Vonage questions from a potential user

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 3

I am thinking about using the Vonage sytem, but I have some questions:

1) I have 256k DSL. Would Vonage reduce that bandwidth?

2) Could I use the net while I'm using the phone?

3) Do I have to buy another phone(s) to compensate?

4) I have a router. Will I have to buy the phone adaptor?

THANKS!

Posts: 183 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: May 05, 2004 Posts: 183

1. Figure that the highest quality voice setting uses about 100kbps up and down, but the "quality" setting can be reduced to bring that closer to 30k. There isn't a huge difference in how things sound, but it does reduce bandwidth requirements.

2. You can surf but the modem only has so much bandwidth. The Vonage adapter can help prioritize voice packets, but using a lower voice quality setting and minimizing large graphic downloads helps.

3. The Vonage phone adapter (ATA) uses regular telephones, but I don't understand what you'd be "compensating" for.

4. The phone adapter is the bridge to the Internet and has to be used, unless you only want a computer-only "softphone."

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 3

I have 256k upload and download.

By "compensate" I meant: do I have to buy a new "special" kind of phone for the Vonage system. Guess I don't Wink

Another question:
5. Can I use a wall phone? (Also, can I use more than 1 phone?)

Thanks for the help!

Posts: 21 · Posted: Sun May 23, 2004 11:43 pm Post subject:

if you have both upload and download as 256k... then the total bandwidth would be 512k... what you most likely have is around 128k up and down.

by "wall phone" if you mean taking a phone anywhere in the house and plug it into the wall pick it up and dial through vonage... I guess???
but sincw you have dsl... this is not possible because your modem has to talk to your phone company through your phone lines.

Posts: 110 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Mar 06, 2004 Posts: 110

To elaborate further on Q 5.....

Many of us here have completely disconnected the street service from the phone company so that our in-home phone wiring is a closed loop. By running a regular phone cord from the Vonage adapter to virtually any phone jack in the house you gain a dial tone at all the other phone jacks in your house.

Because you have DSL, you cannot completely disconnect from the phone company so this probably won't work for you. It may be possible to run the Vonage dial tone to certain jacks that can be segregated from the rest of the phone wiring, however; like, for instance, if you have a second line.

Posts: 183 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: May 05, 2004 Posts: 183

Gandalf, find out your actual up and down speed by running the tests here a few times, spread out over various times of the day and over a couple of days: http://speedtest.dslreports.com

Regarding using your phone wiring to ring wall phones and such, it depends on if your DSL line is being distributed over your internal house loop or if that service wire goes directly from the box outside (the "Network Interface Device," NID) to your modem, or if it hooks to your regular wiring.

If it's a direct hookup from NID to modem only, your house loop can be used to distribute the Vonage service all over the house. If the DSL service is distributed over your house wiring, doing so is less certain but still possible. IF you put "DSL filters" at every place that an analog device (phone, the Vonage adapter, answering machine) connects to the line the two signals should coexist just fine. You can get the filters at Radio Shack, Best Buy and from lots of places online.

Do you know how the DSL signal gets from the outside to your modem? Do you already have filters (supplied by the DSL installer) on your phones?

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 3

Quote:

if you have both upload and download as 256k... then the total bandwidth would be 512k... what you most likely have is around 128k up and down.

Actually, they both are 256k, so I guess my total bandwidth is 512k.

Quote:

by "wall phone" if you mean taking a phone anywhere in the house and plug it into the wall pick it up and dial through vonage... I guess???
but sincw you have dsl... this is not possible because your modem has to talk to your phone company through your phone lines.

By wall phone, I meant a phone that is connected to the wall (and has a cord to the handset). They're old, I know Cry

It sounds like I can't use it.[/b]

Posts: 183 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: May 05, 2004 Posts: 183

Gandalf_the_Bat wrote:

By wall phone, I meant a phone that is connected to the wall (and has a cord to the handset). They're old, I know Cry

It sounds like I can't use it.[/b]

You likely can use it, as well as all the other phones in your house.

Question: Do you know how your DSL modem is connected to its incoming service?

Next question: Did your DSL installer give you filters for all of your phones?