[138154] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: What vexes VoIP users?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jared Mauch)
Mon Feb 28 16:01:58 2011
In-Reply-To: <C2FDF04F-87BA-4CC2-9BA8-55D0577C7526@getjive.com>
From: Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:00:53 -0500
To: Bret Palsson <bret@getjive.com>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
I've found that sip alg on devices is badly broken and must be disabled. Thi=
s is true of ios and various consumer electronics devices. Nat traversal for=
multiple devices is not an issue in any case I have seen.=20
Turning off "smart nat" usually solves it.=20
Jared Mauch
On Feb 28, 2011, at 2:34 PM, Bret Palsson <bret@getjive.com> wrote:
> Sorry I didn't include this in the last email...
>=20
> We have large clients who have phones registered on multiples of public IP=
s from the same location. Works no problem. We do some trickery on our side t=
o make that happen, but I thought all VoIP companies would do that.
>=20
> -Bret
>=20
> On Feb 28, 2011, at 12:25 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
>=20
>> Another vexation for VOIP in the SMB environment is that it rarely works p=
articularly
>> well (if at all) in light of a multiple-external-address NAT pool.
>>=20
>> You simply have to map all of your VOIP phones in such a way that they co=
nsistently
>> get the same external IP every time or shit breaks badly.
>>=20
>> Owen
>>=20
>> On Feb 28, 2011, at 11:11 AM, Bret Palsson wrote:
>>=20
>>> Since our company is a VoIP company, I will chime in to this topic.
>>>=20
>>> Let's start off with the definitions so everyone is on the same page:
>>>=20
>>> vex |veks|
>>> verb [ trans. ]
>>> make (someone) feel annoyed, frustrated, or worried, esp. with trivial m=
atters : the memory of the conversation still vexed him | [as adj. ] ( vexin=
g)the most vexing questions for policymakers.]
>>>=20
>>> Alright, now that that's out of the way...
>>>=20
>>> I am only referring to small medium business and some enterprise (Those a=
re 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
>>>=20
>>> Responses:
>>> - Seemingly complex... Very true. Most VoIP companies, both hosted and o=
n premises are difficult/time consuming to setup and make work they way you w=
ant 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 p=
erceive there is a problem. With the FCC mandating all POTS move to a VoIP b=
ackend (which for long hauls, is mostly already true) POTS will experience t=
he 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 maintain=
s good relationships with peers, the only concern is the last-mile(=46rom th=
e CO to location). Now there is much more that plays in quality, ie. codec s=
election, voice buffer, locality to the pbx.
>>> - Price... Believe it or not people are worried about paying less for be=
tter 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 locat=
ion that keeps the copper in the ground properly maintained. If you are in o=
lder locations, which one of our offices are, there are remedies, you can co=
ntact your bandwidth provider and have them do a head to head test using a B=
ERD (bit error rate detector) and they can find the problem. But that's a wh=
ole other topic.
>>>=20
>>> -PBX:
>>> Some people believe that on premise is the best location for a PB=
X, this may or may not be true. I happen to believe that keeping it off prem=
ise is the way to go. You get up-time, redundancy, locality, and mobility. Y=
ou just plug in your phone and your phone is up and running. Move offices.. g=
ot bandwidth? Your good to go. No equipment to worry about, say a power outa=
ge 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 back=
end.
>>>=20
>>> -Outages: If the internet does fail, most providers offer WAN survivabil=
ity. The customer plugs in phone lines into the router and if the internet g=
oes 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 a=
ll our experience going on 7 years now, 90% of the time WAN outages happen, g=
uess what also dies, the POTS! Who would have thought that when cables get c=
ut, that the phone lines were also part of the cables?
>>>=20
>>> There you go, some common worries, with some answers to hopefully sooth t=
he vexed VoIP user.
>>>=20
>>> Bret Palsson
>>> Sr. Network & Systems Administrator
>>> www.getjive.com
>>>=20
>>>=20
>>> On Feb 28, 2011, at 11:37 AM, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
>>>=20
>>>> 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 peopl=
e 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 phone=
s, not
>>>> to VoIP. I myself have a cell phone but no POTS service at my home addr=
ess. 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
>>>=20
>>=20
>=20
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