Please explain Caller ID to me......

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 16, 2006 Posts: 8

I have Vonage. This is a newbie question. I have caller ID on a new set of phones I bought at home (Uniden CLX-485). When someone calls me from their home or business it displays the name and the number perfectly.

When they call me from their cell phone it only displays the number and the name is "Wireless Caller". While I have them in my phonebook on my home phone, it does not use that to look up the name.

Is this somewhat normal-no name displayed on home callerid from a cell phone caller? Most people in my area use Verizon Wireless.

Thanks, Peter

Posts: 476 · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 3:07 pm Post subject:

I've only seen one wireless carrier that actually displays the caller's name instead of "WIRELESS CALLER". And the Uniden phones have a very annoying "feature" where they won't use the name stored in the phone's phonebook for CID. Why Uniden chose to go this route I have no idea, but it's my only pet peeve with the Uniden phones I have.

Posts: 182 · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 3:46 pm Post subject:

Some VoIP providers let you make a phone book on their web portal. If you put the name and number in there, the CID information uses it instead of the name the network supplies (which in this case is nothing). Vonage doesn't have this yet, but perhaps if enough people want it, they'll implement it.

Posts: 476 · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:07 pm Post subject:

That would be really cool. Hopefully Vonage will roll that out some day along with ACR and outgoing CID preferences.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:22 pm Post subject:

It's entirely wireless carrier dependent. For example, my friend has Verizon Wireless, and his calls show up as "Wireless PCS FL" on both my Vonage line & Verizon land line (just "Wireless" on the land line). I have AllTel and my name shows up on both. Another friend has Cingular and it only shows "Wireless caller"

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 16, 2006 Posts: 8

Thanks all. Appreciate it very much. Yes it is an annoying feature and makes no sense since Uniden looks up the phone # to see if there is a special ring. Why not display the name too like a cell phone would. Oh well. Found another bug in that the Uniden does not copy the icon assigned to the phone number to the other phones. It only copies the name and number and uses the std phone icon.

I just got this Uniden phone with base speaker phone, answering machine and extra handset. It is 5.8ghz.

If you can think of a better base set that has answering machine, perhaps even better range and shared phone books, please recommend. I can take this back and try perhaps another brand. The Uniden phonebook is also hard for me to read without glasses.

As an aside, I like Vonage but do get dropouts while talking from time to time where the other party cannot hear me for 10 seconds. They (Vonage) tweaked my buffer and packet settings but I still get it now and then- perhaps 20 times a month for 10 seconds. Tried upping the speed of my Road Runner to the gamers speed but that did not help., Also throttled down the bandwidth use to the lowest. Still no help. I think it is a Road Runner issue as I have high latency in the part of Charlotte, NC I am in while some others do not who live in another area.

Thanks again for teaching me something.
Peter

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:34 pm Post subject:

The Uniden phones aren't perfect, but they're the best thing I've found thus far. I have a few of the TRU8xxx series phone systems and have been very pleased with them. I believe the TRU series have larger screens than the CLX series phones, but it's been awhile since I've seen them side-by-side. Good battery life, good sound quality, and I've had very good luck with their range. I use one at work. The building's ~250,000 sq ft and the phone covers about 1/2 of that with no special antennas and the base isn't in a great location either. It works better than our Motorola 2-way radios at times.

Quote:

As an aside, I like Vonage but do get dropouts while talking from time to time where the other party cannot hear me for 10 seconds. They (Vonage) tweaked my buffer and packet settings but I still get it now and then- perhaps 20 times a month for 10 seconds. Tried upping the speed of my Road Runner to the gamers speed but that did not help., Also throttled down the bandwidth use to the lowest. Still no help. I think it is a Road Runner issue as I have high latency in the part of Charlotte, NC I am in while some others do not who live in another area.

Just curious, when these dropsouts occur, do you lose internet connectivity on the PCs as well? I've seen Verizon do some strange things late night/early morning which cause brief dropouts on my internet connection, but it appers on both the PC & Vonage lines. Have you run www.testmy voip.com yet?

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 16, 2006 Posts: 8

Thanks very much for your input.

When I get the VOIP dropouts they only occur on the other end, not mine.
I have run the various speed tests including VOIP test. And my Internet does not drop out. I have the VOIP configured in the DMZ zone on the Linksys wireless router and there is really no activity on the wireless router even though it may be sending a signal out (MAC filtered). My roommate uses it for her PC about once a week. But I do have a range extender and Tivo hooked up wirelessly. But that should not consume much since they are really not active so to speak.

I even tried one of those Hawking HBB1 devices to help smooth out any traffic (think NetGear or DLINK may have one too). Did not see it help so I returned it.

Thanks, Peter

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:32 pm Post subject:

I think the dropouts are definitely on the Comcast side of things, just trying to figure out if it's a localized problem or if you're hitting problems further upstream (possibly further upstream than Comcast)

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 16, 2006 Posts: 8

I am on RoadRunner (Time Warner).
With test your voip, I picked San Jose (I am in Charlotte, NC) and the option to preserve speech quality. Here are some results:

Score 4.3
From ME to San Jose (left side of detailed results)
Round Trip Latency: 175ms (ugh)
Loss Period Avg: 20 ms

Post-Dial Delay 109 ms
Call Setup Time 125 ms
Media Delay 265 ms
Jitter Avg: 7 ms

Had better scores on the right side of results "MOS Analysis FROM San Jose To You "

Thanks Peter