Friday, October 17, 2003
Voices over the Internet
While I don't think I'm at liberty to say who got this (but for convenience sake, let's call this person X), or through what program (since X mentioned having to sign a confidentiality agreement) but what X got was very nice indeed.
When I arrived at X's house, X was busy trying to get the home network back up and functioning. X had just received a D-Link VoIP station and was in the process of getting it integrated within the network.
About two hours of mucking around later (since we had to integrate this with the existing DSL unit (which we had to switch from PPPoE to bridge mode) and the WAP (and set the D-Link VoIP to do PPPoE even though R was told that wasn't necessary, because the D-Link unit had to have the public IP address to function).
Once everything was set up we both tested the capability of the system (no limit to the dialing destination—I could have called Timbuktu if I wanted). Except for a slight hiss I noticed (and that may have been the answering machines I ended up calling) there was no difference between this and a regular land line. Also, the number of features available with the service (call waiting, forwarding the calls to a voice mailbox, eight-way conference calling, and a bunch more I didn't get to see) is staggering. If this takes off this might make it worth getting rid of the actual land line (since from what I'm to understand, the service is/will be flat rate and not horribly expensive either).
