 Review by kozik 
Posted: 5.8 years ago
member for 9.6 years, 571 visits, last login: 14 days ago
 Naperville,Dupage,IL
 $25 per month
 about 7 days
 "Really simple install. Local phone number. Easy to use"
 "Vonage flakes when my ISP gets congested. It is really just cheaper dialtone."
 "Most of the time this works fine. When can I get a SIP URI?"
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Hi,
On 7/11/03, I installed the Vonage Voice-over-broadband service in my home. The purpose of this note is to record my experience both for my records and the benefit of others.
SUMMARY
-- What’s Vonage. Vonage is a VoIP service designed to run over your existing home broadband network. I have WideOpenWest cable modem and Ameritech/SBC ADSL. Vonage is $25/mo, 500 minutes, local phone number.
-- Equipment. Vonage sends you a Cisco Analog Telephony Adapter. It has an RJ11 and a 10BaseT connector. Installation was easy!
-- Standard Phone. I use my standard phones; the ATA collects digits, provides tones, generates ringing. Normal user experience. IVR and web-base configuration interfaces.
-- Network Connection. The Vonage service worked with my Linksys router; the required DHCP and NAT functions were already turned on. I did not have to do any configuration changes.
-- Voice Quality. The quality is very good; G711 CODECs are being used. There’s an option to use a compressed CODEC (G729?).
-- Features. Lots of the normal features: caller id, call waiting, transfer, repeat dialing, caller id block, LNP, Voicemail, call logs, etc. All the features can be set from the web.
-- What’s New? Well, lots of what I get from Vonage, I already have from SBC. Anything else new? Yes, a couple of things: Virtual Phone Numbers and personal 800 numbers. I like being able to set my service parameters from a web page. And, maybe a little bit cheaper. Packet8 and iCH are cheaper, but not as feature rich (my perception).
-- Issues. Probably my only “complaint” is that I cannot interwork my Vonage service with other Voip services or with MSN Messenger. I want to be able to put “sip:jack@jackkozik.net” on my business card and be reached by an Voip users. Not necessarily Vonage's problem, but when my WOW cable modem service congests, my Vonage service tanks -- dropped calls, clicks, static, etc.
I have more details, but I wanted to thank the dslreports VoIP forum for very helpful information and message board contributions, especially, the FAQ:
»Vonage DigitalVoice Service
Respectfully submitted,
JK
** DETAILS **
The following writeup covers in more detail:
- The Cisco ATA-186
- Vonage and local phone numbers
- SIP Protocol traces
- Vonage’s web configuration options
- Commentary and Analysis
- Nits
Vonage Gives Me A Local Phone Number.
I was delighted to see that Vonage offers a local phone number. I got 630-566-xxxx; this was advertised as an Aurora, IL phone number. The Vonage web page advertises that they will port your home phone number.
Office Records. I did a little checking: my phone number is homed on a DMS100 (it’s really a DMS500) central office switch (“CHCGILABDS0”) in down town Chicago (“200 N LA SALLE ST”). This switch, owned by the CLEC Focal Communications, lists about 80 different rate centers scattered throughout the Chicago suburbs. I assume that no real FX lines are running from this office to Aurora; I assume that Vonage is using Focal’s virtual exchange service.
URL: »/coinfo
Hop-on/Hop-off. I read that Vonage uses Cisco 5300s media gateways. I assume that they are connected to this DMS100 that converts the telephone call from a circuit-based trunk (PRI?) to an IP packet data stream. I wonder if this media gateway is sitting near the DMS100 (perhaps a blade in a nearby Remote Access Server)? Since Vonage comes to my HomeLAN from a Level 3 IP address, maybe Vonage is using L3’s colocation space – not sure.
A quick scan of other Vonage NPA/NXXs says that Vonage is using other CLECs (XO, Paetec, MCI, KMC,…).
Vonage Uses SIP.
Here’s a trace of a call from my Vonage phone (ATA-186 column) to my mobile phone (lots of details omitted):
Vonage Media
ATA-186 Proxy Gateway
| | |
|------------ INVITE ---------->| |
|| |
| | |
|------------ INVITE ---------->| |
|| RTP
[the above needs to be viewed using Courier Font, sorry ]
This seems pretty straight forward to me. Anything going through Vonage’s service needs to pass a digest authentication step. The SIP messages are running over UDP port 5061. The ATA-186 and the Vonage proxy server know how to deal with my NAT box. The Vonage web site says they are using dynamicsoft’s SIP server product to implement this.
The SIP messages map to Vonage IP addresses; the RTP voice packets map to Level3 IPaddresses.
Voice Path. The voice path packets (RTP/SDP) are running over UDP ports 10000-20000. I noted that the SDP header indicates G711; the voice packets are 214 bytes every 20msec (214*8/0.02=86Kbps), higher if both parties are talking at the same time, lower if noone is talking. 160 bytes / 20msec equals 8000 bytes / sec – so I assume 54 bytes of UDP+RTP overhead. Not sure, but not worth following up, for now. I also noticed silence suppression in the protocol traces, and I have noticed some voice-clipping in my usage of the service. DTMF tones are passed in-band.
So by this model, the voice path is as follows:
My Phone–>ATA186->Linksys->Cable Modem->WOW->Internet->Level(3) Gateway->Focal DMS100->Access Tandem->PSTN->Called Party
A useful experiment would be to measure the one-way voice path delay. It is clearly longer than a mobile phone but much shorter than a satellite phone. My guess 400msec. I have yet to hear any echo.
Keep-alive. Further, I observed a REGISTER message every 15 minutes and a NOTIFY message every 10 seconds. The NOTIFY message and the OK status message are about 300 bytes each. So, on an idle line, I am seeing 600 bytes / 10 secs. I hope this does not impact my kid’s game playing. I assume its okay.
Cisco Analog Telephony Adapter (ATA-186).
Interfaces. The ATA-186 is the box that Vonage sent me for the service. It has a RJ-11 (FXO) interface to connect to your home phone, and it has an RJ45 (10BaseT) interface to connect to your home LAN. This box seems to be really popular in the Voip field; I counted 6 different services that support this (probably more). Since I signed up for the service Vonage has added support for a Softphone and a MOT IAD; otherwise, the Vonage service is rather restricted in its CPE support.
Over the last 6 months, I may have power cycled the ATA once or twice at most. Pretty good stability!!
Functions. The box provides dial tone, digit collection, vocoding (G711 is Vonage’s default). It can be controlled from a web page (locked-out by default with Vonage) or it can be controlled by a built-in IVR.
Centralized Configuration Control. Vonage configures the ATA186 through a tftp server. If support is needed, they can edit your configuration file centrally and then it will be downloaded after a power cycle. A quick skim of the message boards show that the Vonage technical support team has done some tweaking to accommodate special LAN circumstances. I was very concerned when my ISP blocked TFTP for 4 months -- the Blaster Worm uses TFTP to propagate itself.
I believe this helps service stability. By centralizing control and password locking the ATA, Vonage is keeping their service more stable and reducing calls to the CTS team.
Expects NAT/DHCP. The ATA186 expects a home DHCP server to give it an IP address. In my Home Lan, the ATA186 interfaces to the Internet through a Linksys router/NAT box. The ATA is allocated a 192.168.xx.yy address on my home Lan and works nicely through the NAT capability in the Linksys.
Dialing. Vonage configures the ATA186 to do 1+10 digit dialing. The ATA also has the option of calling IP phones. E.g. the URI 16305551111@jackshomelan.net can be dialed 16305551111**10*10*10*1, where the IP addresses is made up for this example.
Vonage Web Configuration
The Vonage web pages lets me view my call logs/billing info, and set the following options: 911, Call Forwarding, Voicemail, Network Availability, Call Waiting, Bandwidth Saver, International Call Activation, etc. The web page is encouraging me to refer the service to a friend and signup for virtual phone numbers.
Network Availability. Vonage will forward an incoming call to a designated phone number, if your home network is not reachable.
VoiceMail. The Vonage web site says that Iperia is the unified messaging vendor. Stutter dial tone is supported in the ATA-186 for message waiting indication.
911. I can set my current address so that when I dial 911, the call center knows where I am. The Vonage web site says that they use Intrado’s 911 call center – I assume Intrado has a service that contacts the appropriate PSAP much like Cellular telephone services used to work.
Bandwidth Saver. You can select a lower bandwidth option for using Vonage service. I assume that it uses G.729.
I note, from the message boards, that trying to use more than one Voip service at the same time requires more sophisticated QoS routing. URL: »Bandwidth requirement for 6 VoIP lines
Virtual Phone Numbers. Vonage lets you sign up for more than one phone number; they will route them all to your ATA-186. For an extra $5 per month, I can get a local phone number in New York or Los Angeles. In the old days, that was called an FX line. Vonage also offers personal 800 numbers. I would consider this service something different and new – most everything else is geared to the “just as good but cheaper” value proposition.
Where’s the IPs and URLs? Much to my surprise and delight, I found the Vonage service very easy to setup (Plug in the box, wait for dialtone). I compare this to more flexible and powerful alternatives (e.g. MSN Messenger) where I have to understand NATs, firewall settings, and subtle differences between proxy settings. I had to write the Vonage email tech support to get the detailed setup requirements for my Linksys. I went to the web site of some other services, and they have much more complicated setup procedures. This Vonage attribute makes it well suited for the mass market.
- Provisioning Using CPL. From the message boards, the Vonage folks are using the Call Processing Language (CPL) scripting capability to do subscriber specific provisioning. Not every subscriber maps to the standard provisioning/configuration views.
- QoS anecdotes. The message boards are full of postings describing concerns about how much Voip traffic you can fit over a broadband link. It is not linear and lots of QoS IPR has been done to overcome this in the IP-PBX space.
- Very Simple Service. The surprising spin on Vonage’s service: “Unlike many Voice Over IP offerings, you don't need headphones or your computer. Just use your standard touch-tone phone, talk as much as you want and rack up the savings.” The value is that the service is simple to setup!
- Three-way calls. I took protocol traces of a 3-way call. I noticed that the ATA sets up 2 separate calls and does the voice path bridging in the ATA.
- No 802.11. The Cisco SIP phones are now offered with 802.11. I guess we have to use Vonage's Softphone on a laptop to get 802.11. I wonder if Vonage's softphone can run on a PocketPC? Another service, called FWD, is heavily pitching Vo802.11:
»pulver.com/press/fwdhotspots.html
- Grown to 100K subs, wow!(!) Well, just how much demand is there for second lines, broadband or not, given the wide replacement of wireline phones with wireless phones? I am not sure. Vonage is advertising on TV; they are being bundled by some cable operators. This has gone out of the lab; real, normal people are using this service.
(If you are still reading this far…) So why did I sign up for Vonage? I didn’t really need it, did I? After all, I have 4 mobile phone in my family; seems like enough to me. In part it is a hobby I have to keep up to date on new technologies. It is kind of funny that the new VoIP technology, to the rest of my family, looks like the same voice technology I have been using for decades.
** Vonage Nits **
While I am satisfied with the service in general, I wanted to discuss some of my annoyances:
- When my ISP's connection to the Internet congests, the voice path gets static, clicks, gaps, or the calls drop. This is problematic. If I have an important business call (Usually these calls last 30 minutes or more) in the evening (Internet busy time), I will use my regular landline or wireless phone. The congestion usually happens in bursts of a couple of minutes, then goes away. For normal 3 or 5 minutes calls, I usually do not have a problem. I am not sure Vonage can do anything about this, because at the same time, noone in my house can surf the web either.
- Odd failure modes. Several times, I have lost the upstream voice path. I will be on a perfectly normal phone call and then suddenly the other party cannot hear me, but I can hear them; I have to hang up and call back. Another case: I'll hang up the phone, and it will take a long time to get dialtone for another call. If I wait long enough, it will eventually come back; this seems like a quirk in the ATA. I have read that some cable modems might be at fault for this.
- Closed. I am sure that Vonage has good business reasons (fraud, churn, billing, etc), but my mobile phone network is more open and programmable than Vonage. With the recent 3rd Party Call control beta, Vonage is starting to change, but the lack of CPE choices and lack of interoperability with other VoIP services is keeping Vonage from being anything more than cheaper dial tone. I am sure this will change over time. The new softphone is a good start, but the incremental pricing makes that inpractical for me.
- Interactions with HomeLAN activity. When I check my IMAP-based email while on a call, I can hear a little "click" on the voice path. If my kids download a video when I am on a call, sometimes the link gets static on it. While I know the new Linksys and MOT routers have voice traffic aware routing algorithms, I don't have them now. Interestingly, this is the only time the other party asks if I am on a cell phone, because otherwise, you cannot tell if you are on a VoIP connection.
- No sip:jack@mydomain.com. I really want to add a SIP URI to my business card. I want to be able to use DNS (ENUM) to define a vanity address for my Vonage service. I want to be able to use iptel.org's proxy servers with my Vonage service. This is not a showstopper, but if I am signing up for a for-fee VoIP service I expect to be able to use it like the free FWD service. Too bad, but I guess I can wait. Maybe I should try Voicepulse?
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