VOIP SunRocket Internet Phone Service $199 for 15months = $13.27/month

[georgepa]

Tony-

I prefer the 640 as well. I like the size. I maxed out my Line 1 allotment with 4 handsets, though. Having Line port 2 as outgoing available to me I am interested in a 4-phone system to distinguish between outgoing lines. Bigger phones=Line 2, smaller phones=Line 1. Cordless 2-line phones w. speakerphones are too pricy, so this may be the best way, even though I prefer the 640s myself.

Thanks for the Amazon links.

 

[dchakrab]

Originally posted by: georgepa


ridefree-

I remember way back when he came into the thread. The discussion centered around using a wireless bridge through walls. I'll try to dig those posts up, don't remember how long it has been. Perhaps half a year?

From my previous post, and several other posts:

"I tried that originally, it never worked, I switched to a wired connection. This is simple."

Does this explain my earliest posts in this thread?

Will keep this thread flame-free in future. I do see attempts to discredit me as flaming as well, though.

To move this back on topic, I'm thinking about asking SR for the new gizmo, since some of you seem to have had success getting one by just asking for it.

Question: How would I measure bandwidth during a call and during lag hours to see how much the current gizmo's eating up? I'm not a heavy downloader at this point, but it'd be good to know, since I do have to get Linux ISOs once in a while.

Question: What other advantages does the new gizmo have over the old one? Does it actually ration download bandwidth better than the old one?

Question: Does any of this affect upload bandwidth at all? If so, how would I measure that?

D.

------------------
Dave A. Chakrabarti

Sunrocket Review

Nirman - My dealings with a dishonest Varanasi, India nonprofit organization that ended up stealing my computer equipment when I volunteered for them for over 3 years.

 

[RideFree]

DSLReports SpeedTest

 

[RideFree]

Originally posted by: tomtrike
Has any one tried this web site?

http://www.testmyvoip.com/index.html

I ran the test call to Boston with the "Preserve voice quality" option and received a score of 3.8.

How did you score?

tomtrike

And/or this.

 

[dchakrab]

Thanks!

Tried the first one so far.

With modem -> gizmo -> router -> computers setup, I'm getting about 30% loss in download speed when I'm making a call as opposed to leaving the phone idle. Upload speed loss is less...about 15%.

Next step is to try it with the second link. At some point, I'm going to rewire so I can test cable modem -> router -> computers, to see what it baselines without the gizmo.

Usable, for now, but even with the gizmo idle I'm rated at slower than 82% of other Comcast users, so I'm guessing there's a significant hit. My downloading needs are so light that it doesn't matter much for me.

If I get the new gizmo, I'll post a comparison...hopefully that'll lessen the impact.

D.

------------------
Dave A. Chakrabarti

Sunrocket Review

Nirman - My dealings with a dishonest Varanasi, India nonprofit organization that ended up stealing my computer equipment when I volunteered for them for over 3 years.

 

[dchakrab]

Crap, double post again.


------------------
Dave A. Chakrabarti

Sunrocket Review

Nirman - My dealings with a dishonest Varanasi, India nonprofit organization that ended up stealing my computer equipment when I volunteered for them for over 3 years.

 

[dchakrab]

Originally posted by: RideFree

Originally posted by: tomtrike
Has any one tried this web site?

http://www.testmyvoip.com/index.html

I ran the test call to Boston with the "Preserve voice quality" option and received a score of 3.8.

How did you score?

tomtrike

And/or this.

This second one, set to "preserve voice quality" puts me at 3.5, halfway between "good cell phone" and "crummy cell phone" in terms of quality...which has pretty much been my user experience. Accurate test, in my opinion.

I wonder if putting my gizmo behind the router and opening ports will affect call quality / bandwidth available to the gizmo. I'm thinking it might work the other way...big downloads through the router will affect the gizmo, unless I set QoS to prioritize VOIP in the router. Hmmm. I suppose I don't really need the download bandwidth, so the more I can allocate to SR, the better...I'm wondering if leaving the gizmo where it is allocates most of the bandwidth to VOIP by default. I mean, you'd think it would, but what if I want to prioritize phone calls even more than it already does? Would that give me better call quality? Can I even do that with the general user login for the gizmo?

D.

------------------
Dave A. Chakrabarti

Sunrocket Review

Nirman - My dealings with a dishonest Varanasi, India nonprofit organization that ended up stealing my computer equipment when I volunteered for them for over 3 years.

 

[RideFree]

The Gizmo will only consume so much bandwidth behind the router. There is no need for "special" settings as the Gizmo knows what to do.

 

[dchakrab]

Originally posted by: RideFree
The Gizmo will only consume so much bandwidth behind the router. There is no need for "special" settings as the Gizmo knows what to do.

Oh, I meant the other way. As in, what if I wanted my download speeds to die to modem-like existence, and prioritize VOIP QoS absolutely...would that improve my call quality?

Theoretically, with absolute VOIP QoS prioritization, picking up the phone would cut off every download or other internet access entirely, leaving everything free for VOIP. In actual practice, they need to set predetermined ratios or cutoffs so that some bandwidth is reserved, but not all of it.

There are ways to set this manually...using a hacked Linksys WRT54G, for example, you can put the gizmo behind the router and decide if you want to give VOIP priority over download / upload speeds or not. I'm wondering if there's some way I can encourage the Gizmo to be even more aggressive, instead of less, since having better call quality would be worth it. I'd just know not that if I picked up the phone, my downloads would go super-slow. Since I use the phone very infrequently, this setup would work, I think.

D.

------------------
Dave A. Chakrabarti

Sunrocket Review

Nirman - My dealings with a dishonest Varanasi, India nonprofit organization that ended up stealing my computer equipment when I volunteered for them for over 3 years.

 

[RideFree]

So, you want to split the hairs between undectable and perfection?

 

[dchakrab]

Originally posted by: RideFree
So, you want to split the hairs between undectable and perfection?

In terms of call quality or bandwidth hit? I have detectable bandwidth hit, but I'm saying I wouldn't care if it were worse, if that meant my call quality improved. Right now, my call quality's rated halfway between "good cell phone" and "crummy cell phone" ...I'd like to be able to improve that to at least "good cell phone" consistently, or better, presumably at the cost of download speed.

D.

 

[pulse8]

Anyone else's service totally fubared right now?

 

[ttown]

Originally posted by: pulse8
Anyone else's service totally fubared right now?

I'm fine in Western WA

 

[dchakrab]

Fine here in Chicago, IL, as of 11:15.

------------------
Dave A. Chakrabarti

Sunrocket Review

Nirman - My dealings with a dishonest Varanasi, India nonprofit organization that ended up stealing my computer equipment when I volunteered for them for over 3 years.

 

[imported_fatman]

Just got up and tried to use phone, found out SR is totally die here, Detroit, MI. Tried to login Sunrocket's website, couldn't login neither... Something wrong over there again... called their support, now is waiting for their support person, can't even hear their music, it's broken...

My annual plan will be expired next 2 days, haven't renewed yet, it that a reason?

 

[imported_fatman]

Man! I can't even login to SR's website and setup forwarding calls to my cell phone....

 

[canalcrab]

Dead on LI, NY.

 

[TheCoop]

Dead in Baltimore, MD as of 6AM this morning and still dead as of 830 pm. Also cannot log onto website. I know their phone lines are tied up. Shame tey cant put a header on their webpage saying they know there is an interruption in service, will be back up in approx whatever hours.

 

[imported_fatman]

Yeah, I agree it's a shame.

that's fine if they even don't know how long they can recorver but at least they should put a header on the website or their answering system so I don't need to waste 30 minutes waiting for nothing! got disconnected twice for no reason.

 

[Surr]

Seems to be back up. At least my SR is now working in NC.

 

[jayfischer]

Down in Chicago at 9:30am.

 

[agrall]

Every time I'm almost ready to pull the trigger and go with SunRocket, I hear of a rash of outages here on Anandtech...

Maybe I should just stay with Vonage...

 

[Surr]

Originally posted by: agrall
Every time I'm almost ready to pull the trigger and go with SunRocket, I hear of a rash of outages here on Anandtech...

Maybe I should just stay with Vonage...

Maybe. I just activated with SunRocket Saturday. It hasn't even been 48 hours, and I already have an outage. At least mine is back up now. I haven't transfered my land line phone yet. I want to give SR a couple weeks to make sure it is going to work out for me, before I give up my Ma Bell line. Since SR has a 31 day trail period, I plan to use it. If outages continue to be a problem I will just cancel.

 

[RideFree]

Originally posted by: Surr

Originally posted by: agrall
Every time I'm almost ready to pull the trigger and go with SunRocket, I hear of a rash of outages here on Anandtech...

Maybe I should just stay with Vonage...

Maybe. I just activated with SunRocket Saturday. It hasn't even been 48 hours, and I already have an outage. At least mine is back up now. I haven't transfered my land line phone yet. I want to give SR a couple weeks to make sure it is going to work out for me, before I give up my Ma Bell line. Since SR has a 31 day trail period, I plan to use it. If outages continue to be a problem I will just cancel.

Surr,
You are doing it exactly the way it should be done.

 

[RideFree]

All:
http://www.staples.com has a couple of the Uniden 646 phone systems on sale (with easy rebate).

For example...
Uniden 4 phone system
Staples # 625837
$99.98 - $40 er = $59.99

I think they're all under the Staples heading of...
Cordless expandable phone systems.