asterisk users - Aug 2004 - VoIP experiences with Cable and DSL

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Hi,

A thought occurred to  me;

Background;
In the early days of cable, the cable people seemed clueless to things like 
over selling bandwidth. But as time went along they got it better and better 
under control. 

Of course their natural competitor, DSL, created a bigger demand for them to 
get things under control.

Today cable is often giving 3-4Mb down and 384Kb up, and DSL is usually 768Kb 
down and 384Kb up. (At least in my area.)

Under normal Internet use all we really care about is downspeed. So cable is 
providing 68.27Kb/$-91.02Kb/$ and DSL 26.48Kb/$ making cable the easy choice.

But with VoIP it has to go both ways and things like latency can easily become 
a big issue. (I have cable and it seems that I get sound degradations much 
easier than I'm comfortable with, yes it's a shared connection with 
occational POP traffic. Also, I'm only talking about dedicated network 
connections for final implementation.)


So, what I realized was that I have no real data to operate with is, and has 
anyone done an evaluation of typical needs which shows DSL better suited for 
VoIP? F.ex. cable shares the pipe and unless QoS is implemented can 
reasonably have more traffic issues than DSL. 

This could easily make DSL to be better suited as focus shifts to up speed. 
Of course DSL has a narrow maximum length tolerance and so that can also be an 
issue (bad implementation).

For a few years now I've operated with cable as the obvious choice, at least
in my area where RoadRunner really built up a good network. It could be that 
for nation wide implementation VoIP really should be on DSL. (Unless of 
course you need a big pipe where a split T is the only higher option.)

- -- 
Steve

"They that would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety."
                                Benjamin Franklin

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On Tuesday 03 August 2004 12:07, Steve Szmidt wrote:
> But with VoIP it has to go both ways and things like latency can easily
> become a big issue. (I have cable and it seems that I get sound
> degradations much easier than I'm comfortable with, yes it's a
shared
> connection with occational POP traffic. Also, I'm only talking about
> dedicated network connections for final implementation.)
As the old Rogers Cable and Bell HSE commercials used to slog it out with 
"With cable you're all sharing a link, with HSE it's individual
links" --
there is some truth in that.

You have a dedicated TX/RX interface with DSL; once you hit the DSLAM you are, 
of course, just part of some gigantic ATM flood but at least the bandwidth on 
that ATM network is likely far beyond what is normally available.  With cable 
you're fighting to talk; something that QoS isn't going to help with in
a
CSMA/CD network.
> So, what I realized was that I have no real data to operate with is, and
> has anyone done an evaluation of typical needs which shows DSL better
> suited for VoIP? F.ex. cable shares the pipe and unless QoS is implemented
> can reasonably have more traffic issues than DSL.
QoS isn't going to help you get to talk in a crowded CSMA/CD network.

-A.

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004 12:07:14 -0400, Steve Szmidt <steve@szmidt.org>
wrote:
>
> For a few years now I've operated with cable as the obvious choice, at
least
> in my area where RoadRunner really built up a good network. It could be
that
> for nation wide implementation VoIP really should be on DSL. (Unless of
> course you need a big pipe where a split T is the only higher option.)
I currently use Cogeco cable in Oakville, ON, Canada.  It has been
fantastic!  I don't think I've used a provider with as much available
throughput (exactly as advertised).  Only occasionally does the
service go up and down, but that is infrequent.  I have an external
modem, and am using a pure VoIP setup with IAX trunking to my
VoIP/PSTN gateway.  Only occasionally do I get a dropped packet or
something, but nothing to worry about.  I spoke with my parents for an
hour over the connection, and there was no problems (actually... I was
getting some echo, but Asterisk nicely took care of it, and my parents
were not aware of any echo cancelling going on until I told them what
Asterisk was doing on my end, as I could hear it working).

I will be using Cogeco again for me internet (cable) so that I don't
have to pay Bell any money.  Unfortunately my buzzer isn't going to
work in the apartment, so I'll have to let guests in, but hey, I'll do
a bit of leg work just to save any of my money going to the greater of
two evils :)

Leif Madsen.
http://www.asteriskdocs.org