2 Questions, one about 911, one about bandwidth

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Sep 21, 2006 Posts: 2

Heya folks,

About 911 service in general, I know that when I move into a new apartment and connect my phone to the wall, I do get a dial tone. This allows you to call Bell and set up a new account. Question: Does this limited service phone line have 911 access? If so, wouldn't this be a bonus feature to mention when you switch to Voip? I mean, you could have an extra phone connected to your naked land-line as a just-in-case precaution.

Am I out to lunch in assuming this?

Next question is about bandwidth. I do a bit of downloading, and I can adjust my bittorrent program to not saturate my bandwidth. But what happens when say, my girlfriend is on the Voip phone and I happen to hit a video on YouTube. For however long it takes to download the video, my bandwidth is totally saturated. Is her call going to be garbled?

Let's expand this second question a bit: If what I said above about bandwidth does become a problem, are there consumer routers that allow you to assign bandwidth or priority to specific LAN ports?

Thanks for any suggestions, insults, whatever.. cheers!

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Sep 26, 2006 Posts: 7

r u telus or shaw i run bitcommit limwire and talk on the phone
but bitcommit and limewire run on difrent ports so u should'nt notice any changed in quality.

Posts: 120 · Member of the Week Joined: Aug 30, 2006 Posts: 120

The Motorola VT2442 will prioritize Voip packets over other network traffic if connected directly to your cable modem, and all other hardware behind it. This is how I have mine setup and works great regardless of how much simultaneous upload/download I try to push to 'break' a Voip phone call. I spent hours trying to get it to hiccup, and it didn't. Hence I'm pretty happy with Vonage, especially with the 4 months of free service I got out of of them when I signed up Smile

I can see how regular phone adatpers, connected behind other routers might cause call degradation if your getting crazy with your simultaneous upload/download while on a call. Check for firmware updates for your router, if you have one. Most will have QoS features which allow you to prioritize traffic on your home network. My linksys wrtg54s does, however I don't need it since I've got the VT2442 up front.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 14, 2006 Posts: 2

Nonex, yes, your regular land-line can call 911 even if it is disconnected. It is an FCC requirement that any phone able to access the network be able to dial 911. You will get what is known as a "soft" dial tone when using a disconnected phone. However, your phone number and location information may not be sent unless the phone company has assigned a special phone number to it that is unused and unpublished. If you call 911 and hang up, they may not be able to call you back or get your address.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 14, 2006 Posts: 2

Oops, I noticed this was in the Canada forum. If you are in Canada, I can't verify if the call will go through on a disconnected line as they aren't governed by the FCC.

Posts: 120 · Member of the Week Joined: Aug 30, 2006 Posts: 120

No can do. My line is dead since my home phone service was stopped. Nothing happens, just dead air and there's no voltage on the line.

So 911 won't work, unless it's just me Neutral