VOIP vs. PSTN

Posts: 533 · Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 12:50 pm Post subject: Re: VOIP vs. PSTN

tmbeem wrote:

EzCo wrote:

roberts wrote:

hi, everyone,

VOIP vs. PSTN, which is better?

So, you're asking on a Vonage forum if VoIP is better than PSTN???

FYI, the previous poster made a comment about having to rewire your phone jacks to be able to use them with Vonage, not true. There may be a corner case here or there, but not true in general.

Unless you want to fry your Vonage box, YES you HAVE to do a little rewiring separating the voltage coming in from the TelCo at the box on the outside of your house if you want to use your house phone jacks. But from what I've read it's no big deal. Read the Hard Wiring Forum here before making statements telling someone otherwise.

If you consider disconnecting the RJ-11 from your NIU "rewiring", then you're pretty clueless about what rewiring actually means.

Posts: 533 · Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 1:25 pm Post subject: Re: VOIP vs. PSTN

DigitalVoice wrote:

scerruti wrote:

I would argue that VoIP is clearly a superior technology than PSTN. It is based on a fault tolerant, self repairing network.

Well VoIP didn't "self-repair" on my network I can tell you that.

There are just too many variables and potential issues affecting VoIP functionality that are way outside Vonage's control (ISP and your home setup to name only those two) that the whole experience can be very frustrating. A few dropped calls here and there, some static or maybe some inexplicable choppy audio might force you to spend countless hours in troubleshooting sessions in an attempt to isolate the cause(s).

The bottom line is that *THE USER* has to be fault tolerant. To state that VoIP is fault tolerant on this forum is a bit laughable. What kind of faults are tolerable?

I'll just throw my $.02 in here regarding fault tolerance. VoIP isn't really based on any kind of network, fault tolerant, or otherwise. However, for PSTN quality services, it requires one. In many cases, as with Vonage, fault-tolerant protocols aren't even used, they use UDP which is connectionless and has unguaranteed delivery. If there are hiccups in the network path from you to Vonage, you'll most likely notice them (depending on buffers and queue depths of routers in the path), but because we're humans we can adjust and compensate for that.

Why not use reliable protocols like TCP that will guarantee delivery and is truly fault tolerant? Because it's too much overhead, and could delay transmission. If you weigh the two, a brief packet loss, resulting in a dropped word is much more tolerable to us than delay. This goes back to the point of a user being tolerant, which is a good one.

NavyDavy also had an excellent point regarding using VoIP services from your ISP, such as Comcast. Since they are geared to provide VoIP services on their network, they design for that, instead of an ISP that's just geared to get packets in and out as quickly as possible. Which is essentially what you get if you have Comcast as an ISP but Vonage, or anyone other than Comcast, as a VoIP provider.