Vonage VoIP Forum Digest - July 22 - July 24, 2005

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July 22, 2005

By Daniel Connor

Welcome to today's edition of the Vonage VoIP Forum Digest.

Today, we'll point you to an interesting and informative article about Vonage's Bandwidth Saver. We'll kick off our Friday "In The Blogs" feature by telling you what some bloggers we read regularly (and a few we read less regularly) have been writing about Vonage this week. We'll also look at an older Vonage VoIP Forum thread with some new posts about getting Vonage to work with XBox Live, and a new thread about - get this- why your Mom's voice may be causing your Vonage connection to think your Mom's voice is a touch-tone sound.

In The Headlines

Vonage's Bandwidth Saver Praised

An interesting article on the Enterprise IT Planet site called "Getting The Most Out Of Broadband" states the case for Vonage's Bandwidth Saver.

"For those that keep a close watch on network throughput, Vonage's 'Bandwidth Saver' is a handy tool that allows you to control the sound quality of the call as a means to conserve valuable bandwidth," writes the site's Mike Houghton. "They explain that while most customers with 128 Kbps connections often choose the normal sound quality setting, which devotes 30 kbps to call traffic, you bump that rate up to 90 kbps using the Web-based Vonage Dashboard. At 30 kbps, however, users can save bandwidth and still enjoy good call quality. However, as with any young technology, the growing pains will make themselves apparent. Many discussions among users revolve around issues such as line echo, disconnects, and crackling. However, the benefits and long list of features and options are enough to compensate for these occasional quirks."

Sometime over the last several days, you may have received a notice from Vonage asking you to go to a Web page to acknowledge that you know about the temporary limitations of Vonage's E911 service.

Friday Feature: In The Blogs

We read about 15 VoIP and IP-telephony-related Weblogs. Some we read more than others, but we enjoy most of them. Face it, bloggers are opinion-shapers. So each Friday, we are going to give you a round-up of what the blogs we read said about Vonage during that week:

Russell Shaw of the ZDNet IP Telephony blog writes about the effort that Vonage, as well as its competitors, is making to let customers know the current limitations of E911 service.

Andy Abramson of VoIP Watch gives his candid thoughts on Vonage's announcement about new broadband cordless phones now in the works.

Tom Keating of VoIP Blog also gives us some information about Vonage and other companies' efforts to inform customers about E911 limitations now in effect.

BroadbandReports.com has a lively discussion about the new Vonage-configured Linksys WRTP54G router.

Om Malik of Om Malik's Broadband Blog tosses around his reaction to those Vonage-VocalTec merger rumors that have been kicked around lately.

Jeff Pulver of Pulver.com runs an interesting piece by Jay Batson, who is Chairman and Managing Director of the SIP Forum.

Erik Lagerway of SIPThat.com also weighs in on all that Vonage-VocalTec talk.

Mark Evans of Mark Evans Blog (that kinda makes sense, ya know) tells us what he thinks of a survey that came out this week ranking the leading VoIP providers - including Vonage- by number of subscribers.

On Ted Wallingford's The VoIP Weblog, Michael Sciannamea guests a post about why he thinks Wi-Fi/VoIP phone sales are going to grow. Lots of people expect that Vonage will be a major player in that market.

And speaking of "lots of you," well, lots of you are posting in the Vonage VoIP Forum. Let's hop over there and read what you are talking about today:

On The Vonage VoIP Forum

Occasionally, older Vonage VoIP Forum threads get some interesting new posts. I think this is sometimes due to the fact that our posts are searchable, and some of your folks find something in an older post that might shed light on a problem or issue you are having.

Take for instance an older thread called vonage-forum.com/ftopic2269.html">Vonage and Xbox Live. This post started in January of this year, but got three new entries just today. Actually, to shed light on these entries, we should look back to a June 19 post in this thread by Vonage Forum Member vonage-forum.com/member-viewprofile-5283.html">DarKev, who asked:

"Has anyone ever tried plugging their Vonage ADA into the ethernet jack of the XBox WiFi adapter? This could be an excellent way to use Vonage while traveling. Especially if you are staying in hotels where they have a WiFi connection. If the Microsoft XBox WiFi router will work with Vonage, you've got it made. If anyone has tried this, please let me know. I'd definitely buy an XBox WiFi device, even though I do not have the XBox game. I would be strictly using it to communicate over a WiFi in a hotel with Vonage via the ethernet cable."

Vonage Forum member vonage-forum.com/member-viewprofile-14189.html">aongus replied that he had encountered some problems making this work, but then Forum member vonage-forum.com/member-viewprofile-6972.html">lsdean wrote, "I have not had any problems with my vonage and Xbox Live."

Hey readers: this is an interesting thread. Why not go there and post your experiences with, or your questions about, getting Vonage to work with Xbox Live? Tell ya what. I'll put a hotlink directly to the postreply for this thread vonage-forum.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=posting&mode=reply&t=2269">right here.

On a new Vonage VoIP Forum thread called vonage-forum.com/ftopic7149.html">Touch tones during most calls? new Vonage Forum member vonage-forum.com/member-viewprofile-14195.html">geekette comes up with one of the most entertaining questions I've read on the Forum in quite some time. It seems as though, when she talks to her Mom, and sometimes a touch tone sound occurs on a Vonage call. The problem, vonage-forum.com/member-viewprofile-4235.html">paul248 says, could be the "DTMF (Dual Tone Multi Frequency) tone detection algorithm." By the way, that is the system used by touch-tone telephones. DTMF assigns a specific frequency (consisting of two separate tones) to each key.

"When you push '2' for example," Paul explains, Vonage sends '2 was pressed' as data, instead of just passing on the sound of that button. However, some voices (mostly female) are too close to the DTMF tones, and they get mistakenly converted into a real tone at the other end."

But hey. I'm totally sure we all love our Moms anyway, right?

That's what's hot about Vonage today. Check with us Friday morning for the next edition of the Vonage VoIP Forum Digest!!