A little story about iConnectHere
Posted on May 30, 2008
Filed Under providers, voip | Leave a Comment
So, folks, a while ago I did say few words about iConnectHere. Mea culpa - I did say they are not that bad. I was wrong.
I decided to try them when my VoipCheap was especially bad - it didn’t work at all, and since its world-class technical support was not very responsible, I decided to take a chance. So I signed up on their website, payed them certain amount of money… about £30 - in U.S. dollars something around $59.95 or some other idiotic amount just slightly below 60 bucks.
First of all, it did take 4 hours to receive login and password. I don’t know what they’ve been doing all that time (considering that it was weekend and they tend not to work outside of working hours). So either their computer systems are really super-fast and they need 4 hours to generate new password and create an account, or… I don’t even know. Well anyway, it did take 4 hours - and that’s how long did it take.
And, finally, I got it and I can start calling… Ha! You need to wait for your “special brand new equipment” to arrive, boy! In 6-8 working days, boy! And no other way. Nope. Not at all.
Although I managed to figure what should I do to make it work - so I needed to register my Linksys PAP2’s MAC address on their website (do you like the smell of this idea?) as it was an only way to make it work! In total it took me 2 hours before I could make a call - y’know, I do know a few bits about this stuff but it still wasn’t very… straight-forward, even for me.
Ah, forgot to mention. I signed up for a World Unlimited calling plan which (theoretically) should give me unlimited calls to 16 or so countries - including my home country (which is Russia). So I simply placed a call - and talked for couple of minutes.
Well, I never expected that VoIP quality may be THAT bad. Yes I know, good old Betamax isn’t that good and there’re quite a few providers who can do much better - in terms of voice quality - for just a few quids a month more, but I am quite happy with them (most of the time). But iConnectHere… it was something “amazing”, “unbelieveable” - you see the quotes around these words, don’t you? My mom didn’t recognize my voice. Yep. And after that I figured that I was charged - and charged quite alright - for each minute of my conversation.
To make a long story short, I decided I don’t want to go ahead, so I decided to cancel my account - strictly under their terms and conditions. So what do you think? Here the most funny part just started! Read the rest of the article
SMC Barricade
Posted on May 25, 2008
Filed Under hardware, providers | Leave a Comment
Still having fun with my Barricade – it has got identical problem as my previous WAG325N does - it blocks RtP traffic. But, with only difference - not always. And man, it really piss me off! So, as the result now I am having two debates - one with SMC’s 2nd line technical support, and another - with iConnectHere, which are basically refunding me money for a third week (mental note: write another ‘howler’ to them). Will keep you updated on both matters 
P.S. Ah yes, iSoftPhone worked just fine - I called my wife from Barcelona couple of times, and had no problems at all. Which simply can’t be bad!
SMC Barricade SMC7904WBRA-N review
Posted on April 23, 2008
Filed Under hardware | 3 Comments
Just as I promised, enjoy a review of my brand new SMC Barricade
wireless 802.11N ADSL router - I got it just today, and happy to share my thoughts about it with you, guys.
How should I begin… well… probably, first, I should send you to read all the technical data about this router - which you can do straight away, probably - in the post
in which I announced this review. It probably make sense even if you’ve read it - just to remind yourself what this router is. For those lazy ones, I will quickly (and really briefly!) include the spec: this is ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL2+ 802.11N draft 2.0 wireless broadband router - no more, no less. All the specs are more or less standard, nothing too outstanding - at least a dozen of suppliers provide a similar solutions on the market now - including Linksys, Belkin, Netgear, and many many others (and name SMC is quite new - at least for consumer market, and at least - for myself). Anyway, what is in the box?
- The router itself - quite a decent silver plastic box, with two antennas - in a plactic bag.
- Power adapter
- Quick start guide
- Standard network patch cord
- ADSL telephone cord
- CD with something (I did not insert it, sorry)
- Virtually somewhere on a CD there’s a 3 month trial version of Panda Antivirus. Thank you very much, very kind of you.
Quite minimalistic, huh?
By the way, I don’t know whether you’ve mentioned or not, this is a very common thing now that manufacturers do not enclose a printed copy of manual to the box - saying, that putting a CD they save some trees (I don’t know, I never seen that trees). Well yeah, right, but what if, for example, I am a very proud owner of a MacBook Air, which (uh-oh) doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive, and I haven’t got an internet connection - yet, because my router - here’s it, right on my table - but since I am silly user and I need manual badly to make it work? What then? Don’t think this is a way to go, anyway - a lot of people who do not fit into the concept of silly users (like, my father) still love read manuals sometime after they figured by themselves how it works - just to be sure he didn’t miss something.
Anyway, whatever is in a box is definitely enough to make your ADSL connection work (well may be it also worth include ADSL filter). So, we plugging all the wires in, connecting the router, and navigating to the default address - 192.168.2.1. And…
In attempts to find an ideal ADSL gateway
Posted on April 22, 2008
Filed Under hardware, telecom | 2 Comments
Update: See a full review of SMC Barricade SMC7904WBRA-N router - with photos and screenshots.
Just like in any of previous’ posts - if you think, it hasn’t got anything to do with VoIP - thing again. As I told before, 24 or 8 second disconnects were related not to the softphone or ATA, but to the router. In fact, I would never realized it by myself, although with help of Light-Connect’s techmen it became quite clear. My next choice became SMC Barricade SMC7904WBRA-N router.
What, you never heard about SMC? Well, I never did as well. Although I decided to try - and primarily because I do not want to overpay for a brand name (as often if not always it happens, that most famous brand names are made in China, on the same Uncle Lao’s factory as the most unknown ones). I did not find many reviews of this particular piece of hardware, but ones I’ve seen, says that despite ugly look, it is quite good actually. Additionally, in constract with my poor WAG325N, this one is certified against 802.11n draft 2.0 (which theoretically should give some benefits in future). As for now, I quickly reviewed manual (yes, I know - most of us are doing that while waiting for a new gadget), and found nothing too interesting, except, may be, a Wi-Fi Protected Setup feature which I never personally seen before (and quite unlikely that I will ever use it). Good word about manual - they do know that Mac OS X exists in this world! Though they’re talking about 10.2 (and goddamned MacIE which is dead, dead long ago!), I think that it will not create any problems to most of users to apply these instructions to Leo (as far as I remember, Linksys’ refust to admit the fact that any other operating systems exist, even when they’re using Linux on some of their new devices).
The feature list will be quite short, and will consist of, mostly, well-known abbreviations:
- ADSL / ADSL2 / ADSL2+ with a connection speed of up to 24 Mbit/sec (not applicable to BT). Good thing is that you can tune up almost everything related to ATM, 1483 and PPPoA/PPPoE, including even QoS class (which seems to be something flaky for consumer class gateways). And yes, you can manage a traffic priorities - on a MAC address level, i.e. you can assign that a traffic which goes to your, say, VoIP device has got a higher priority than anything else. Strictly speaking, this is strongly adviced if you’re using VoIP or Video conferencing.
- WiFi 802.11n draft 2.0 with a link speed of up to 300 Mbit/sec on the distances up to 300 metres.
- NAT, Firewall, DMZ, UPnP. If you don’t know what that mean - probably, you don’t need it.
- DDNS - really nice feature. Never heard about? Go check out DynDNS.org, worth reading.
Generally, that is it - for now. As soon as I get it (which I hope will happen quite soon), I will try to write a good review of this piece of hardware (I said - I will try, I didn’t say I will!). Anyway, stay tuned - updates will follow.
Problems with Linksys PAP2…
Posted on April 18, 2008
Filed Under hardware, providers, software, voip | 8 Comments
…were not a problems with PAP2 at all. Or, as I understand it. Yesterday an exhausting series of tests showed, that PAP2 hasn’t got anything to do with my 24-seconds disconnect problem (8 seconds using Light-Connect) - the problem in fact is in my Linksys WAG325N router. When I change it to my good old BT Home Hub, it works perfectly well. When I connect to (somebody elses) wireless network (which isn’t mine) it still works perfectly well. Even when I connect using HSDPA/3G on my communicator it works!
But now with my router. So, after 2 hours of arguing with Linksys’ support, they eventually agreed to exchange my router (fingers crossed that the next one will not have such problems). That’s what I am going to do pretty soon.
Meantime, good algorithm of detecting problems with SIP is to look carefully through SIP log (most of softphones and some of ATAs - PAP2 not included - support logging). Generally, you should look trough the log and seek, ‘who’ send a ‘BYE’ command. If it was a server - talk to your provider, because one of the reasons may be inability to deliver a packet to you (as your smart router just kills it). If it was a client - something is wrong with your hardware/software. Anyway, when you’re having problems with your SIP - this is a way to go.
So I am off - need to do some work, after all, and you guys stay tuned, as updates will follow inevitably
iSoftPhone - review and results
Posted on April 17, 2008
Filed Under blog, mac, photo, software, voip | Leave a Comment
Hey, guys and girls, just as I promised, please get the review for iSoftPhone «the coolest softphone for Mac OS X» - according to the manufacturer (well it will not be a formal review, there’re few on the Web - but rather my experience of using it).
It is quite tough, actually, to review it. Because my impression is very ambiguous. Let’s start with good things:
- The look - an application looks like a proper Mac OS X software, with all the look’n'feel, with support for Mac OS X “services”, with Command+, - enabled preferences menu… It really looks great - at least, first couple of minutes.
- And it looks pretty similar to iPhone as well - it is hard to forget, what iSoftPhone was inspired with.
- Sound quality is quite good.
- Website contains instruction for a variety of different providers - you’ll never get lost.
So - biggest thing is that iSoftPhone is a first ever VoIP application which looks like a proper Mac app. No, I don’t say that X-Lite or SJPhone (which I personally adore) are bad programs, of course not - they just don’t look native on Mac OS X. And iSoftPhone - does.
It isn’t all, but… Now let’s dive deep in.
First of all - shall you believe it or not - the biggest problem I experienced with iSoftPhone is that its main window is not resizeable! Have you seen many Mac applications with not resizable windows?
OK, I can understand to some extent - probably, developers decided that this one size will fit all, and everybody would be happy with it, and they avoided hassle of creating a resize-enabled GUI. But it’s just ridiculous - for example, on my 1440×900 MacBook Pro screen this iPhone looks quite small, and on the Full HD screen it’ll look just tiny! And what about those lucky of us who has got screens with resolution more than Full HD?
Additionally, this non-resizable window adds another problem - when you switch to the address book mode, if you’ve got contacts with a long name, like Jose Maria Manuel Sanchez Fernandos, you will see, probably, only “Jose Maria …” - and that is it. And there’re no way to find out the full name without running Address Book, it is not funny.
IP Telephony to get 74% of market by 2009
Posted on April 16, 2008
Filed Under industry, news, telecom, voip | Leave a Comment
Palo Alto, CA – September 21, 2005 – The latest study by The Radicati Group, “Corporate VoIP
Market, 2005-2009” provides an in-depth analysis of the worldwide Corporate IP Telephony
market, including installed base, market size, market share by vendor, breakouts by region, and
analysis of key vendor products and strategies.The study focuses on vendors of on-site deployed corporate IP PBXs, both hybrid and pure play. It does not include hosted solutions or IP Centrex. The study shows that a majority of companies, especially medium to larger sized companies, are gradually upgrading their PBXs to hybrid IP/TDM solutions. This allows corporations to migrate to IP telephony at their own pace, rather than completely overhauling their telephony network.
The study estimates that by 2009, 74% of all corporate telephony lines will be IP lines.
Worldwide revenue for hybrid and pure IP PBXs is expected to grow from approximately $1.5
billion in 2005, to $9.9 billion in 2009.To order a copy of the study, or for additional information about our market research programs,
please visit our web site at http://www.radicati.com, or call Ruchi Batra at (650) 322-8059.
Worth reading, but unfortunately I cannot afford paying 2000 quid for their papers - anybody seen them? The whitepaper can be downloaded from here.
Anyway, they seem to be quite right - as every other office right now is already using IP telephony, and every second one is seriously considering moving to it - at least, to cut expences minimum 10 times (everybody knows, how careless are corporate users about calling overseas from their deskphones - and if they need it, they will do it anyway).
iPhone 8gb - £169 in O2 and Carphone Warehouse
Posted on April 16, 2008
Filed Under hardware | 3 Comments
If you think it is not about VoIP - thing again. And hell yes, iPhone which can be used as a perfect client for VoIP of any flavour is now just one hundred and sixty nine pounds in O2 - the most official seller of iPhones in the UK. Though Apple did not updated, this may mean only one thing - iPhone 3G is coming!
It can’t be bad, guys, can it? Especially - considering that fring promises to create a native client for iPhone as soon as possible - it just rocks!
Update: With Quidco 100 pounds cashback the iPhone will cost you 69 pounds!
iSoftPhone - an ultimate Mac client
Posted on April 14, 2008
Filed Under software, voip | 2 Comments
Hey guys, just want to share an excellent news with you - somehow (tss!) I managed to get a fully valid licensed version of iSoftPhone - a Mac VoIP program, inspired by the look and feel of the mobile-phone-everybody-talks-about (as they advertise themselves, «the coolest softphone for Mac OS X»). As the result, this evening I will write a good full review of it - fingers crossed, let’s hope it’ll be good!
P.S. If you really need a legal copy of it - just give me a shout. I may share this secret with you
I hope you will see this review tonight, or tomorrow morning - so stay tuned!
Linksys PAP2 failure and SJPhone softphone
Posted on April 12, 2008
Filed Under hardware, providers, software, voip | Leave a Comment
A weird thing happened - my brave and faithful Linksys PAP2 suddenly if not died, but at least started to misbehave in a very strange way - calls are dropped after 20-25 (as I figured later - after exactly 24 seconds). Sad but true - it happens, and it happens with the hardware as well. I changed provider, I restarted the box and even updated firmware and done a hard-reset - it didn’t help.
Good thing to know, that you still has got a number of back-up options, and one of them I immediately evaluated.
For a long time my personal favorite softphone was … did I say it? I believe that I didn’t… it was SJPhone - quite flaky and ugly looking on Mac, but it worked, it worked just all the time, and I should say I was quite happy with it. So, I decided that such a situation, in fact, is a good opportunity to try a new “preview” version of it. OMG… if previously it looked like a 10 years old Windows 3.1 application, now it looks like… well I don’t know… go and see yourself…
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