Wireless Connection

Posts: 831 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Jun 08, 2007 Posts: 831

"I'm considering changing my isp to a wireless service"

What wireless service . . .hopefully not an aircard with one of the cell companies, it will not work, lag and delay will be horrible..

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 09, 2008 Posts: 2

The wireless service is by USI Wireless, who won the contract to wifi my city. So far the reviews are pretty positive, and on their faq page they say that you should be able to use Voip with them so long as you have a QoS-capable router.

I have that, yes?

Their wireless modem is the Ruckus MetroFlex, which they say is "the world's first customer premise equipment specifically designed and optimized to work with metro Wi-Fi networks. Patent-pending hardware and software let subscribers connect faster and more reliably to outdoor metro Wi-Fi networks — automatically optimizing around changing environmental conditions." That's what they say, anyway.

They also have instructions for setting it up with a wireless home network. It has an Ethernet port for connection. I've been searching through this site, and am thinking this might work, but maybe someone out there might know if this would likely work with the equipment I already have.

Thanks!
Jenrou

[I]

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

companies will say whatever the customer wants to read.

the only real way is to test it with the Voip speed tests and also with Vonage.

everything is purely theoretical and of course they are going to claim compatibility with Voip to get the customers.

but once you get it and put in Vonage, you'll know pretty soon within a week or so of using it whether it's passing muster.

Posts: 25 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Mar 31, 2008 Posts: 25

My finals area tomorrow and therefore I have some time for procrastination at hand...

I looked at the USI and the Ruckus webpage and tried to find some technical information - no success.
Both rave about their products and the "Easy 1,2,3"-stuff, but that's about it.
USI talks about 1-3+ Mbps, and Ruckus mentions in their video that you "plug your Ruckus device into you r existing broadband modem".
Well...that doesn't sound promising.

I would do a little war-driving and find out about their throughput by checking speakeasy.net or so.

Personally I am not convinced, although WiMax can do 75Mbps and WWAN (free space optics) 1.25Gbps.
The rate of 14.95$ sounds good, but the question remains: how reliable is the service? For Voip you want as much bandwidth available as possible and are they able to guarantee that?

Your existing hardware should support a setup like that and if they offer a trial period, it might be worth to check it out.

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

dante,

actually bandwidth is of secondary concern. what is more significant is the jitters and the amount of lag time between signal initiation and actual processing of the signal.

just imagine you are in a assembly line. if your particular stop in the assembly line is having issues, then the entire line has to be stopped. That's what its like with Voip. if there is even a small bottleneck, your real time phone conversation will be completely stopped hence terrible connections and broken sentences.

bandwidth even with cable internet is plenty. what is the problem is jitters and round trip time.

Posts: 25 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Mar 31, 2008 Posts: 25

mundy5 wrote:

Quote:

bandwidth even with cable internet is plenty. what is the problem is jitters and round trip time.

Thank you mundy5 for this info. You can see that Voip is something I'm not really familiar with.
But what this tells me is that there is no way of finding out if your service will be running smoothly until you have set it up, is that correct?

Is there a tool or webpage can I use to collect this data?

I remember having timing trouble with ICMP packets once and found the culprit in an older cable used in our house.

Is there a way to increase the size of the jitter buffer from my end?

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

Quote:

But what this tells me is that there is no way of finding out if your service will be running smoothly until you have set it up, is that correct?

Is there a tool or webpage can I use to collect this data?

Actually there is a way. it's a type of speed test that we have on this forum. go to the top left corner and you'll see the forum menu;

hold your mouse over the "vonage information" and you'll see Voip Speed Test as one of your options. Run it with the wireless connection and you'll see how good or bad it is. I would recommend that you run during different time periods such as the 5-10 pm slot which is when the system should be at its heaviest.

This will not tell you everything, but it can give you some idea of how good or bad the connection is.

I do not believe there is anything you can do if the jitters and roundtrip times are bad b/c its based on the isp not on your own home network (most of the time).