Re: Vonage vs. Verizon [was: Anyone had experience with Comcast SMC modem/router? ]
On Jan 19, 2007, at 13:14, Ben Scott wrote: The only other public sector stuff I know of with this level of fault tolerance is medical life support equipment. We'd like to think so. The prevailing attitude among manufacturers in the 90's was "the FCC gives us an exemption for interference so we're not going to shield anything!". Yes, you could put a cell phone next to one of the ventilators and it would stop working. So, next generation, they wrapped their gear in some sheet metal, but, boy, that was an additional cost. I loved reading the article about the shuttle group again - in the end the easy-to-measure metric is that the shuttle code is about the most expensive per LOC out there ... and the best. It's almost like: "you get what you pay for." Except in the case of the ventilators none of the customers asked for a $2 cheaper ventilator that wasn't shielded from interference - and I doubt the vendor marked the price down for it. Fortunately, open source gives you more control than when you're at the mercy of a vendor or a cartel of vendors. -Bill - Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cell: 603.252.2606 http://www.bfccomputing.com/Page: 603.442.1833 Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/ VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Vonage vs. Verizon [was: Anyone had experience with Comcast SMC modem/router? ]
On 1/18/07, Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Can your network survive the collapse of a building on top of it? s/a building/one of the biggest buildings in the world/ What other system is engineered for failure as well as the POTS stuff? Railroad signaling? Lunar Lander life support? Fighter aircraft? I know critical military and spaceflight hardware certainly is, which is why I qualified my own statement with "public sector". :) I would expect commercial flight hardware is probably similarly robust, but I don't have any real knowledge of the stuff. The only other public sector stuff I know of with this level of fault tolerance is medical life support equipment. Railroad signalling is a good possibility, I didn't think of that. One might expect that to be highly fault tolerant. On the other hand, from what I gather, it isn't. From what I can tell, they appear to rely on the engineer to make intelligent decisions in the event of signal failure. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Vonage vs. Verizon [was: Anyone had experience with Comcast SMC modem/router? ]
Paul Lussier wrote: Dan Jenkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > The Comcast service has been exemplary though, as long as we > haven't needed to call them. We finally replaced all our Verizon > lines with Vonage, as Vonage had far better sound quality and > reliability than Verizon's voice wires could provide (at less > cost). How long have you had Vonage? I've had them for over a year now. In general, I'm satisfied, but there seem to be some annoying quirks with them. The most frequent problem is the echo. It's not there all the time, but it's there quite often. We've been using Vonage since summer 2004, so about 2.5 years. We had a lot of choppiness at the very beginning, but changing the sequence of devices solved that. The Vonage MTA did not work well when inside our firewall/router (which is a Linux system, to bring this back on topic). Moving it to the perimeter solved the problems. We do very rarely encounter choppiness when outbound bandwidth loads are extremely high. I don't believe I've ever heard the echo. I have noticed that long calls (say over 90 minutes) seem to get dropped recently, but that could be a completely different issue. (Our phone system is over 20 years old and has been showing a few quirks.) I've been considering putting in an Asterisk system (to bring this topic back on Linux), partly so as to learn more about Asterisk. However, as someone else said, I do want something that just simply works and does not need to be administered, which is one factor in why we have stuck with Vonage over Broadvoice and others. In our case, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. -- Dan Jenkins ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-206-9951 *** Technical Support Excellence for over a Quarter Century ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Vonage vs. Verizon [was: Anyone had experience with Comcast SMC modem/router? ]
Tom Buskey writes: > What other system is engineered for failure as well as the POTS stuff? > Railroad signaling? Lunar Lander life support? Fighter aircraft? For some insights into how to implement software systems of this quality, look here: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.html Regards, --kevin -- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald Knuth ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Vonage vs. Verizon [was: Anyone had experience with Comcast SMC modem/router? ]
On 1/17/07, Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: To say nothing of the redundancies in conventional POTS design (which really is, in general, some of the most robust engineering I've ever seen in the public sector). (Emphisis POTS here -- anything more than -48 VDC talk battery and the whole story changes.)Redundant in-building power wiring, redundant battery banks, generator backup for the batteries, dedicated line for each and every subscriber (pair gain not withstanding), no electronics anywhere for outside plant, auto failover for trunk routing, etc. The infrastructure I've seen in most Internet provider systems can't hold a candle to it. Obviously, any system can still fail, but for the most part, *none* of this exists for Internet service -- especially home Internet service. Sadly, I doubt there are many systems engineered as well as the POTS system. Bell labs did a study on the effect of lightening on buried lines even. Now, they just bury the lines and deal with the consequences. When I was at Genuity, I heard that the GTE phone switches in the basement of one of the towers on 9/11 *kept working* until the batteries went dead. Much of Manhatten's phone lines went through there. Can your network survive the collapse of a building on top of it? What other system is engineered for failure as well as the POTS stuff? Railroad signaling? Lunar Lander life support? Fighter aircraft? ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Vonage vs. Verizon [was: Anyone had experience with Comcast SMC modem/router? ]
On 1/17/07, Michael ODonnell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: the 911 concerns are not about *if* calls can go through, but > whether calls will *always* go through, and properly It probably doesn't pay to be too arch about it - even the conventional land lines can have their problems. One icy night in southern Chelmsford approx 10 yrs ago my wife spun out in her car, which was crippled after she hit a curb. When she tried to contact the cops from a nearby house by dialing 911, she could at first get only busy signals and then on all subsequent attempts it just rang with no answer...:-/ Wow. That's actually a pretty serious failure. The E911 system has some fairly sophisticated functionality, up to and including seizing trunk lines to make the calls go through (i.e., your call to Aunt Marge gets dropped if someone dials 911 and the trunk is busy). They also have, or at least used to have, multi-party 24/7 technical staff on-site at the central call handling centers. To say nothing of the redundancies in conventional POTS design (which really is, in general, some of the most robust engineering I've ever seen in the public sector). (Emphisis POTS here -- anything more than -48 VDC talk battery and the whole story changes.)Redundant in-building power wiring, redundant battery banks, generator backup for the batteries, dedicated line for each and every subscriber (pair gain not withstanding), no electronics anywhere for outside plant, auto failover for trunk routing, etc. The infrastructure I've seen in most Internet provider systems can't hold a candle to it. Obviously, any system can still fail, but for the most part, *none* of this exists for Internet service -- especially home Internet service. Note well that there's a huge difference between the technical engineering and the customer service that controls it. For the Big Bells, the two are just about inversely proportional in their quality. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Vonage vs. Verizon [was: Anyone had experience with Comcast SMC modem/router? ]
> the 911 concerns are not about *if* calls can go through, but > whether calls will *always* go through, and properly It probably doesn't pay to be too arch about it - even the conventional land lines can have their problems. One icy night in southern Chelmsford approx 10 yrs ago my wife spun out in her car, which was crippled after she hit a curb. When she tried to contact the cops from a nearby house by dialing 911, she could at first get only busy signals and then on all subsequent attempts it just rang with no answer...:-/ I'd be more concerned about having the same gang of thieves controlling *all* of my communications channels, which would seem to be the case if you get your TV and your Net and your phone all from ComCast. (shudder!) ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Vonage vs. Verizon [was: Anyone had experience with Comcast SMC modem/router? ]
On 1/17/07, Paul Lussier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Oh, and I have had occasion to use 9-1-1 from my Vonage line and had emergency response within 10 minutes of the call. So, no worries there either! In fairness, the 911concerns (well, the real ones) are not about *if* calls can go through, but whether calls will *always* go through, and properly. I'm sure I don't need to tell you, Paul, about the differences between "seems to work" and "trusted to always work". :) That said, I believe most of the 911 concerns are about protecting ILEC profits, not people. FWIW, I don't even have a landline; I just my mobile. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Vonage vs. Verizon [was: Anyone had experience with Comcast SMC modem/router? ]
I just thought I'd drop in my 2 cents on this. I use Broadvoice over Vonage for one reason, that I would think would be important for people on this list. It uses SIP and you can bring your own device, including an Asterisk server. I would rather go with the open standard and control over the device than with somebody using some proprietary locked device. My parents have the Comcast VoIP option and had tons of trouble with it at first (calls dropping, phone not ringing). But after 2 weeks it seems to have been fixed (going on the 2nd month now) On Jan 17, 2007, at 8:49 AM, Paul Lussier wrote: Dan Jenkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: The Comcast service has been exemplary though, as long as we haven't needed to call them. We finally replaced all our Verizon lines with Vonage, as Vonage had far better sound quality and reliability than Verizon's voice wires could provide (at less cost). How long have you had Vonage? I've had them for over a year now. In general, I'm satisfied, but there seem to be some annoying quirks with them. The most frequent problem is the echo. It's not there all the time, but it's there quite often. The other problems I've had are: - Making a call and the recipient can't hear me, but they're loud and clear. - Dropped calls where suddenly I'm talking to a dead line Of course, for $27/month, they certainly beat the same feature set from Verizon for $75/month! I certainly won't go back to Verizon and spend almost $50 more per month. Oh, and I have had occasion to use 9-1-1 from my Vonage line and had emergency response within 10 minutes of the call. So, no worries there either! -- Seeya, Paul -- Key fingerprint = 1660 FECC 5D21 D286 F853 E808 BB07 9239 53F1 28EE A: Yes. Q: Are you sure? A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. Q: Why is top posting annoying in email? ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
