On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 03:25:42PM -0800, Peter van Hoof wrote:
> I am considering switching from a  landline to a VOIP service
> such as Vonage to reduce cost. I am wondering about experience 
> with such service, recommendations of one company or another etc.

Peter,

I had Vonage service for about a year, and I really liked it.  Support was
good, and service was not down very often.  911 calls will connect, but 
your street address does not get sent to the dispatcher, so if you are 
choking on something, use your cell phone.  Their 911 setup page is a farce.

Vonage has you place their ATA between your DSL/Cable modem and your internal
router or main PC.  This caused a problem for me:  I could no longer ssh into 
my home LAN from remote, as their ATA did not forward ssh packets across its
interface.  So I placed the Vonage ATA behind my home router.  This works, 
but renders the QoS function in the Vonage ATA useless, as I started to hear
choppy audio whenever else in the house used the internet.  

I loaded dd-wrt onto my Linksys router, and enabled the QoS function.  I
configured the router to give premium bandwidth to the Vonage ATA that was
plugged into it, and standard bandwidth to all other devices plugged into the 
router.  This worked perfectly.

About 6 months ago, I bought a Digium TDM400 card and built up an Asterisk 
server in my house.  I canceled my Vonage service, which was hard to do, 
because they really provided decent service.

But now, I am saving well over 50% from what I was paying Vonage... and having
a PBX in my house is pretty cool!

>  Do the boxes typically drive  several phones at the same
>  time  (ringer equivalent)?

Yes - I had my whole house (4 telephones, 2 of them were line powered)
connected to a single RJ11 port on the Vonage ATA.

Take care,
-Chris

-- 
| Christopher Cole, Cole Design and Development               cole@coledd.com |
| Embedded Software Development and Electronic Design       http://coledd.com |
| Akron, Ohio, USA                                               800-518-2154 |
-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist