> On Feb 28, 2011, at 11:37 AM, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
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>> 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!
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>> 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?
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