I decided the other day to give VoIP a try–I wanted to see what it sounded like, how well it worked with the volume of traffic I put out across my router, what interesting devices are available, and so on.
I started off by going the easy route, letting Vonage do all the work: I got their basic service, with a Linksys SIP device (a full blown 4-port router with two telephone ports, quite nice actually). I decided to keep my original POTS line still connected.
Since Vonage requires you to use their devices (buy at a store, or order online), I had to wait for them to ship the Linksys router. In the meantime, I decided to try out their softphone, basically software much like Skype. And, much like Skype, the quality was low. For the five days I waited for shipping, I found myself more and more annoyed with the stuttering that you get over VoIP–which, as I discovered later, was mostly due to the softphone. Anyway, as soon as the Linksys router arrived, I “disconnected” (and uninstalled) the softphone. At $9.99 a month, with only 500 minutes, it was a bit of a joke. One benefit out of the experience though–I discovered an *excellent* computer headset from VXI with a single USB connection. Fantastic quality, both speaking and listening.
I’ve got a decent Polycom SoundPoint Pro (getting a little long in the tooth, but still a really good office phone), so I moved my main line into the second port, and connected the first to the Linksys. First call out, and the quality was excellent–far superior to the softphone.
Over the next couple of weeks, the connection held up well during conference (three-way) calls, during heavy use (both down and up, and I’ve configured no QOS), lengthy international calls, and general all day usage. I would get complaints from time to time about a stuttering, requests to repeat things, but in general the audio was excellent, and I got not one single drop during that time. With some QOS love (which my older router does not support), I’d give Vonage 2 thumbs up as a second line option.
And then my Cisco 7960G arrived.
