[wplug] VOIP recommendation

[Phil Groschwitz]

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:25:38 -0400
"Michael Semcheski" <mhsemcheski at gmail.com> wrote:

I'm interested in voip for my house too.  I have an IPCop firewall, and
it sounds like if I were to get voip I should put the voip box between
my cable modem and the IPCop firewall.  Is that right?  Is there any
security problems with that?  I'd hate for the voip box to get hacked
and wind up with a phone bill from some exotic island.

> I'll add a couple of data points here:
> 
> I used Speakeasy.net's VOIP service for one year.  I started off with
> a 1.5/384 ADSL setup.  That was inadequate.  I had to bump up to
> 1.5/768 to have acceptable phone.  I am actually pretty disappointed
> with Speakeasy.  It felt like a bait-and-switch.  However, once I was
> up to 1.5/768, the quality of service was fine, but expensive.
> 
> I'm currently using Comcast and am surprisingly pleased with their
> VOIP service.  Their modem / VOIP gateway has a built in UPS, which is
> nice.

Comcast isn't cheap, though, is it?  I'm thinking of vonage, voip.com,
verizon's VoiceWing, or ATT's CallVantage.  I think they're all under
$30.  I first started looking at Skype but that one seems too
problematic.  I like this softphone idea, though.

BTW, I've had IPCop for a long time.  When I got it, I had
middleschoolers and wanted content filtering and logging.  They're grown
now and I no longer need that kind of protection.  I've accumulated an
unmatched collection of hubs, WAP's, noisy FW server, and power
supplies.  I wonder if its time to throw it all out and buy a single
firewall/router/wap/phone ata device???

Phil