@scottalanmiller I thought you were in Spain these days.

@scottalanmiller Wow... Does geographic location have any bearing on the best SIP provider?

@scottalanmiller Yeah you would think it would have the opposite effect.

@scottalanmiller good to know about the ssl vpn reordering the packets.

@scottalanmiller Interesting...

@scottalanmiller said:

@wrx7m said:

Sometimes it sounds like I am talking to them on a cell phone with garbling and echoes and it skipping so i can only here every other word.

More likely than VoIP is... that you are actually talking over a cell phone.

You think I am talking to a random tech on a cell phone? Is that really a thing?

@scottalanmiller Yeah I am sure that the bandwidth isn't an issue for most now but that isn't the only thing. Latency and jitter, etc.

@scottalanmiller Yeah, their own call centers for support. I can tell by the quality of the calls. Sometimes it sounds like I am talking to them on a cell phone with garbling and echoes and it skipping so i can only here every other word.

@scottalanmiller said:

@wrx7m said:

When will it get to be at least as good as the old fashioned way?

Seriously, having used both, public Internet VoIP has been better for me than my landline experiences have been over the years. Better sound quality, more reliable calls. Neither is perfect, but VoIP has been better. And I've been on public Internet VoIP both home and office for around fifteen years now. And working in VoIP hosting on public Internet for over a decade.

I wish I could say the same. I would love to just say, Internet or bust.

@scottalanmiller When I mentioned Barracuda, I meant that they are using some sort of VOIP and it sucks, bad.

Thanks! Free is good and this is something I would like to review. I am currently the only one running 10 Enterprise in my company and I am waiting for some things to get sorted out before I consider replacing all of our Windows 7 systems with it.

I still haven't seen the quality of SIP/VOIP across the internet be stable/good enough for my liking. Sure you can QOS for your network but once it leaves, you can't do jack. I am still a fan of the older-school PRI.

Dropped calls, echos, garbling, cutouts, etc. Even large companies that have tons or resources and time to invest in phone systems like Barracuda have super crappy call quality.

When will it get to be at least as good as the old fashioned way?

Every month or so, I check with Verizon and TimeWarner to see about an inexpensive connection for a backup and the only thing I could get is a really, really, really slow aDSL connection of 1.5Mbps/768Kbps for 80 bucks a month. TimeWarner has given me the we don't want your business price of $200,000 to build out their network. LMAO!

Like everything here, FiOS is just down the street but not at my address. Fiber was down the street for a few years and it was our neighbor that convinced our new ISP to pull it in to him and so now we have it.

Telepacific auto renews for a year term. I had to fight them on an ETF because we had their fixed wireless service, which was a nightmare, for a 3-year term. The problem was that the contract for the data was under an over-arching contract called a TAA and then one for voice (PRI) and data and they didn't line up. This is something that is super shady because I did the full 3 years for the data and canceled 45 days in advance of the contract, after we had our fiber installed and tested. Once I did that they charged us around $5500 for the remainder of the contract that was the over-arching one where we still had 9 months on.

Nested contracts are complete BS and if you can't cancel the one buried in there without it being affected by the overall one, I say screw off. I read the contract for the fixed wireless twice and had my boss read it over before I signed it way back then. It does mention the other contract but since we were only dealing with the data aspect, it seemed that it wouldn't apply because we were still using their voice services.

It took tons of time and effort to prove that the connection was horrible. I had problems almost every week with slow speeds and one time it was out for 12 hours and several more times from 15-45 minutes. They replaced all the equipment several times and that is after I found out they couldn't offer us the speed that we had originally signed for (30/30Mbps) and we ended up having to settle for 10/10Mbps because there was a legal dispute on the back-haul side where they were unable to upgrade the circuit. These are the things that you should think about when you decide to open up shop in a mostly agricultural area flanked on 3 sides by crops.

I finally had our CFO who loves to fight people over pennies call them and I didn't hear anything about it until I requested the most recent invoice from accounting and saw the credit for the full amount of the termination fee.

Switched to Impulse out of Goleta, CA for our 50/50 fiber circuit and they seem to be good so far (about 8 months in). The only problem is that they are kinda small and don't have basic things like customer support portals so everything is done via e-mail or phone and they require check payments.

@scottalanmiller said:

@wrx7m said:

So Adtran doesn't seem to have anything in the 10GE arena. I think that is another reason why I had eliminated them early on.

That would do it.

LOL. Yeah. Very strange that they have the edge/campus but without any 10GE and then they carrier class with ONT and others.

So Adtran doesn't seem to have anything in the 10GE arena. I think that is another reason why I had eliminated them early on.

I will check them out. Thanks for the suggestions.

@scottalanmiller Interesting. I had not heard that before. Maybe I should give them a second look?

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

Not that it means anything - but I've never heard of Extreme Summit.

Not SMB gear. It's good stuff. Way better than Cisco.

What the deciding line when you move from, for lack of a better term, SMB stuff to - Way better than Cisco stuff?

LOL, well if it is designed for large businesses or if it is "making due" equipment with lack of support, features, performance, etc. Cisco walks an odd line of having both enterprise gear and hobbyist crap and just horrible prices and rarely very good. Value is low, even when the quality is there.

It's hard to exactly describe a line, but it is pretty clear when you look at companies. Juniper, Adtran, Extreme, Palo Alto are enterprise gear. They expect network engineers to be involved.

Netgear, D-Link, Ubiquiti, etc. don't expect network engineers and are built for companies that need a bit less. Doesn't mean it is bad, it's just not meant for the same audience.

Some, like Dell and HP ride the line, leaning towards enterprise. But you'd see them in both places.

Similar to mini computers, you don't see them in the SMB. It's kind of commodity versus non-commodity.

Interesting that you would include Adtran in the enterprise side of things. I knew very little about them before my time here and I am not saying they aren't enterprise, I just never knew they would be lumped in with Juniper and the like.

I like the ease of use in terms of the web gui but I have had to replace both of mine due to dead ports.

@Dashrender Redundancy and I am almost positive that the switches that have more than 4 ports of SPF+ cost more than double. I think at that point you are looking at a core type switch.