Is VOIP Over WLAN DOA? 234
prostoalex writes "Voice-over-IP in Wireless LAN environment - a futurist's dream of always-on always-connected service. Guy Kewney from eWeek tests the technologies that try to satisfy this market today and finds nothing but disappointment. " The best result we got was that just once, I heard his voice with a delay of about 15 seconds, saying "You just have to speak up!"--which was part of a 20-second burst of speech from him. The rest was lost.""
sataphone (Score:5, Informative)
Re:sataphone (Score:5, Insightful)
The telecom industry spent a lot of money to find out what people find is OK. The two main factors are delay and Mean Opinion Score (MOS).
For delay anything past 300ms people will notice, around 500ms you start to hear echo. Most phone service worth it's salt will keep it below 300ms.
MOS is a 1-5 score placed on the quality of the voice through a connection 1 being low, 5 being excellent. More info:
http://www.tech.plymouth.acuk/spmc/people/lfsun
So when the author states that it's not ready for prime time its because a 1 second delay is actually at least 3 times too long. If you can deal with it, more power to you, but the telecom industry would laugh at any company who would try to bring 1 second delays to market.
ft
Re:sataphone (Score:5, Informative)
No Mr. Enderle. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Mr. Enderle. (Score:5, Insightful)
WiFi is always haphazard compared to wired. You never know if a packet's going to make it safely or crash into something else in 2.4gHz land.
Phone calls work better when circuit switched... we only do VoIP because packet-based is less wasteful.
Re:No Mr. Enderle. (Score:3, Informative)
IANATE (I am not a telecomms engineer), but from what I was told in an engineering class at university a few years ago, POTS service is only circuit-switched from the handset to the local phone company's central office. Everything that travels long-distance over the phone backbones is packet-switched.
Re:No Mr. Enderle. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, no kidding. This guy had a problem with getting his VOIP implementation working. Well, let me tell you about my vehicle experiences. I once tried to start up a Lada [klimov.ee] car and drive it down the street. Well, within a few seconds the vehicle crashed into the median and then careened over an embankment and the car was destroyed. Therefore, according to the logic employed by the "VOIP is dead" reporter, all vehicles will never work and we might as well just forget about this whole "driving thing".
Oh, and a non-sarcastic note to others considering writing such drivel: just because your *implementation* sucks, it doesn't imply that the technology itself won't work. Case in point: most of the large long distance providers are already moving to VOIP, such as AT&T. So now when you make a long distance phone call, it's being routed through VOIP. Make that same phone call on a cell phone and now you're doing VOIP on a Wireless Local Area Network.
To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Cell nets aren't LANs, btw -- they're either MANs or WANs. There are real differences -- in protocol, in problems, in nature.
--Dan
Re:No Mr. Enderle. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Mr. Enderle. (Score:3, Funny)
TIME.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:TIME.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No Mr. Enderle. (Score:2)
After all, it's tradition!
Acronyms (Score:5, Funny)
IANAE, but perhaps change the TCP/IP settings so you dont waste so many SYN/ACKs then upgrade the WIFI to 802.11g perhaps with a VPN/IPSEC or maybe SSH over RF ASAP. FWIW the WAP shoud be IEEE standards compliant, the company who sells it should be ISO9000 compliant too. HTH.
too early (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:too early (Score:5, Informative)
Re:too early (Score:5, Informative)
> New Zealand to Salt Lake City for remote collaboration in a lab
> environment rather successfully with hardly any delay
> whatsoever
Yeah. I do this all the time.
Ingredients:
1. PowerBook G4
2. Mac OS X 10.3
3. iChat AV
4. AirPort (802.11b version)
5. Comfy bed, little computer lap tray, Collie sitting on your feet (all optional)
Results: no problem at all. No delay noticeable. Voice quality was fine. Voice quality was so good, the whole thing was kind of anti-climatic.
Re:too early (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, gotta hate those nonweathers.
Re:too early (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I would say that iChat and VoIP are actually very different things. The point is (IIRC) that VoIP has to use much shorter frames and more or less *has* to run over H323 to be compatible with other bits of VoIP gear.
To those of you who say "well, to hell with VoIP and POTS numbers and all that, we'll use our modified IM networks and be DAMNED!!"
Dave
Re:too early (Score:3, Interesting)
I can do better than that. I regularily talk to my wife in the Philippines on a 43k dialup (I'm on broadband). The results are less than perfect, with her voice cutting out occasionally -- especially when her prepaid ISP is heavily loaded -- but they're much less frustrating than standard long distance. And I get the satisfaction that, well, sure it's crappy sometimes... but at least I'm not getting charged $0.25 per minute for it. It actually works out closer to $0.01 per minute, because of her dialup. And
Re:too early (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as what you've seen work, he does make a good point: Once you get a bunch of people trying to use it at once, things are going to become an issue, especially with the limitations of Access Points.
The future is mesh networking, where rather than an access point, all of the 802.11 devices run in ad hoc mode. Then, routing software, such as AODV, will automatically generate routes with failover.
I work for a company called Kiyon that has been doing ad-hoc mesh networking for a couple of years. By dynamically generating routes between nodes, we can extend range through multiple hops and reliability by changing the route mid-stream. The lightweight nature of the protocol improves latency as well!
So we're pretty happy about what we've got. It'll solve a lot of the problems of VoIP out of the box.
Re:too early (Score:2)
Re:too early (Score:3, Interesting)
The distant future.. maybe. I don't see networking moving over to mesh topologies anytime soon, even if your company has some working systems.
Alexander, (Score:2)
Re:too early (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no point. There's enough room on the 900mHz and 5.8gHz bands for classic circuit-switched wireless phones to work. If you want better sound quality, you can go digital over that link... but there's no reason to bring along all of the overhead of UDP/IP and WiFi on the exchange. It's better to use a much simpler system of ones and zeros with a basic bit-flipping encryption key.
There's just no benefit to VoIP over WiFi when instead of going over the WiFi bridge you could use a standard consumer 900mHz phone instead.
Re:too early (Score:3, Insightful)
I happen to believe that soon we will share our wireless ports in a harmonic fashion - and that will permit us to get service beyond current base radius.
Add to this the possibility that personal wifi phones could also be mesh points and you have the makings of a personal beehive of connectability.
ironically - the power requirements of repeating signals - as opposed to making single long hops suggests that sharing your service with others actually saves yo
Re:too early (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea is: you have a mobile phone that you carry around with you. When you are not in range of WiFi, then you use the normal GSM/CDMA network and pay the normal price for it. But when you are in range of a WiFi network, like at the office, you can switch to VoIP and talk for free (more or less).
It may not be perfect today, but I think it's pretty close, and in a few years it will be obvious.
Re:too early (Score:4, Interesting)
Did he have a weak signal? Was he 300 feet from the AP or 2 feet? Did he have poor signal quality? Maybe he was standing by a wall where someone was running a microwave in the next room. We found a brand new radio in one office was interfering with our 2.4Ghz telephones. It was putting off a *LOT* of noise, even when it was turned "off" but plugged in. There's one room in my house, even though it shows 90% link quality, 802.11b devices suffer performance problems. Every other room is fine.
Maybe it was the throughput of his Internet connection. Was he sharing bandwidth on a 56K dialup, or a poor quality provider? Maybe there was any number of problems between point A and point B. Maybe it was simply the device(s) he was using were faulty. Nah, no one gets bad hardware.
Saying VoIP over WiFi is dead is like saying the Internet is dead because you're on a noisy line and it takes 5 minutes to view a single web page. By this judgement, television is dead, because as a kid I saw more snow on the screen than picture. Was it television technology at fault? No, it's because I was 100 miles from the nearest broadcast tower.
But hey, people declare perfectly viable projects dead all the time. *BSD is dead, right?
Stanaphone worked for me: (Score:3, Informative)
The 802.11 basic standard does not support voice! (Score:5, Informative)
There are extensions to the 802.11 standard like 802.11e and WME that will allow priority queuing and some minimalistic scheduling to take place. Other companies play tricks with the protocol to allow for voice clients to perform better under the BASIC standard but there are drawbacks.
In the end, it is too early to judge VOIP over WLAN because clients and access points have yet to adopt extensions to the basic standard.
-Ho
Re:The 802.11 basic standard does not support voic (Score:3, Interesting)
IP is nothiing but extra overhead that really isn't needed over a "last inch" network hop.
The key to good VoIP is QoS primarily (Score:3, Informative)
This QoS capability must happens at various OSI layer, like physical layer 802.11, and/or network layer IP. (Transport and application layer QoS are not as effective.)
From IP to IP perspective, IP QoS will be the key for good VoIP.
From WLAN only to WLAN only perspective, WLAN QoS will be beneficial.
In a hybrid physical layer network, with backbone+broadband+ethernet+WLan, IP QoS is the way to go for good VoIP.
Ho
Re:The 802.11 basic standard does not support voic (Score:3, Informative)
VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:5, Informative)
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:4, Informative)
If he set this system up himself, tell him to go get one of the linksys/netgear/whatever router/gateways in a box that support QoS (it's usually the units a step above the basic ones). If his router or gateway is a linux box of some sort, get it setup on there. If he's using Vonage, their VoIP adapter supports it if connect it in front of the PC/router/what-have-you.
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:5, Insightful)
To use a telephone, you go to the local thrift store, spend $5 on a phone, and plug it into the wall to get reliable telephone service.
To use VOIP, you have networks, hubs, routers, wireless cards, firewalls, switches, and enough power bricks to saturate two 6-plug power strips so that you end up with something that must be tweaked to operate smoothly at all, in order to get something with the range of a cordless telephone. (Wifi uses the exact same frequencies as a cordless telephone - it's essentially a fancy cordless telephone modem)
Never mind what happens when any of those various boxes have a security [slashdot.org] vulnerability found... [slashdot.org]
In order to be truly successful, the technology needs to GET OUT OF THE WAY for the common user. Bridges are technology that are so reliable we never think about using one. So are telephones. VOIP will have "arrived" when it's use is automatic and reliable.
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:3, Informative)
eg. at home, the cheapest VOIP phone is 50UKP (compared to 2UKP for a cheap POTS phone), and you need an asterisk router to make it all hang together if you have more than one phone. Oh, and an FXO as the VOIP carriers are all 2-3 times more expensive than regular POTS and you'd be stupid to use them at the moment (in the UK it's impossible to have DSL without paying the full rental for a POTS line anyway so there's no rental cost saving).
I
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:3, Interesting)
Well perhaps in the UK it isn't worth it, but in the US and Canada Vonage is making a big impression. I'm going to spring for my DSL no matter what phone system I use, so that doesn't enter into the price comparison. Once I add the features I want onto the POTS line my monthly bill before long distance is near $40. The basic fee for the POTS line to support the DSL is around $10, add the $25 Vonage fee and I'm at $35.
True it's not much of a savings prior to long distance, but calling the relatives in Can
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:3, Informative)
However a working SIP phone with Asterisk is great. I had more problems with two anal
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, to use your OWN telephone. But if you want to telecommute and be on the corporate PBX, VoIP is the ultimate solution. You can have the same number for days when you are in the office, at home, or on travel. All calls you make come out of your office PBX and not your home phone.
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:3, Insightful)
You can get (pretty much) all of these advantages with a cell phone, starting at around $35/month.
Oh, wait a minute. Aren't we talking about wifi VOIP? Isn't a cellular network just another wireless network?
Here, in Chico, CA
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd have to install a whole pile of even more expensive equipment if your phone company wasn't providing all of the necessary switches and other hardware leading up to your home.
I just moved into a new home less than two weeks ago. The house didn't have any telephone service coming into it, so I had to order it from the local telephone company (Bell Canada [www.bell.ca]). Unfortunately, for new homes they'll only setup your service from the curb to an outside wall of your home. You have to do the rest (or pay them quite a bit to have them do it).
Between the cabling, the phone line, the basic 1x9 phone distribution panel, the wall box to contain it, and various bits and pieces of necessary hardware, it's cost nearly $200 CDN in parts. And none of these components has any processing capability -- it's all simple electronics.
Sure it's easy to think of POTS as being easier than VOIP, but that's typically because the telephone company or someone else has done all the work for you, giving you a wall jack as your interface. If the phone company did nothing but give you a cable with access to their network, you'd have to invest a pile of money into the necesary equipment to make that useful.
VOIP may be in the same boat one day. One of my previous employers went all VOIP for a new office of about 2000 employees, and setup a seperate network just for handling the telephone traffic. For those of us using the system, it was as easy as plugging the phone into the jack marked "phone" -- no different than with a POTS phone in any home (but mine. As it happens, the builder appears to have screwed up much of the phone cabling theey roughed in internally, as thus far only 1 in 5 is actually working :P).
Brad BARCLAY
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:2)
I've only played with a few of them and never looked for any QoS settings. My guess is you can't change them without a lot of hassle.
Re:VOIP over DSL isn't much better (Score:2, Informative)
That does it (Score:5, Funny)
Why not... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why not... (Score:2)
Re:Why not... (Score:2)
Re:Why not... (Score:2)
Mobile phones are cheap commodity hardware. They work, don't break up, and don't require you to invest in an entire network infrastructure just to make a local phone call.
VOIP is great for geeks to play with (heck, I have one at home.. at least as far as the POTS line - I refuse to pay the premium charges that VOIP providers want) but let's not pretend it's some kind of great idea....
Re:Why not... (Score:2)
Re:Why not... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why not... (Score:2)
Is that the standard being applied now? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to visit the magical world the submitter lives in where every new technology works perfectly from the get-go and never needs to improve and be developed. Must be nice.
what a curmudgeon (Score:2)
The other complaints range from are valid (they don't work), to dubious (confirmation email never arrived), to the downright persnickety, such as that quoted above.
I guess now I should make some pithy or snide comment about the acronyms in the article title, but I think it's OK. The answer is
Actually, the real question.... (Score:3, Funny)
You mean... (Score:2)
Cisco 7920 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cisco 7920 (Score:2)
But in the article it appears this guy is trying to do VoIP on a laptop or PC and the first quest
Imagine... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like this is as good as it's every going to get. If that was true, EVERYTHING would suck.
IMHO... (Score:2, Funny)
The Mike (Score:5, Interesting)
Me? I use Zalman headphones [pccasegear.com] with a logitec webcam microphone duct taped on the right side. But I just use it for gaming. If I had to communicate anything other than "Our base is 0wn3d!" I would probably get something better.
Re:The Mike (Score:2, Informative)
someone... (Score:3, Funny)
Someone needs to implement this in PHP [slashdot.org]. Then we'd get some real performance.
Maybe its Uses are Misunderstood (Score:3, Interesting)
On another note, Im trying to get some users to a new website I created. It is basically my "day trading" stock journal online. Everything is free of course, so if you like stocks, I recommend taking a look. GroupShares.com [groupshares.com].
Thanks,
Aj
VOIP over WLAN? (Score:5, Funny)
Let's see... you take your voice, turn it into packets to be reassembled a short distance away (espcially indoors). Ummm this has been around for millions of years... voices going "wirelessly" over the air... it's called "yelling".
Re:VOIP over WLAN? (Score:3, Informative)
Is it just me, or am I the only one who ever thought this was completely stupid?
You just haven't seen it used in the right environment. VoIP over WLAN is perfect for a multi-building campus-like environment with roaming users. Instead of building a single-purpose analog infrastructure to support Spectralink-type phones, you can invest in building a data infrastructure (or use an existing one) that supports both your computing resources and your telephone systems. Plus, many of the industrial VoIP wire
Re:VOIP over WLAN? (Score:2)
Works fine at my house (Score:5, Informative)
And my Grandstream [grandstream.com] SIP phone works great attached to a Linksys WET-11 client bridge.
And my Ipaq runs IAXComm [sourceforge.net] just fine over it's wireless card to use as a netphone.
Does the battery life suck... yes... does it work and show promise... YES!
Just because people have problems with these cheap (as in quality)(usually SIP or H.323 based) piece of crud phones doesn't mean the technology and possibilities are not still there. SIP is VERY prone to problems from NAT (which many wireless networks use of course).
Anyways... for my 2 cents though I say... just give it time.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Works for me.. (Score:2)
Your company has Network Engineers (Score:3, Informative)
It's perfect for mothers-in-law! (Score:2)
Re:It's perfect for mothers-in-law! (Score:2)
Mobile VOIP does seem like a solution looking for a problem.
Skype (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, the new technology will have glitches. I may just be lucky. However, I think the story submitter pronounces wireless VOIP dead far too early. If, at this early date in the life of the technology, a Mickey Mouse set-up like mine can work, then the future for serious, enterprise level applications seems bright.
VOIP WLAN DOA? (YAFIYGI) (Score:5, Funny)
But IIRC, its FUBAR WRT the FCC and maybe IRS.
A FOAF says the MSFT will BSOD it b/c its w/o DRM.
IAC, the US DOJ, FBI, CIA & IRS also dislike it.
So FTTB VOIP WLAN is SOL. HTH... HAND! -JPH
Re:VOIP WLAN DOA? (YAFIYGI) (Score:2, Funny)
Complete bollocks (Score:5, Interesting)
I've used Skype ( http://www.skype.com/ ) quite extensively (windows only at the moment but they have a linux version in the works) over my LAN and via my cable connection to people ranging from 160 miles away to people in other countries.
Sure, there is a slight "houston, this is tranquility base) type of delay, but within a couple of hours use this becomes second nature.
Many of the calls I made exceeded one hour in duration, god alone knows what they would have cost via telephone.
Every call was end to end encrypted, yes, even the voice signal.
To call what is effectively a brand new technology which is basically still in public beta DOA is nothing other than complete and utter bollocks and a sure sign that whoever is applying such a label to VOIP is either...
a/ terminally fucking clueless
b/ blunkett (UK) / cheney or rice (US) / a telco shitting themselves.
BT has just started rollout of 21CN which will involve the ENTIRE NETWORK moving over to IP based traffic routing, so some 30,000,000 telephones in the UK alone will be, guess what, VOIP within a few years... link here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/09/bt_ip_net
Slashdot is rapidly declining to the point where Pissy World (UK) / Fry's (US) sales staff will start calling what THEY percieve as stupid clueless customers as "slashdotters" as a term of generic abuse.
"News for Nerds" ??? Give me a fucking break, Twaddle for Teletubbies is more accurate a decription of the content lately.
Re:Complete bollocks (Score:2)
BigZoo.com US-UK @ $0.039/min. $2.34 an hour. A small price to pay for avoiding the "houston, this is tranquility base) type of delay problem.
No PC, Windows or otherwise, no cable or DSL connection needed, just a regular phone.
Obligatory... (Score:3, Funny)
We are the BORG, but not yet. (Score:3, Interesting)
urk, what a concept.
couple it with the ability to pick up subvocal sounds from sensors near your voicebox and we'll end up like the Belcerebon people of Kakrafoon (HHGGTG reference)
As if the plagues of mobile phones aren't enough (people talking in restaurants, cinemas, while driving), freed from Telco mobile charges it could become a real social concern if it isn't DOA but merely pining for the fjords.
HHGGTG quote: The Belcerebon people of Kakrafoon used to cause great resentment and insecurity among neighboring races by being one of the most enlightened, accomplished and, above all, quiet civilizations in the Galaxy.
As a punishment for this behavior, which was held to be offensively self-righteous and provocative, a Galactic Tribunal inflicted on them that most cruel of all social diseases, telepathy. Consequently, in order to prevent themselves broadcasting every slightest thought that crosses their minds to everyone within a five-mile radius, they now have to talk very loudly and continuously about the weather, their little aches and pains, the match this afternoon and what a noisy place Kakrafoon has suddenly become.
VOIP booming in Australian Universities (Score:3, Interesting)
No problem here (Score:2, Informative)
Test your connection out (Score:5, Informative)
Even if you don't care about VoIP, it is a useful test of the latency and bandwidth of your connection. VoIP is pretty sensitive to late packets so this tool highlights connectivity problems.
-ben
I just put a Cisco VoIP system in... (Score:5, Informative)
Now, that said, I put the system on its own POE switches and isolated network. Nearly 100 phones and the voice quality is superb. As a matter of fact, I had to introduce some comfort-noise because if nobody was talking, you couldn't tell you were even connected to anyone. It was really that clear. The POTS connection was done with a single PRI span, so calls were digital end-to-end.
I had to place two of the ephones on a remote end of a 10MB fiber link. They worked flawlessly. I then tried a single phone on a WIFI bridge, and it worked flawlessly.
Back to the article... The protocol the phones talk to each other using is g729. It uses roughly 9.6K worth of bandwidth, and sends packets every 20ms or so. A quality secured WiFi connection without any interference can support at least 25 to 30 phones before you start having channel speed or bandwidth problems.
In summary, a properly architected system has NO problems, whereas a system implemented over old, crappy hardware will have problem after problem.
The equipment matters (Score:5, Interesting)
Second warning -- I'm actually raving about my own company's gear here. I'm way more likely to get in trouble over this, but heh -- can't let an entire nascent industry get tarred over a temporary generation of *ahem* lesser performing equipment.
So, warnings aside -- I was at Hivercon last year. Hivercon's a fun show, set in the middle of Dublin, Ireland (which, btw, is a fantastic city.) I'm sitting there, on:
1) My laptop
2) Wireless
2.1)HOTEL wireless
3) VPN (IPSec w/ 50% packet overhead!)
4) An international link
5) VoIP into a conference call
By all rights, the quality should have been awful. I mean, it had every right to be...
Now, we have VoIP at home too -- Vonage, to be specific. Our Vonage link runs over an 1.5mbit SDSL line provided by Speakeasy/COVAD, is QoS'd at our firewall, and connects directly to our home telephone wiring.
The quality on the international, wireless, IPSec'd, laptop'd conference call through my Avaya softphone exceeded what I was used to from our home VoIP provider. It was basically landline equivalent -- yes, it was even better than my cell phone.
I was _shocked_. I remember PowWow, FreeSpeak, and all those other systems that ran VoIP over Modem lines. In what alternate universe did VoIP become a quality leader under difficult network conditions?
Turns out that implementation matters. I went and harassed some of the people who worked on the phone equipment (heh Brian) and asked how this system could possibly be working at all. Apparently Avaya got a bunch of the people from Bell Labs (it came from Lucent, which came from AT&T, which itself came from Ma Bell), so there was all this knowledge lying around already in how to manage reliable communications like lives depended on it. The big things being used were:
1) Error Concealment
2) Dynamic Jitter Buffers
Error concealment is simple -- there's necessarily 50 packets per second on a 20ms-latency link (1000ms / 50 packets per second = 20ms of audio per packet), and speech is massively redundant. So rather than simply dropping out when packets were missing, the voice client was "filling in the gaps" with neighboring content. Since the overall frequency profile was kept relatively consistent, short term drops were kept outside the range of human perception. Neat -- obvious, and not entirely unique to this particularly implementation (there's direct support for concealment in some of the G.72x codecs), but neat.
The dynamic jitter buffers are cooler. The basic idea here is that some links are high quality and others are less so, and sometimes the quality of the link will change in the middle of a call. As a response, the Avaya architecture will negotiate a longer buffer for packets to be stored before they're output to the listener to be heard. This buffer starts at ~10ms and can scale up to ~300ms -- distracting, but users have been accustomed to higher latency through their love of cell phones (sad, but true). The key is that the human auditory system can't easily detect speed changes at subsecond resolutions, so you simply execute a non-pitch-shifting slowdown of output speech over a second or two and now you've got a jitter buffer far more tolerant of inclement network conditions. Mind you, this is an absolute nightmare for automated testing equipment, which expects time to be constant, but it's great for everything else -- even TTY's! You'd think a 150bps modem could travel over any link, but apparently not...
Anyway, we keep hearing about how Motorola and Avaya are putting out some kind of VoIP phone, so I'm actually pretty hopeful that we'll see a GOOD VoIP/WiFi solution sometime in my lifetime. I can say this much, though -- simply spurting ulaw on the wire and calling it VoIP ain't my idea of a good time.
--Dan
Re:The equipment matters (Score:2)
I've also been hearing rumors of a Motorola VOIP over WiFi, and eventually a dual mode GSM/VOIP-WIFI phone. I'd expect to see one in the next year or two.
Re:The equipment matters (Score:2)
Whoops.
Well, since I blew it - I work for Motorola's automotive group, not any of the phone/802.11/networking groups, so what I've heard has been rumors only - we're not even in the same physical city as the phone guys.
Re:The equipment matters (Score:2)
There's definitely been work on this. There's alot of financial incentive to get this to happen, since cell phones not working indoors is a massive problem, and except for Nextel, no carrier will let you throw up their base stations. They're happy to let you throw up 802.11 stations, though, and not use their radio frequency space to complete calls (as long as they're still making some cash on completing the call).
This isn't secret or anything -- it's just
Re:The equipment matters (Score:2)
Re:The equipment matters (Score:2)
Just not ready yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Down the road I bet the networks will mesh together, and the wifi, cellular and others will start to be one big network operating in small clusters to keep things running smoothly. We can't handle that kind of bandwidth and that many users now, but who's to say we won't be able to in 20 years?
I just doubt that the separate wifi and cellular (and other) standards will persist side by side for all that long as convergence quickens.
Writing down time of death is premature but... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, the current state of WiFi is pretty sorry. Perhaps I am just flustered because of the problems I've had setting up a WiFi network for the first time, but everyone I know who has setup WiFi has had to deal with a whole array of perplexing problems. Without fail, they end up consulting with tech support to get the connection to work. Many router reviews I read on-line detailed mysterious problems and uneven user experiences. On the other hand, connecting Ethernet is practically like plugging power in an outlet nowadays.
I'm not tech-illiterate. I've built every computer I've owned since high school and have run Linux variants on each of them at one point or another. I don't mind some technical complexity, but setup should be easier than it is, and the connection more reliable.
At this point, I could launch into a rant about cell phones as well. CNN had an article today [cnn.com] about growing customer complaints with cell providers in the US. In related news, java.net's front page is leading with a blog and associated discussion about how the current speed of software development is going to get the industry in serious trouble [java.net].
I think someone should write an article about the death of the IT industry as a whole. Computer-based consumer electronics and software have an amazingly poor degree of reliability, and there appears to be little liability on the part of companies and few channels of recourse for consumers. Well, </bitter>. I'm going off to enjoy my newly configured WiFi.
Obey the network QoS requirements (Score:2)
Robert
Latency... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you RTFA, the guy is whining about latency. Wireless, in this case 802.11, and specifically Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum digital transcievers often employ more than one forward-error-correcting protocol to get around the horrible bit-error-rates. For most packet traffic, a little latency is an acceptable price to guarantee that more packets pass their checksum. For streaming audio/video this is not so.
Not knowing exactly what was going on, I'm going to guess that his connection was really bursty, possibly due to other 802.11 traffic and also possibly multipath interference aggregation problems with many RF sources in the same band in a confined RF reflective space. If I were a latency-sensetive streaming protocol, I would buffer a little bit, and cut out a lot. I'm thinking I would probably flush a lot of bytes from my buffers because they got too old before I could assemble a meaningful blast of audio.
If this kind of thing sold access points, then 802.11 chipsets would have a sideband that tolerates more packet error and less delay. That would allow you to turn on "interference robustness" and still make a phone call because it doesn't use "interference robustness."
It works well. (Score:4, Informative)
VoIP over WLAN has just started. If you work for an intrenched Wireless Phone provider or a Baby Bell you wish that VoIP over WLAN was dead and this is probably just the beginning of the FUD from these guys and their pawns in an effort to hold on to their customers. So my answer is no.. its not dead.
wireless VOIP works for us (Score:2, Interesting)
Seems like Mr. Kewney has an alternate agenda, or is just really quick to jump to conclusions.
Cisco Rocks (Score:3, Informative)
http://cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/phones/ps379
Totally rocks! - I have over 100+ installed - no problems whatsoever - crystal clear
VOIP over WLAN Dead? No fucking way IMHO
I've can even war drive with it! It will hop on any wide open access point connect and go - mind you QOS is dicey - but it's fun anyway to have it hop on some dummy's access point and then 4-digit dial someone at the office.
Re:Good idea (Score:2, Informative)