[ale] Vonage redux

[Christopher Fowler]

Packet8 gave me my ATA.  I've been satisfied with them.

You can buy a Vonage ATA at Sam's or BestBuy
On Thu, 2005-08-18 at 10:18 -0400, Jason Fritcher wrote:
> Mills, John M. wrote:
> > Q1: Does Vonage service require any inbound ports be forwarded to its modem,
> > or does the modem initiate the connection and get only repies, even for
> > inbound phone calls? Vonage' installation notes list a potload of ports
> > which shouldn't be blocked, but don't say if any must be specifically
> > forwarded to their modem.
> 
> I did have to forward UDP ports 5060 and 5061 to the Vonage box.
> 
> > Q2: Does Vonage typically provide the modem, or do most customers go buy one
> > (LinkSys or whatever) from a third party? Any strong preferences? (I know I
> > could replace the simple Airlink router with a "known brand" - is this
> > useful?)
> 
> I believe you can either buy one directly from Vonage, or you can go to 
> most electronics stores and buy one there. But you will need to buy the ATA.
> 
> > Q3: If Vonage service requires inbound port forwarding, do they provide a
> > modem that can use a fixed IP in my LAN?
> 
> I'm using the Linksys PAP2 ATA, and it can do DHCP or static IP. I left 
> mine as DHCP and assign a static IP through the DHCP server.
> 
> > Q4: Vonage' notes suggest that putting their interface behind the modem does
> > sacrifice some functionality (e.g., QoS control), but that it should work.
> > What should I anticipate happening to the phone link when another system is
> > keeping the LAN busy?
> 
> I haven't experienced this myself, but you'll experience breakups in 
> conversations from latency and jitter. One project I've been meaning to 
> start is setting up QoS on my linux router.
>