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.
Showing posts with label Telephone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Telephone. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Sunday, October 7, 2007
VoIP - Voice Network Inc
In order to connect your asterisk to real people with real telephones you are going to need to do at least one of two things: Put some hardware into your Asterisk box that allows you to connect your computer to one or more standard telephone lines (or POTS; Plane Old Telephone Service;) or subscribe to a VoIP provider that you can connect to over the Internet and which in turn provides the hardware that connects to the regular telephone system.
Now, there are advantages and disadvantages to both options which basically boil down to features, flexibility, and cost advantages for the VoIP provider, vs quality and simplicity for your standard POTS provider.
Since I am mainly concerned with cost and flexibility, I have decided to go with VoIP.
There are various levels of VoIP providers, but in the end, the basic services they all offer are what are known as DID (Direct Inward Dialing) services and PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) gateway services. Many vendors provide other services on top of those basic services, but as long as you have the basic services and you are willing to do a little work, you can pretty well build yourself a system with all the same services the big VoIP vendors provide, and at no (or little) extra cost.
Those basic services, DID and PSTN gateway services provide the following functionality:
DID (Direct In Dial:) gives you a phone number and allows people to dial that number. When they dial that number it connects them to the VoIP provider, which in turn passes that call over the Internet to your VoIP phone or PBX (Private Branch Exchange - which in my case is my Asterisk box.)
PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) Gateway: This service allows you to connect your VoIP phone or PBX to a VoIP providers server, which in turn connects to the PSTN and allows you to call other people connected to the regular PSTN using their POTS phones.
Once you have subscribed to these two services (and they don't necessarily have to be from the same VoIP vendor,) and your VoIP phone or PBX are configured properly, you have the ability to make and receive phone calls from anyone with a phone.
Of course, when you subscribe to a "full service" vendor such as 'Rogers Home Phone', or 'Vonage', you also get some fancy "bells and whistles" such as voice mail, call waiting, call forwarding, etc. All of which are provided for by those vendor's big PBX systems, but since you also have a PBX system (Asterisk) you now have the capability to provide those same features and options without having to pay the high "all in" cost, or "additional charges" usually associated with the "full service" vendors.
So what's the difference? Why should I do it myself rather than let Rogers or Vonage do it for me? Simple ... the basic charge for a DID service can be as low as $5 a month ($1 if you meet certain traffic requirements) and PSTN Gateway services can go as low as $0.01 per minute. So instead of paying $20 a month for a Rogers / Vonage service, plus extra if you want any fancy options, you can pay $10 or less for the basic DID & PSTN Gateway services and build your own fancy options as needed.
So doing some basic research on VoIP providers available in the Greater Toronto Area, I decided I'd give 'Voice Network Inc' a try, and subscribed to their DID and PSTN gateway services.
At this moment I do not have any feel for the quality of their VoIP network, so I cannot really make any positive or negative recommendations as yet on their service. My rational for going with this company was based on them providing features that seemed to best meet my needs.
Some of the reasons I picked Voice Network Inc.
Payment methods: The included the regular methods, including CC, Paypal, and online banking. They also offered EMail money transfer which works best for me. You simply email them a deposit of either $15, $20, $25, or $100, into your account balance, and use the balance to pay for monthly DID and phone call charges. In my case since I'm evaluating the service I went with a small $15 deposit, and purchased one DID number (any charges for making calls is deducted from your balance.) I sent the EMail money transfer Friday evening, and the amount was deposited in my balance at 5am Saturday morning.
Local Calling Charges: Incoming calls are free (I paid $1 a month for the DID, but there are usage conditions that mean that I will likely be charged about $6 a month in the end, but this is "up front" information and will not be a surprise,) and outgoing calls to just about anywhere in Canada will be charged at $0.01 per minute.
Long Distance Charges: My wife's family lives in SouthEast Asia, and the charge for calling her family in that particular city is just slightly over $0.02 per minute; cheaper than your average phone card ... we shall see if the quality is any better.
My initial testing with ths service for local calling seems to be working out quite well in terms of quality ... my first call did sound a little "broken", but when I checked, I was making the call while my wife was streaming live TV from Asian, and the MythTV box was running a "full bore" bittorrent "upload" ... as soon as I turned off the bittorrent client the quality went to "excellent" ... seems that a project for the near future will be to get a hold of a DD-WRT compatible router and configure some QoS (Quality of Service) parameters for my home network.
Upcoming post: My Asterisk config files, which I used to build a basic dial in, dial out, multi extension, voice mail enabled, VoIP system.
Now, there are advantages and disadvantages to both options which basically boil down to features, flexibility, and cost advantages for the VoIP provider, vs quality and simplicity for your standard POTS provider.
Since I am mainly concerned with cost and flexibility, I have decided to go with VoIP.
There are various levels of VoIP providers, but in the end, the basic services they all offer are what are known as DID (Direct Inward Dialing) services and PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) gateway services. Many vendors provide other services on top of those basic services, but as long as you have the basic services and you are willing to do a little work, you can pretty well build yourself a system with all the same services the big VoIP vendors provide, and at no (or little) extra cost.
Those basic services, DID and PSTN gateway services provide the following functionality:
DID (Direct In Dial:) gives you a phone number and allows people to dial that number. When they dial that number it connects them to the VoIP provider, which in turn passes that call over the Internet to your VoIP phone or PBX (Private Branch Exchange - which in my case is my Asterisk box.)
PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) Gateway: This service allows you to connect your VoIP phone or PBX to a VoIP providers server, which in turn connects to the PSTN and allows you to call other people connected to the regular PSTN using their POTS phones.
Once you have subscribed to these two services (and they don't necessarily have to be from the same VoIP vendor,) and your VoIP phone or PBX are configured properly, you have the ability to make and receive phone calls from anyone with a phone.
Of course, when you subscribe to a "full service" vendor such as 'Rogers Home Phone', or 'Vonage', you also get some fancy "bells and whistles" such as voice mail, call waiting, call forwarding, etc. All of which are provided for by those vendor's big PBX systems, but since you also have a PBX system (Asterisk) you now have the capability to provide those same features and options without having to pay the high "all in" cost, or "additional charges" usually associated with the "full service" vendors.
So what's the difference? Why should I do it myself rather than let Rogers or Vonage do it for me? Simple ... the basic charge for a DID service can be as low as $5 a month ($1 if you meet certain traffic requirements) and PSTN Gateway services can go as low as $0.01 per minute. So instead of paying $20 a month for a Rogers / Vonage service, plus extra if you want any fancy options, you can pay $10 or less for the basic DID & PSTN Gateway services and build your own fancy options as needed.
So doing some basic research on VoIP providers available in the Greater Toronto Area, I decided I'd give 'Voice Network Inc' a try, and subscribed to their DID and PSTN gateway services.
At this moment I do not have any feel for the quality of their VoIP network, so I cannot really make any positive or negative recommendations as yet on their service. My rational for going with this company was based on them providing features that seemed to best meet my needs.
Some of the reasons I picked Voice Network Inc.
Payment methods: The included the regular methods, including CC, Paypal, and online banking. They also offered EMail money transfer which works best for me. You simply email them a deposit of either $15, $20, $25, or $100, into your account balance, and use the balance to pay for monthly DID and phone call charges. In my case since I'm evaluating the service I went with a small $15 deposit, and purchased one DID number (any charges for making calls is deducted from your balance.) I sent the EMail money transfer Friday evening, and the amount was deposited in my balance at 5am Saturday morning.
Local Calling Charges: Incoming calls are free (I paid $1 a month for the DID, but there are usage conditions that mean that I will likely be charged about $6 a month in the end, but this is "up front" information and will not be a surprise,) and outgoing calls to just about anywhere in Canada will be charged at $0.01 per minute.
Long Distance Charges: My wife's family lives in SouthEast Asia, and the charge for calling her family in that particular city is just slightly over $0.02 per minute; cheaper than your average phone card ... we shall see if the quality is any better.
My initial testing with ths service for local calling seems to be working out quite well in terms of quality ... my first call did sound a little "broken", but when I checked, I was making the call while my wife was streaming live TV from Asian, and the MythTV box was running a "full bore" bittorrent "upload" ... as soon as I turned off the bittorrent client the quality went to "excellent" ... seems that a project for the near future will be to get a hold of a DD-WRT compatible router and configure some QoS (Quality of Service) parameters for my home network.
Upcoming post: My Asterisk config files, which I used to build a basic dial in, dial out, multi extension, voice mail enabled, VoIP system.
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