Vonage voip

[philosurfer]

Anyone else have a Vonage account and Amnet cable internet?
is it working?
I think racsa is blocking ports...
If so... is there any other alternatives?




"Know what you know... and know what you dont know."

peace,
WaxJunkie

 

[AdamSelene]

It was working a year ago. Haven't used one lately.

If you have a local firewall and a firewall/router state-side, you could set up an IP tunnel and bypass any port blocking.

 

[philosurfer]

true that...
i do..
but.. i wonder what kind of latency i would incur by increasing my hops... probobly not sufficiant to work.

ill try it but i doubt it will be acceptable.

still interested if anyone else has vonage or a voip service in costa thats working over the local ISPs...

im about to just import a sat illegally.. getting really pissed with racsa...
this **** is getting lame.

 

[AdamSelene]

Doubt it is RACSA, probably more likely AMNET, or you're just getting insufficient upstream bandwidth (AMNET is async). You can also try ICE DSL or an ICE T1. Sattellite will have a lot of latency for VoIP applications. There are also a few line-of-site wireless providers (but with ICE or RACSA uplinks). RACSA offers satellite to, but quite expensive. If you make any progress on importing and aligning a satellite dish (e.g. DirecWay), let me know. I cannot get cable modem nor DSL at my house. I'm sure customs will stop the dish if you mail it down, best idea would be to find someone sailing down.

 

[AdamSelene]

Found some interesting info here:
http://centre.telemanage.ca/links.nsf/key/DirecwayCostaRica

Direcway Satellite Internet service is available in Costa Rica to non-commercial clients. High-speed internet access via satellite is 10 times faster than dial-up. But Costa Rica is on the fringes of the satellite footprint, and with the additional rainy weather, connecting to the satellite is tough in Costa Rica.

Hughes officially says that the Direcway service is not available in Costa Rica; however, there are folks with large dishes who are able to connect and get full service. A 1.8 meter dual-polarity dish is the minimum size that will work most of the time, but a 2.5 meter dish is recommended. There are a couple 3.5 meter dish installations in Costa Rica, also, but for commercial purposes.

A

1.8 meter installation like this will work most of the time especially in clear weather. But locations nestled in jungle valleys will have a difficult time connecting through daily fog, clouds and rain. Of course, you never know until you try. We are willing to help. Contact us for availability in your area.

Recently, we brought down a Direcway 1.8 meter dish by plane as extra baggage from Toronto. $300 was paid to the airline for the extra baggage, and another $50 was paid at Customs for ... well, 'taxes'. The Direcway 1.8 meter dish is large enough that it requires a 2.75" pipe cemented into the ground for mounting. We had to worry about cows coming by and rubbing against the dish so we put the 8"x8" reinforced cement post 7 feet off the ground.

We had difficulty getting a strong enough signal to pass the Direcway antenna pointing tests with the 1.8 meter dish because of rain clouds. The larger Direcway 2.5 meter dual-polarity dish is more suited for the rainy season down here. The Direcway 1.8 meter dish lost signal a few times afterwards when thick clouds rolled over us. Normally, this is infrequent further north, but here in what is considered to be a rain forest, rain clouds can show up in a flash and last all day. As a result, we recommend using only 2.5 meter dishes down here if you want reliable service all year round.

 

[AdamSelene]

<TABLE cols=2 width=650 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left width=650 colSpan=2><CENTER>[size=+2]RACSA says it can connect you anywhere for $400 a month[/size]</CENTER></TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left width=325><CENTER>By the A.M. Costa Rica staff</CENTER>


Radiográfica Costarricense S.A. noted Thursday that it can connect anyone anywhere in Costa Rica — for a price. The internet provider, known as RACSA, was promoting the use of its satellite system and said it was perfect for hotels and other businesses tucked away in the mountains where traditional phone


</TD><TD vAlign=top align=left width=325>lines or television cables do not reach.


For $400 a month, the company will allow up to five computers hooked up to one 1.8 meter (nearly 6-foot) parabolic dish that can bounce a signal to the company’s receiver in Calle Blancos north of San José. The service runs at a speed of 64 kps, and the firm says it now has 35 customers.


</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>These stories were published Friday, Aug. 27, 2004, in Vol. 4, No. 170



<CENTER></CENTER>

 

[AdamSelene]

RACSA, what a joke.

For comparison:

DIRECWAY Small Office $99.99 /mo
Speeds are 100Kbps up and 1 Mbps down.

 

[philosurfer]

Funny you should say that...
i have already brought a 1.8 meter dish here.
and set it up 5 watt buck... pretty sick setup acctually.
but then i got burned by my business partner.. and had to leave it all.
(which by the way.. you ever deal with anthony (tony) burton hes a crook and owes more that 150k to debters in cr and about another 100k in the us, my recomendation.. stay away from the crack head.)


brought it in on a container no worries.
i can get stuff like that here without issue or tax
its nice to have friends.
and the latency even at 500ms wasnt bad. from what i understand its the hops that do the damage to the voip packets.
i have a good friend in the worldwide sat business and owns bandwidth on satmex5 and the new satmex6.

but for now its amnet... yes.. im thinking i will crack the router and open the ports that way...hehe... i swear the networks here are sooo rookie its not even funny.
or just wait a couple months till i get my new dish. but im pissed i cant use my damn vonage... hehehe...

back to cisco land for me.

 

[wilheim]

On a personal level (my home PC) I use Dial-pad with AMNet cable modem. Works great. 2.9 cents a minute to anywhere in the states.



http://www.dialpad.com/


wil.

 

[wolfie_cr]

is the problem with incoming or incoming/outgoing calls?

vonage works fine with both amnet and ICE at this point

 

[wolfie_cr]

well after writing a long edit to my post.....I got burned by not editing posts after 15 minutes have elapsed..........so in a nutshell


Adam , I know of a mexican company that offers service here, through diff satellite= smaller dish because the footprint of the satellite targets Latin America to start with

Keep in mind philo.......that satellite connections will probably not support VPN connections and also they have caps that might hurt you badly if you download a lot of stuff

 

[philosurfer]

the sat i was using, (company name withheld)
worked fine...i had a full t1 with them.
and i plan on doing it again once i get the new equipment down here..
if anyone is interested, let me know i plan on containering the stuff down in april.

the issue im having with vonage is calling out.. havnt really tried anyone calling in.
I use the softphone software for my laptop but from what i understand it just uses port 80 http proxy to work.

i just got the router in the mail a couple days ago and i cannot get it to work..i get a dialtone and when i make a call it gives me a fast busy.
I have a friend that has the same thing and said it used to work fine then one day it just started doing the same thing... so im guesing Amnet is blocking ports used by vonage...i have yet to find a program that lets me confirm that.
sigh for now.

:drink:

 

[wolfie_cr]

philo, I have never used the softphone, what I do have is the ATA adapters......if you use xp disable the firewall and make a test.....that fast busy is indication that the connection is not being established properly

also check and see if the router has a DMZ or DMZ host , if it does then enable it and put the ip of your computer that has the software in there

that should minimize the chance of problems due to the router blocking the requests

the T1 through satelite sounds interesting, if its symmetric.........how much would it be/month?

 

[truthteller]

I use a Sipura adapter with icconnecthere service and no problems. I have DSL with ICE and pay 2 cents a minute anywhere in the US.

 

[TenChin]

Vonage VoIP

Greetings, I have installed and configured many Vonage Boxes using Racsa and Amnet. I would be more than glad to give you some help if requested. You may contact me at vsurfer/@/e-garfield.com (Replace the "/"s from the email)

Regards,
George.

 

[DELSOLII]

I have been using Vonage for over a year. It works great with both incoming and outbound calls.

I was having some trouble two weeks ago where I was having horrible static during the hours of 12pm to 4pm. It was so bad that I couldn't understand anything the other person was saying.

I went over to amnet and upgraded my modem to 256 each instead of 516-128. I pay a little more, $180 a month, but my calls are crystal clear and I have not had any more problems.

Hopefully, that can help.


Sol II

 

[wolfie_cr]

hehe, DEL SOL II has money (or he can't afford the pain of not hearing the person on the other end of the line)

256 symmetric with amnet is expensive, I have been monitoring both dsl and cablemodem and the problem typically is with the download speed during "rush hour" I "supose" that the symetric links from amnet must have a higher priority on their switches (which they should actually since you are paying more money)

dsl with ICE costs 100 dollars for 1024/256 but two problems, 1) you must be close to telephone central 2) you need to get the dsl modem by yourself, ICE in one more of their genious moves has run out of them, also I have noticed that the speed in my house at least, varies wildly, they must not have a proper control of bandwidth sharing on their switches

also vonage has a setting on their dashboard where you can lower the bandwidth that the phone line uses, this will help

 

[WHALE]

Is there only one internet provider for the whole country ???

 

[wolfie_cr]

two, RACSA and ICE, RACSA is a "private" company which is owned 100% by ICE.

 

[AdamSelene]

Is there only one internet provider for the whole country ???

two, RACSA and ICE, RACSA is a "private" company which is owned 100% by ICE.

Mostly but not entirely true.

There are only three ways out of Costa Rica Internet-wise, via RACSA, via ICE and via Satellite. RACSA and ICE, despite being subsidiary/parent, have completely separate uplinks to the outside world. ICE's is both newer and superior.

Within Costa Rica there are several connection options:

AMNET and CableTica offer cable modem service (in some areas), RACSA handles the routers and transit at the cable head-ends.

RACSA offers direct connections (e.g. T1 lines), colocation, dial-up, and 1980s worthy satellite service.

ICE offers DSL connections (in some areas), and also direct connections (T1s, etc).

I'm aware of at least two line-of-site wireless providers. One has their uplink with RACSA and the other with ICE.

I'm aware of several colocation providers with various uplinks (RACSA/ICE/Satellite).

Many buildings have their own Internet provider. Oficentro and La Colmena have Digital Solutions, Torre Mercedes has a Guatemalan network provider (the name escapes me), etc. However the upstream from there goes back to the 3 ways out (RACSA/ICE/Satellite).

The choice of local connection method/provider can make a big difference in quality of service.