Voip Using Ipstar

[mouse]

I'm interested in making high quality VOIP (pc to pc and to phone) calls over the net from Thailand, using ipStar to Europe and the States. I do not like the idea of Skype or the others which use the virtual soft phones and am trying to concentrate on Vonage where I can hook up an actual phone.

Is it possibel?

Will it work with ipStar?

Is it legal?

Will the Vonage hardware (i.e. Linksys router) work here?

Any info would be greatly appreciated. I fear of signing up for service, and finding out that the service does not work.

Thanks in advance for any information.

[netkoala]

Me too.

Sorry i am not constructively adding to this thread, but I too would like to hear of a workable large corporate solution, please.

i.e. Tie the IP phone into the LAN Cisco router, to supply an office full of call operators with calls.

Link to existing commander call queue system etc.

Make a 1800 number available.

Maybe redirects into the PABX for functionality.

I think there was once a guy on this site that had a product.

Would like to hear from him again, but also from others that know of competing products.

Think there were some products that queued messages using MS Exchange, for example. Perhaps a Linux based system? Or suggestions on sticking to PBX solutions and having two phones on a desk , one PSTN and the other VOIP.

[dman]

You will have problems with IPSTAR and voice. The problem is too much jitter (unpredictable or varying degrees of delay) on the upload. I work as project manager for a US based company in charge of IT projects throughout Asia, mostly China, India, HK, Php, Etc. We are deploying VOIP at most of these sites. For my home here in LOS I have IPSTAR 256k/128k. I have a Nortel IP softphone that connects directly to my company's PBX in Boston via a VPN tunnel. When I make a phone call it is as if I was sitting in the Boston office. The problem is with the upload. I can hear the other person I am calling, but my transmission to them upload is poor most of the time. Not sure why but the upload is an issue with satelite. When I travel and am in a hotel that has DSL or leased line, I am able to make phone calls from my laptop Ip softphone and the quality is crystal clear. This saves literally thousands of dollars when I travel as I am often on conference calls for hours. I would strongly recommend ADSL or leased line (very expensive) I am waiting for ADSL to be available where I live in the (North) and will switch as soon as I can. Check out this site below, it offers some good info on all forms of communication. If you go to tests and tools you can find some windows registry tweaks to help the performance of your system with satelite. Good luck

http://www.dslreports.com/

[dman]

Netkoala, sorry I did not read through your post before I made the last reply. My company deploys a Nortel solution for our offices worldwide. I have worked for both companies Nortel and Cisco over the last 20 years and now work for a semiconductor company so have no alliance to either company. My opinion is that Nortel is a clear leader in the VOIP solution for worldwide based companies looking to leverage their corporate network bandwidth for voice. There is no need for two phones. The communication server or PBX with a voice gateway card has the inteligence to route a call over the PSTN or the corporate network depending on congestion at the time the call is placed. The talk about VOIP and merging voice and data was all the buzz 6 years ago but only now is it really being deployed with some sucess. There are still a ton of issues both technical (QOS, Prioritization, Compatibility) and non-technical, countries whose Govt. owns the telephone system and makes it illegal to bypass the PSTN for a phone call. For the private user this is not an enforacable issue but to a large multinational company, you must obey the laws of the country. Cheers

[dfwbkk]

Working for the world's largest supplier of telecom equipment I feel somewhat ambivalent, but I do use a VoIP service at home (live in the US). 20 bucks a month for unlimited calling within North America and Europe.

Can travel with my DSL-VoIP-modem and thus carry my home number with me. Can have local numbers in various countries (Malaysia and Singapore among them but not LOS...) so that people calling me don't have to call internationally. Me like...

dman, your thoughts about bypassing dear old PSTN probably applies here. Mr Toxin made/makes most of his nest egg from telecoms...

/// dfw

[dman]

Nice setup you have dfwbkk. I have a similar setup where I carry my local Boston office number anywhere I travel, configured into my laptop, Nortel IPSoftphone. I only need to connect to a proper internet connection, which most business hotels provide these days even in India where I was last week, connected wireless to their system and had crystal clear voice quality to the US and Thailand, but it does depend on the particular location and ISP that the hotel supplies, also important to get the best quality, you need a proper phone or headset with a DSP built into it. The cheap headsets for 99 Baht dont cut it. One additional nice thing my company has done for me is program the PBX in Boston with a local number so when someone like Mom+Dad dials that local Boston number it rings my humble abode land line here in LOS saving them the LD for the call and does not require me to be connected to the net. So far China in my experience is about the strictest on bypassing the PSTN for foreign companies doing business in China, but for a traveller in a hotel it is no problem. I have the IPstar broadband satelite here which sucks for VOIP as I metioned in previous response, but with E-phone land line dialing at 7 Baht/minute for a call to the US its cheap enough. I dont have ADSL yet where I am, they say it is coming, but so is Christmas. If it ever does come I will try it, I think it will be far better for VOIP than the IPSTAR satelite.