UKVoIPTalk.com

"news" <news@care4free.net> wrote in message
news:raw1k8FnQVaFFwrj@care4free.net...[color=blue]
>I am considering signing up with Gradwell for VoIP, for home/small business
>use.
>
> By far the most important criterion for me is RELIABILITY.
>
> 1. When you pick up the phone, do you always get a dial tone?
>
> 2. When you dial a number, do you get connected almost immediately, or do
> you have to wait 30 seconds to connect?
>
> 3. Do you get cut off in mid-call?
>
> 4. Does 1471 tell you the date/time that someone called you, as well as
> the calling number?
>
> In other words, I'm looking for a basic telephone service, as reliable as
> BT or NTL. A service that has got the fundamentals right. A service that
> understands what single-point-of-failure means. The frills can come later.
>
> Experiences of Gradwell anyone?[/color]

My experience of Gradwell:

Since I signed up about a year ago [and once I had sorted out all firewall
issues at this end] I have had only one problem with the basic telephony
part of the service.

This occurred when Telewest had screwed up a datafill and "lost" the linkage
between the DDI number and Gradwell's numbering provider - not actually
Gradwell's fault (and confused Telewest greatly as it was local to a
specific exchange or exchange group - ie completely a screw-up at their
end).

I am also aware of a couple of brief outages (because they were listed on
Gradwell's site) that would have removed telephony briefly (less than an
hour IIRC) during this period - but I didn't notice them directly myself.

I've also encountered a couple of quirks with the web setup for their more
sophisticated "Virtual PBX" product - namely that stuff you do on the
website is not (quite) instantly reflected in the telephony side, and in
particular if you point a PSTN number at something (conference, voice menu,
etc) you have only just setup there may be a brief period where the PSTN
number does something odd (rings out, or responds with silence) before the
telephony system catches up with the web setup.

Finally I've had a problem with using the conferencing facility with larger
numbers of participants, particularly when some of them were US based - on
one occasion we had a ~10 second echo (at more or less full volume) which
made the conference almost impossible to use! [However I think here we (a)
are probably pushing the limits of the technology and (b) need to look as
much at reducing far end (phone/softphone) echo].

Basically I'm very satisfied - I thought a "warts and all" description was
more useful than "it's fab/works for me". I'd concur with the other
responder who pointed out that your net connectivity is likely to be an
order of magnitude less reliable. [Interestingly my greatest period of no
connectivity during the time I've been with Gradwell was when BT replaced
the telegraph pole my voice/ADSL line is provided from].

Of course an advantage of Gradwell is that they can provide a divert to a
PSTN number, so if you are without (primary) connectivity for a period of
time you could arrange for incoming calls to be routed to a landline (or
even mobile), albeit at your cost...

--
Thomas Sandford

"news" <news@care4free.net> wrote in message
news:sCE0ixE1EtaFFwrj@care4free.net...[color=blue]
>
> OK, but is there any point in presenting a dial tone to the user if the
> phone/ATA is not registered?[/color]

Under certain circumstances, yes, after you realise the account may not be
registered because a call has failed.

Even though you could "dial out" using that particular unregistered account,
it would obviously fail, but as multiple accounts can be associated with
each FXS port, then if dial tone is present you could go ahead and make a
call using another account either by selecting it by dialling a prefix, or
perhaps letting the dialplan route a different call via another
pre-determined account according to the type of call, eg international or
mobile.

Rob

"news" <news@care4free.net> wrote in message
news:raw1k8FnQVaFFwrj@care4free.net...[color=blue]
>I am considering signing up with Gradwell for VoIP, for home/small business
>use.
>
> By far the most important criterion for me is RELIABILITY.
>
> 1. When you pick up the phone, do you always get a dial tone?
>
> 2. When you dial a number, do you get connected almost immediately, or do
> you have to wait 30 seconds to connect?
>
> 3. Do you get cut off in mid-call?
>
> 4. Does 1471 tell you the date/time that someone called you, as well as
> the calling number?
>
> In other words, I'm looking for a basic telephone service, as reliable as
> BT or NTL. A service that has got the fundamentals right. A service that
> understands what single-point-of-failure means. The frills can come later.[/color]


I have been using gradwell at a small office (7 phones) using the centrex
pbx facilities.

i'll talk to u on msn if u like

[email]msnREMOVETHISBIT@dazzas.co.uk[/email]

In short - its great!

Darren

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006 11:46:00 GMT, news <news@care4free.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
>In message <456acb79$0$8735$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net>, Rob
><nobody@this.place.invalid> writes[color=green]
>>
>>
>>The DrayTek Vigor2800VG has an option "Play dial tone only when account
>>registered", which depending on whether it is selected or not, gives a dial
>>tone in either state of the VoIP account (ie registered or non-registered).
>>[/color]
>
>OK, but is there any point in presenting a dial tone to the user if the
>phone/ATA is not registered?[/color]

Its also possible to make peer-to peer calls to a phone connected to
another router by direct IP addressing without the need for a SIP
registrar. They may have included the option to avoid confusion if
that function is used.

Chris

news wrote:[color=blue]
> 1. When you pick up the phone, do you always get a dial tone?[/color]

In a voip network, the dialtone is generated locally by your phone.

So, nothing to do with gradwell really, providing the SIP registration
stays up.
[color=blue]
> 2. When you dial a number, do you get connected almost immediately, or
> do you have to wait 30 seconds to connect?[/color]

Always fast.
[color=blue]
> 3. Do you get cut off in mid-call?[/color]

Never.
[color=blue]
> 4. Does 1471 tell you the date/time that someone called you, as well as
> the calling number?[/color]

Not by dialling 1471. You can certainly see this info on the web interface.

I have this info collected by my Snom phone anyway, so I'd never dial a
number to find out.
[color=blue]
>
> Experiences of Gradwell anyone?[/color]

All fine.

Tim

news wrote:
[color=blue]
>
> In other words, I'm looking for a basic telephone service, as reliable
> as BT or NTL. A service that has got the fundamentals right. A service
> that understands what single-point-of-failure means. The frills can come
> later.[/color]

Lots of people have written nice things about us - but, before I read
those, I was going to say that, if you want a BT phone line, you should
get one from BT, because VoIP services in general, are not BT phone lines.

There are loads of points of failure in VoIP - we route calls using
Linux servers instead of Marconi switches and we run it over ADSL lines.

Plus, SIP isn't as good as the PSTN routing protocol (ss7). It only has
6 error modes, rather than the 40 odd error codes SS7 gives you.

That's not to say voip doesn't work well for a good number of people
(many thousand on our system) and it offers some great features - but
it's not a BT line.

cheers
peter

--
peter gradwell. gradwell dot com Ltd. [url]http://www.gradwell.com/[/url]
-- engineering & hosting services for email, web and voip --
-- [url]http://www.peter.me.uk/[/url] -- [url]http://www.voip.org.uk/[/url] --

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006 23:03:38 +0000, Peter Gradwell
<peter@gradwell.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>news wrote:
>[color=green]
>>
>> In other words, I'm looking for a basic telephone service, as reliable
>> as BT or NTL. A service that has got the fundamentals right. A service
>> that understands what single-point-of-failure means. The frills can come
>> later.[/color]
>
>Lots of people have written nice things about us - but, before I read
>those, I was going to say that, if you want a BT phone line, you should
>get one from BT, because VoIP services in general, are not BT phone lines.
>
>There are loads of points of failure in VoIP - we route calls using
>Linux servers instead of Marconi switches and we run it over ADSL lines.
>
>Plus, SIP isn't as good as the PSTN routing protocol (ss7). It only has
>6 error modes, rather than the 40 odd error codes SS7 gives you.
>
>That's not to say voip doesn't work well for a good number of people
>(many thousand on our system) and it offers some great features - but
>it's not a BT line.
>
>cheers
>peter[/color]

But would anyone want to be associated with anything that Richard (R)
Ashton was connected with?
It put me off straight away

news wrote:
[color=blue]
>
> In other words, I'm looking for a basic telephone service, as reliable
> as BT or NTL. A service that has got the fundamentals right. A service
> that understands what single-point-of-failure means. The frills can come
> later.
>
> Experiences of Gradwell anyone?[/color]

Gradwell seem to be about as good as VoIP gets in terms of reliability.
Which is to say nearly as good as BT and for many people functionally
no less good than BT - but when you get right down to it they are not
and can not be as reliable. Not to put too fine a point on it they
simply have more transport layers for your call to be carried over and
hence more things that could go wrong. Some of those transport layers
are not built on the same reliability-at-all-costs basis as the PSTN.
VoIP simply cannot deliver the sort of single-point-of-failure system
you want unless you happen to be on 21CN in Wick - and I would not want
to bet real money on normal PSTN levels of reliability for Wick over
the next few months.

POTS is still the most reliable if reliability is your overriding
criteria. If you want the features and benefits of VoIP and as much
reliability as you can get then from my experience I would say that
Gradwell is a good choice. Personally I find the Gradwell service
sufficiently reliable that I have not yet had a problem and so for me
there has been no real-world difference in reliability.

--
Nic
[url]www.entrust-systems.net[/url]

NicHughes wrote:[color=blue]
> Gradwell seem to be about as good as VoIP gets in terms of reliability.
> Which is to say nearly as good as BT and for many people functionally
> no less good than BT - but when you get right down to it they are not
> and can not be as reliable. Not to put too fine a point on it they
> simply have more transport layers for your call to be carried over and
> hence more things that could go wrong. Some of those transport layers
> are not built on the same reliability-at-all-costs basis as the PSTN.
> VoIP simply cannot deliver the sort of single-point-of-failure system
> you want unless you happen to be on 21CN in Wick - and I would not want
> to bet real money on normal PSTN levels of reliability for Wick over
> the next few months.[/color]

Yes.

But it depends what you want.

For instance, you can get an easy 8 channels of G.711 voip down an ADSL
max line, if you are near the exchange.

Compared to paying BT for 8 ISDN lines, the costs quickly roll in favour
of VoIP.

5 minutes of downtime a month when the ADSL decides to resync may well
be preferable to paying BT $$$ every month.

Its a tradeoff.

There are other advantages too - like BT won't usually port numbers
between areas. But you can port the numbers to a VoIP provider and take
them anywhere you like.

Or maybe, buying extra services online in real time may be preferable to
talking to BT's call centre.

Tim

Geoff wrote:
[color=blue]
> But would anyone want to be associated with anything that Richard (R)
> Ashton was connected with?
> It put me off straight away[/color]

Explanation?

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