Vonage SoftPhone

[CzarJunkie]

Looking to sign up to Vonage, also their SoftPhone option as I want to be able to use the advanced features it offers when I'm working from home or on the road.

The number you choose when signing up with Vonage, is this also used for the SoftPhone?

I have a DDI number at the office and our PBX routes that through to me, presumably a divert on this to the Vonage service wouldn't be a problem?

Anyone here used the Softphone? Whats the quality like? Do the features work as well as they should?

Thanks.

[Crossman]

Hi,

I've never used Vonage specifically before so I may be wrong on some details.

Vonages softphone looks to be based on X-Lite, which is the softphone I use with our Asterisk system, and have used with many other SIP providers.

The number you pick should follow you no matter which client you are using, be it a SIP phone, ATA adapter or softphone, as long as it is logged in there is no reason why it should not just work. This is certainly the case with other SIP providers I've used.

To be honest, I've never used the more advanced features so I couldn’t really vouch for them, but the softphone does have some plenty of features on it.

Call quality is as good as the microphone/speaker combo, and Internet connection. I would definitely recommend a decent headset otherwise the echo at the far end is quite bad (as I've been informed by the other parties). It's a good idea to have QoS or some other prioritisation in place on your device connecting you to the Internet.

Yes, you can forward your phone to a Vonage number, or at least you can so long as your PBX supports forwarding to a geographic phone number.

In general though I've had no problems with the softphone on SIPgate and I can't see it being a whole lot different on Vonage, decent headset, good Internet connection, forward your number to the Vonage number, job done...

Crossman.

[CzarJunkie]

Thanks m8, good information and sound advice as always.

[CzarJunkie]

Just another thought. So If I only wanted to use the x-lite softphone would there be any need to sign up to Vonage, couldn't I just sign up with another sip gateway? Don't really want to pay for open source software.

If so, do you have any recommendations, the features would have to be similar to vonage such as a geographical phone number, voicemail, caller id, call waiting, call diversion etc.

[CzarJunkie]

sipgate.co.uk are looking promising, any thoughts on them anyone?

[CzarJunkie]

Just signed up to sipgate and tried out their softphone. The quality is not very good, might be ok for talking to colleagues on but not anyone else.

Anyone know if the quality might be better thru Vonage?

[Crossman]

Howdy...

Most SIP providers seem to use X-Lite or a variation of it as far as I can tell.

The reason why I used SIPgate is that someone ages ago told me the settings in asterisk and I've been using them since as one of our main providers. We've got a couple more but they all seem to be much of a muchness in terms of quality and reliability. I've found one half of the battle was to get a decent enough bandwidth (to avoid stutering on the line) and the other half was to dabble with different codecs to get the quality right.

I'm just on getting a nosh at the moment so now's a bad time to go and look up the settings we use but I'll take a look and post as soon as I can.

I've never used vonage but I can't seem them being alot different in terms of quality, certainly the 4 or so we use can't be told apart.

I'll post back...

Crossman.

[CzarJunkie]

Thanks m8, I think if I can improve the quality a little through either tweaking a few settings or using a different codec it may be the solution I'm looking for.

[Crossman]

Sorry for the delay, clean forgot about this...

Is the quality bad, as in worse than a traditional land line telephone or does it sound different? The quality I get on our Grandstream Budgetones (hardphone) is about the same as a normal landline. As I've said before, the softphones sound clarity seem to be affected largely by the microphone / headphone combo, with the Internet bandwidth being the cause of stuttering and break-up. The clarity of the softphone on the mac I'm on now is good but it does sound different to the accoustics of a normal phone.

I use the g711u codec on the mac and pc with the setting for the suppliers settings to override mine flagged as I've not had chance to pratt around and find the very best settings.

Also when we did testing I swapped places with the other guy I was ringing to see what quality was like and stragely the quality the person at the other end hears is normal even when it sometimes is a bit tinny at my end on my cheap headset...

Hope that helps...

Crossman.

[CzarJunkie]

Quality on both ends was poor, my colleague was on the landline while I was on an 8mb line using a decent digital Plantronics headset.

It sounds very muffled and makes your voice sounds very deep and a bit slow, if thats possible. Made my m8 sound even more depressing then he usually sounds, which was quite a feat.

I'll have a mess with the codecs, but it's not looking like a solution I could employ to replace the landline just yet, which is a shame.

[Crossman]

Hi,

I'd be very suprised then if it's your internet connection, and with call quality being poor at both ends, I would be betting on it being either a PC audio setting or the softphone. I don't think it's sipgate as I'm with them and the call quality is just like a landline, although it may be one of the softphone settings for the sipgate account.

If I were you, althought it sounds obvious, I'd go throught the following as a process of ilimination to see where the problem is at:

1) Codecs - Try other codecs to see if changing them affects clarity.

2) Phone - I know it may be a pain but if you can lay your hands on a proper SIP phone (Grandstream and the likes) then it will give you something to compare with. If you can't then another brand of softphone may do.

3) Headset - I've had all sorts of headsets, Sennheisers through to £2.99 specials and although generally the more expensive the better clarity there have been some strange exceptions to the rule.

4) PC settings - I would check any soundcard and/or computer settings relating to audio. Worth a look.

Once you know where the problem is, fixing it becomes a whole load easier...

Crossman.

[CzarJunkie]

Thanks again m8, I'll have a mess about this weekend and see if we can improve on the quality.