xfone 018 phone service and Linux

[geoffrey mendelson]

On Mar 7, 2009, at 11:21 PM, Arie Skliarouk wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 13:54, Gilad Ben-Yossef  
> <gilad at codefidence.com> wrote:
> Arie Skliarouk wrote:
>
> On a 150kbit upload ADSL upload of a 1500 bytes packet takes about  
> 85ms. To send out the VoIP packet would take another 85ms (on  
> condition that you have a really good QoS). This causes latency of  
> 85-170ms with jitter 85ms. The VoIP speech (SIP protocol) has a lot  
> of skips and is unacceptable.

SIP packets are about 100 bytes.  They are even smaller with header  
compression, but CISCO
has a patent on that, so I can't say for certain anyone else uses it.

I have a US VoIP provider and they are extremely well connected to  
Netvision. Average ping
times are slightly over 160ms. I used to have Vonage, and from  
Wednesday afternoon until
early Sunday morning, they were unuseable. My current provider is good  
24/6.5 (I'm shomer
shabbat), but unlike my vonage connection, it was perfectly usable 3pm  
Friday, 8pm Saturday.

I have a 5m/256k cable modem from hot, and a TP-Link router without QOS.

Note there are other VoIP providers that do similar things, 012  
provides you with a BEZEQ
aDSL line and a "box", but won't let you use it for Internet, Orange  
makes you get the line, but
provides the ISP service and "box". I have heard BBL does too, but  
have no desire to find out.

Actually the cheap deals for outgoing calls currently are the HOT 077  
service with 2,000 minutes
a month to BEZEQ and 077 lines. It is not VoIP and can be used for a  
fax, btw. Orange's 139
NIS for combined ISP service and 600 minutes is a good deal if you use  
it to call cell phones,
as HOT is 45ag a minute.

Neither is very good if you call mostly outside of Israel.

SKYPE has outgoing only service, but it is SKYPE, which is something  
some people love
and others hate (I'm on the hate side) for $6 a month ($13 for a lot  
of countries).

My wife is in Amsterdam for 4 days, and I seriously thought about  
spending the $6 for
one month of an incoming Dutch number via SKYPE, but she had no  
landline access.

Geoff.
-- 
geoffrey mendelson
geoffreymendelson at gmail.com