VoIP & ISP update

I made a couple of changes to my configuration, one for practical purposes, and the other I was more or less forced to make.

The first change was that instead of using Asterisk to handle my SIP phone, I connected the SIP phone directly to the Voicenetwork.ca service. I did this as there seemed to be some jitter and "sputtering" going through Asterisk, probably because I am trying to do too much on that one Linux system (Mythtv, torrents, DVD burning, file sharing, video server, dynamic DHCP client, and so on.) The good news is that this so far is working great. The sound quality is very good, even when my wife called her sister over in Asia (for 2 cents per minute) ... and this is with a $12 cdn USB phone connected to a slow computer running X-Lite softphone.

The other change is with my ISP.

Teksavvy have changed pricing for some of their high-speed connection services. I was using "unlimited" for $29 /mth, but they are going to up the price for that service by $10 starting next year. Their Premium service, which runs at the same speed, but uses improved routing and better "ping times", also goes for $29/mth, and still does. I went with unlimted originally as the premium package was limited to 100GB download per month. To make up for the raise in pricing for unlimited, they bumped the premium package up to a 200GB / mth download limit, with prepaid upgrades of $10 per 100GB if needed. Since I usually use just over the 100GM per month in most cases, the 200GB should do me just fine.

So all in all, things are looking good ... I may put together another PC I have sitting in my closet unused to run as a dedicated Asterisk server to see if that works without degrading sound quality and stability, but that's for later on.

Internet Service - TekSavvy

Before cancelling my Rogers "Extreme" account, I decided to get a DSL service installed and see if the speeds were at least as good as Cable.

So I call up Teksavvy last Monday (Oct 1) and ask some general questions to make sure I am not committing myself into any long term contracts, so I can have the DSL installed, and if it doesn't work out, then I can cancel the service and just continue using Rogers.

The sales person explained it all to me, and confirmed that I can cancel at any time, so I went ahead and ordered the ADSL service.

Since I already had an ADSL modem from a previous ADSL account a few years back, I didn't need to order one of their modems. Total cost (paid via online backing bill payment method ... the sales guy gave me an account number, then I simply logged onto my online bank account; added them as a "payee"; paid the install charge and 1st months service for a total of $62.59; gave the sales guy the confirmation number; and he gave me an installed date of Friday Oct 5.

Come Oct 5th I take my DSL modem, plug it into the phone line, hook up a spare Dlink router to the modem, configure it with my ID and password, and wait.

Around 3pm I noticed that the green "connected" light was steady, and a couple of minutes after there was a knock on my door. A technician was there telling me that everything was hooked up and should be ready to go. A quick test confirmed everything was working. The tech explained that my CO was very close so I should get near perfect speeds (which I also confrmed ... my 5Mb download, and 800Kb upload rated speeds are in the ~4.4Mb download and 700+ Kb upload.)

So far so good. Rogers can expect a call from me on Monday or Tuesday.

Note: Since I am using "Dry Loop DSL" on top of the usual $29.95 per month charge, there is also a "band B" $9.10 per month surcharge, making the total monthly bill $39.05 plus tax (which I believe is only GST.) According to the Wikipedia article, the "band B" surcharge may no longer be applicable, so I may ask them about this a little latter on after I confirm that accuracy of the Wikipedia information.


Installation Cost
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9.10 Band B
29.95 Monthly
19.99 install
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62.59 incl GST.