Best VOIP Service Review

Moving Forward To Connect With A VOIP Telephone

Voipworld — Sat, 19 May 2012 12:02:11 +0000

Moving Forward To Connect With A VOIP Telephone

VOIP telephone and voice over ip systems are changing the way people talk on the phone. A VOIP telephone is now helping corporations change their global communications policies and is putting them more in touch with international business partners.

A VOIP telephone is changing the way personal users talk to their families and giving them more time to share and communicate like it was originally intended. Distance no longer needs to mean cost thanks to VOIP telephone services.

Having a VOIP phone may make you the most popular person in the office. Imagine having the capability to use your VOIP anywhere in the world and still get excellent rates, possibly even pay no money at all, for long distance phone calls.

Incoming calls can be automatically moved to your VOIP phone, regardless of where you have decided to connect to the VOIP network. This gives the VOIP phone user a great deal of mobility and functionality, on the road or abroad. The VOIP telephone is certainly the thinking person’s communication device, enabling the entire world to draw closer as the user continues to move through it.

Business VOIP is one of the most popular services available from VOIP providers. Most providers offer free VOIP telephone numbers to use nearly everywhere in the world. These numbers are arranged through organizations that compile and connect people on VOIP networks.

VOIP User is one of these organizations and it enables customers the ability to connect to any network and at time anywhere in the world for free. This mobility makes VOIP telephone systems the wave of the future for corporate users and for business VOIP plans.

You can also use a VOIP call center to enable connectivity for customer service at all hours of the day, every day, any day of the year. This type of service is unique to VOIP users because the VOIP call center can actually be mobile, too. As long as the VOIP call center user has a good connection to the internet or to another network, helping out with customer service calls is possible.

Many VOIP systems or providers also provide a series of bundled extras for no extra charge. This PSTN features include great items like 3-way calling, call forwarding, call waiting, automatic redial, and the ever-popular caller ID.

The services VOIP call centers provide are also bundled with these great features, making VOIP an even more popular choice among people looking for a great deal with great service features as well. It is a program that seems too good to be true to many people, but the technology is real and the programs work just as they say they will.

The future in terms of VOIP telephone systems is here. Without a doubt, VOIP telephone technology is on its way to taking over the communications work and establishing new trends within a matter of mere years.

As systems change and evolve to offer even more capabilities to customers, the customer base of companies like Vonage VOIP will grow significantly and people will flock to VOIP providers to upgrade their existing telephone services to something better. VOIP will change the way we communicate once again.

Mike Selvon owns a number of niche portal. Please visit our voip portal for more great tips on voip telephone, and leave a comment at our voip blog.

VoIP & Gadget News – U.S. House of Representatives Approves Skype for Video Calls

voip — Sat, 19 May 2012 11:58:34 +0000

Looks like the U.S. House of Representatives is adopting Skype to lower costs. According to Skype’s Big Blog:
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Administration announced that they will open up the world of Skype communications to Members of Congress and their staff. Now, Members of Congress can reduce travel time and related costs while increasing and improving communications, transparency, and government accountability through the experience of Skype video calling. Skype enables lawmakers to hold meetings with their constituents who are unable to travel to the Congressional office, participate in virtual town hall meetings when the Member is not in her District, and build relationships and collaborate more effectively with other Members on important legislative efforts.

Skype’s engineers worked closely with the Congressional network security team to ensure that Skype is used safely for official business.
That’s great that Congress is looking to save costs by leveraging Skype. Of course, I wonder if U.S. Representatives will now avoid contentious in-person town hall meetings like the raucous town hall meetings during the Obamacare debate. Some legislators even called constituents who voiced their disagreement with the healthcare plan “unAmerican”. Do we really want our representatives hiding behind a webcam?

Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of our government using Skype to improve communication with constituents. Just as long as townhall meetings aren’t replaced with a computer monitor in the center of the room. What’s next? Instead of 435 Representatives sitting in Congress, we’ll see 435 computer monitors running Skype with Representatives working remotely? I can picture it now…

And of course you know once Congress starts using Skype and sees how it easy it is to conduct business, they’ll want the ability to work from their home district and use Skype. I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing, considering the corrupting influence Washington D.C. seems to have on politicians. Perhaps if they stay closer to home more often they’ll actually listen to what the American people want.

Tags: house of representatives, obamacare, skype, town hall, united states, video conferencing, voip
Related tags: house representatives, using skype, members congress, skype video, skype, representatives

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Finding a Good Low-rate VoIP Provider to Make Cheap Phone Calls

Voipworld — Fri, 18 May 2012 23:56:38 +0000

Finding a Good Low-rate VoIP Provider to Make Cheap Phone Calls

If you’re looking for a way of making cheap phone calls, you’ll have come across new technology called Voice over Internet Protocol (Voice over IP, or VoIP). Most people realise that the decision about whether to use VoIP is really a no-brainer. It allows you to make calls over the internet, instead of through a traditional phone line, so the amount of money it can save you can be significant. But once you’ve made the decision to use VoIP to make cheap calls, what next? How can you make sure you pick a good low-rate VoIP provider?

If you’re convinced by VoIP, but you haven’t yet signed up, then don’t rush in. Curb your excitement about the thought of all those cheap international calls, take your time and consider the following points.

1. Reputation. Customer feedback is worth more than anything a company says about itself. Does the low rate VoIP provider, as well as offering cheap calls, also enjoy a solid, positive reputation and the goodwill of its customers? Can you find any comments or reviews from existing customers? Some VoIP providers will offer testimonials. What do these say? Are they independent? Perhaps you can find someone who already uses that particular VoIP provider, and who might be willing to give you a candid view about the service.

2. Call plans. Think about what countries you call, and how frequently. Check the VoIP provider’s call plans. How many are there? What countries are included? There’s no point signing up for a call plan that includes a raft of countries that you’re never likely to call, or will call only infrequently. Does the provider offer a basic call plan for UK landlines only, as well as one that includes dozens of countries around the world, and various call plans in between? Beware of a VoIP who offers call plans that simply seem to good to be true – it could be a sign that they’re in financial difficulty. Expect to pay from around £6 a month for the most basic, UK-only call plans, and around £20 a month for a call plan that covers numerous countries, with a range of call plans in between.

3. International tariffs. Check the VoIP provider’s international rates for calls to countries that aren’t included in your call plan. You don’t want to have a wonderful, low-rate call plan and find yourself stung by high rates whenever you call a number that’s not included in your plan. Fortunately, because VoIP uses broadband to make calls, you’ll find that even these rates are much, much lower than those offered by traditional phone companies.

4. Tie-ins and fees. Does the VoIP provider want you to commit to a contract? Is there a trial period? What are the penalties, if any, if you cancel your service? Are there any set-up fees, admin fees, equipment fees, postage fees, or any other kind of charges? And you want to make sure that there is a money-back guarantee, no-questions asked trial period? Check the VoIP provider’s website to see how transparent they are about their charges. Ideally, they should be absolutely clear about what you will be charged, and when.

5. Flexibilty. Will the VoIP provider allow you to choose a dialing code? Some will give their customers the option of deciding what dialing code they want – either one that’s local to where they live, like a traditional phone service, or one that’s local to their customers or family. It might not be relevant to your needs right now, but it could be something that would be of great benefit in the future.

6. Customer service and technical support. What’s the customer service and technical support like? Can you contact someone for free, by phone or email, when you need to? Is there someone available to talk to you at any time? Some of the fiercest criticisms of telecoms companies are the result of poor customer service and dreadful technical support. You really don’t want this to ever be a headache, should you ever need it, so make sure that the VoIP provider puts the customer first in these respects.

7. Features. What features does the VoIP offer? Traditional service providers often charge for features such as voicemail, call-waiting, caller id, call forwarding etc. Does the VoIP provider charge for such basic features? Or do they offer them for free?

8. Add-ons. What does the VoIP provider offer in terms of chargeable services you can bolt on to your account later, if you want to? These days, thanks to advances in technology, you can get really useful add-ons. You might, for example, be able to make calls from your computer or laptop, add a second phone line, or create a ‘virtual’ phone number that rings to your own number, so that friends or family who live abroad can call you cheaply.

9. Transparency and clarity. Does the VoIP provider’s site look professional? Is it easy to understand and navigate? Can you find what you want straight away? Is the language clear, concise and unambiguous? Does it inspire confidence that this is a trustworthy VoIP provider?

10. Keep your number. Can you keep your original telephone number if you want to? Is it a straightforward process?

If you’re already convinced (and you should be!) by the cost savings of using VoIP providers to make cheap international calls, it’s best not to rush into signing up with any old provider. Think carefully about the issues listed above, choose your VoIP provider wisely, and cheap calls will be all yours. You’ll never look back.

Costas Kariolis – Online Marketing Manager of Vonage UK. Vonage are leading low rate VoIP providers for home & small business users. Offering cheap phone calls and free international calls to landlines via an internet phone service for a set monthly fee. For interviews, quotes, images or comments contact: Costas Kariolis Online Marketing Manager E-mail: theteam@vonage.com

Voip Guide – Free Calls to Pakistan in July

voip — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:57:17 +0000

June is almost over but there is more reason to smile for our pakistani friends. You can now call Pakistan for Free the entire month of July.

Our Friends at Rebtel has announced a unbeatable “Free…

Learn how to make FREE calls worldwide.

Read more…

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Moving Forward To Connect With A VOIP Telephone

Voipworld — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:56:09 +0000

Moving Forward To Connect With A VOIP Telephone

Mike Selvon owns a number of niche portal. Please visit our voip portal for more great tips on voip telephone, and leave a comment at our voip blog.

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Technorati Tags: Connect, Forward, Moving, Telephone, voip

Wireless VoIP: 7 Easy Steps For Switching To VoIP Phone Service And Going Wireless

Voipworld — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:01:09 +0000

Wireless VoIP: 7 Easy Steps For Switching To VoIP Phone Service And Going Wireless

VoIP phone service has taken over the telecommunication world by storm! This is inexpensive and has a lot of features that are comparable to the PSTN (landlines); it is the best thing for individual users, small businesses and large businesses.

Are you tired of paying huge phone bills for long distance calls and international calls? Do you own a small business and want a low cost phone service? VoIP phone service is for YOU! You can go wireless with a VoIP phone.

Here are 7 steps that will help you switch to VoIP go wireless

1. You will need an updated computer.

You will need to have an upgraded computer that is compatible with VoIP software. When you are comparing and choosing service providers, pay more attention to see if they run their programs on Windows, MacOS or Linux operating systems. Especially, if you use Mac or Linux, don’t assume that all VoIP phone service providers will have your needs met. Some of the common features of computers that affect the ability to provide VoIP wireless are hardware, motherboards, processor speeds, memory (RAM), video and graphic cards. If your computer is obsolete, VoIP phone service may not be functional.

2. You must have a High Speed Internet access such as DSL or Cable

High Speed Internet is a must for VoIP phone services to function. There maybe a few companies that work with dial-up connection but the audio quality is not satisfactory sometimes and it is because of the lack of high speed internet service. High Speed Internet connections provide the bandwidth needed and produce great quality audio.

3. Do you need residential or business VoIP phone service?

Some of the differences between residential and business plans include faxing and email capabilities, more long distance on basic and not unlimited plans, and some companies even throw in goodies such as free yellow book advertising for business VoIP phone service plans. Again, creating a list of what you want in a VoIP service will help you better determine what your tele-communication requirements are.

4. Compare VoIP Phone Service Providers

There are many factors that affect your choice of VoIP phone service providers – the number of long distance calls, international calls, business VoIP phone service etc. Now it is time to compare various service providers. VoIP is so common that chances are you may have a friend or relative that may already be using it! So, word of mouth is good way of getting some feedback. Comparing is important and there are more details to know, so read the article at – http://www.ez-voip-phone-service.com/how-to-compare-voip-phone-service-before-buying/

After comparing VoIP phone services, you can decide which VoIP service best suits your needs. Purchase this VoIP plan.

5. Choose Your Own Area Code

A lot of VoIP providers will give you the option of choosing your own area code and phone number. Just to be clear – you can live anywhere and still choose an area code from any other place! This is a great option that is available only in VoIP services and not in PSTN (landline). This is also a good idea for business owners who want to target a particular area of customer. They can choose the area code of this particular area of customers. Now, for the customers, this call will be local call.

6. Purchase an adapter for your VoIP Phone

This is important if you want to go wireless and don’t plan on sitting near computer just to receive or make your phone calls. Most of the VoIP phone service providers send you free adapter. If you don’t receive a free adapter, then you can purchase one. With an adapter, you don’t have to sit near the computer. This will allow you to use your household phones to take calls.

7. Other Important Things about VoIP phone service

As you know, VoIP phones have very similar features such as setting up your voicemail, caller ID etc., you can configure it. In fact, there is an internet control panel that you can use to configure these features.

VoIP phone service is a definitely a blessing to the world of communication. You can make very inexpensive long distance and international calls and use business VoIP phone service for your business – small or large.

Lokesh Kumar is a small business owner and investor with varied interests in new technology and communications. To discover more about the basics of VoIP Phone services and business VoIP phone service to advanced and latest topics of VoIP, visit VoIP Phone Service Tips

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Technorati Tags: Easy, Going, Phone, Service, Steps, Switching, voip, Wireless

VoIP & Gadget News – Social ENUM Platform Enables Facebook & Twitter Phone Calls

voip — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:59:46 +0000

ENUM resolves phone numbers into a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) or IP addresses. It’s basically “DNS” for phone numbers, mapping a person’s phone number to the person’s IP address on the network for routing the call over IP over a carrier’s network. ENUM offered the promise of a single point of contact for all communication devices, that has largely been unfulfilled. Now, with the exponential rise of social media networks, people are starting to self-identify themselves with their Facebook username or Twitter account ID more than their phone number. Today, social media users want the ability to communicate with someone via their social media ID, such as their Facebook account ID or Twitter ID instead of using antiquated phone numbers.

Well, imagine if you could integrate an ENUM database with social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, that enables you to register your various phone numbers and devices into this ENUM database. Then using whichever social media authentication you chose to login (Facebook Connect, Twitter oAuth) you can control how, when, and whom can contact you. This would allow you to hide your personal phone numbers while still allowing people to click-to-call you over the Web using social networks. Further, with social media security controls, you can make it so that only people in your Facebook friends list are able to call you.

That’s the goal of Telesocial, a company still in stealth-mode, but expected to launch in beta next month. Telesocial offers an API platform that leverages social media networks and ENUM to enable widespread name resolution to user’s devices which will enhance communications and offer a value-add to operators. Telesocial converts social media usernames into phone numbers using what they call the “Social Enum” and transmits the calls to the appropriate networks.

Continue reading Social ENUM Platform Enables Facebook & Twitter Phone Calls…

Tags: app, application, enum, eric stone, facebook, social, social networking, telesocial, twitter, voicexml, voip, web
Related tags: social media, phone numbers, phone number, social networks, media networks, social

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Voip Video Phone

Voipworld — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:57:24 +0000

Voip Video Phone

Voice over internet protocol or VOIP is a very popular thing on the internet today. VOIP is how you can use your internet connection as your phone line. It makes having a conventional phone line unnecessary. Not only can your voice be transmitted over the internet, so can you image. Video calls have been with us for a while. However, like any new technology it used to be very expensive. Nowadays with various free and very inexpensive online services, you too can make a call broadcasting your image and view the person you are speaking to all in real time.

Welcome to the world of VoIP Video Phones. VoIP Video Phones operate like any normal phone, except they have an LED screen that allows you to view the person you are talking to. Before the video part was added, an IP Phone was like any other phone except instead of having a normal RJ-11 phone connecter; it was equipped with an RJ-45 Ethernet connecter. VoIP Video Phones operate in the same manner. They simply plug into a modem and your internet connection is used to communicate with the other caller.

Hooking up a VoIP Video Phone is relatively simple. Using them can be complicated depending on the features that you get with your phone. As we mentioned, they come in all types of price ranges and with different features.

When choosing a provider make sure that they provide the best service to suit your needs. For more information on companies offering VOIP please visit VOIP Video Phone.

Brock Timberman is a staff writer for Platinum Web Services.

IP Video Phone

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VoIP & Gadget News – Elfiq LB-800E Link Balancer Review

voip — Wed, 16 May 2012 23:59:42 +0000

I had the opportunity to test and review the Elfiq LB-800E Link Balancer as part of a TMC Labs review for the September issue of Internet Telephony Magazine. It’s an impressive product that does traffic balancing, ISP bonding, Ethernet bonding (EtherChannel), and enables plug-and-play bandwidth redundancy. I thought I’d share my review here. Enjoy!

Elfiq LB-800E Link Balancer
www.elfiq.com
MSRP: $3,495

We all know data is critical to just about any business. The real question is how to handle business continuity in the event a data connection is lost. While there are a myriad of ways of handling the loss of a data connection, the simplest method is the usage of a link balancer. A link balancer is a network-based appliance that proactively manages bandwidth from multiple ISP or private links. Should one or more links go down, the link balancer can automatically switch the traffic to the available ISP link(s) until the troubled link returns to normal.

In fact, a link balancer can actually be proactive and perform outbound traffic balancing, distributing traffic across multiple links based on rules you specify. A link balancer can take multiple ISPs from multiple technologies (DSL, T1, fiber, cable) and combine them to ensure business continuity. If there is link saturation or a link failure with an ISP provider, using a link balancer it will automatically make sure the other ISP bandwidth links are there to take over. TMC Labs took a look at the Elfiq LB-800E, a powerful and robust link balancing appliance that was surprisingly easy to setup. To get the best possible real-world experience, we actually hooked up to our production network and configured it to work with our two ISPs and one of our web servers.

Importantly, Elfiq’s line of link balancers support session persistence management because certain types of traffic, such as HTTPS (secure web site access) needs to have its simultaneous sessions use the same link for cookie compatibility. This does not hinder the ability to dynamically balance this type of traffic since sessions going to a different HTTPS destination can go over a different link. Elfiq’s persistence simply ensures that sessions going to a given destination remain together, on a per-destination basis. Similarly, you can configure a link balancer to use a primary link and only switch to a secondary link if the primary link reached a high utilization threshold that you preconfigured.

We should mention that in addition to failover and outbound traffic balancing, the Elfiq LB-800E can also perform inbound traffic balancing and failover with no change to your existing internal infrastructure – other than the initial configuration of the Elfiq device of course. One critical component to inbound traffic balancing and failover is Elfiq’s Intelligent DNS (iDNS) module. The Intelligent DNS module will intercept incoming DNS requests for specific services and balance them according to the selected algorithms and parameters defined. Because the LB-800E knows if a link goes down, it can modify inbound DNS requests on-the-fly and point to an alternative IP address. Importantly, iDNS only intercepts DNS queries for records you wish to load balance and provide failover. Any other DNS query is passed onto your existing DNS servers. All you need for failover across multiple links is an IP (ISP1) to IP (ISP2) association for each server you want to failover.

For example, suppose you have a web server www.acme.com whose DNS points to 24.38.43.100 (ISP 1) and you have a backup ISP 2 reconfigured with IP address – 44.56.66.200. Now suppose ISP1 goes down. When outside clients (browsers, VoIP devices, apps, etc.) try and resolve www.acme.com, the Elfiq device will know that ISP1 has gone down, intercept the DNS query via its DNS listener and resolve the DNS to your other data link (ISP2 – 44.56.66.200). That takes care of the external side of things. On the internal side, the Elfiq device sits between your Internet connections and your firewall so it has the ability to modify the packet to make it appear to the firewall as though it came from ISP1 even though it came from ISP2. The packet is then routed by your firewall using its normal rules to reach the destination server or device. When the server responds, it still responds using the same exact default gateway (the firewall). The firewall then sends the response to the Elfiq, which because it maintains session states, it is able to map the IP address back to ISP2’s external IP address.

As you can see, this is done keeping your existing network infrastructure the same. No need to manually change default gateways on servers, no reconfiguration of your firewall(s), and no DNS changes required. The beauty of this is that it’s done proactively and automatically by the Elfiq device with no human intervention.

The LB-800E Link Balancer actually checks the status of each ISP link every few seconds to validate its health – essentially probing predetermined outside sites down for their availability. When a link stops responding to the tests conducted by the Link Balancer, the link is taken off the list of available links and directs traffic to the remaining links. Importantly, the LB-800E continues to test the unavailable link, and when it becomes available with acceptable metrics, it is returned to the list of available links. During an outage the LB-800E will send email alerts and will also alert you when the link returns to being available. Elfiq Link Balancer events and alerts can be sent to a remote syslog server as well.

Besides failover capabilities, another nice advantage of the Elfiq LB-800E is that it enables the use of multiple ISPs concurrently. Instead of having an idle backup data link you pay good money for, you can use all the links to their maximum limit enabling your company to benefit from the additional bandwidth. The Elfiq LB-800E has some powerful customization rules and you can even modify algorithms based on time of day. Another important feature of the LB-800E is its site-to-site resiliency feature. With a Link Balancer at two sites using Elfiq’s proprietary SitePathMTPX feature, communication between those sites is protected against link failures or saturation by using alternate paths to ensure connectivity. Using this feature you can load balance VoIP / VPN traffic over a number of links so your remote offices and users don’t lose connectivity during a link outage. This is all done without changing your VPN appliance or firewall configuration.

The Elfiq Networks QoS feature lets you grant priority to critical data, such as email, VoIP or VPN traffic and supports QoS diffserv marking. The Quality of Service module lets you set policies for ports, protocols and applications, allowing you to give lower priority to non-critical activities such as streaming radio or gaming. Importantly, should one link fail, which means less overall available bandwidth, the QoS module will apply new user-defined rules to the other links to guarantee bandwidth for all critical services. Although we didn’t test this feature, the Link LB offers filtering on IP, ICMP, TCP and UDP protocols.

The web admin was very easy to navigate and configure the various settings. It has a series of wizards that guide you in the configuration of your device. It also has a batch command screen where you can copy/paste several commands into the screen and execute them all at once. It’s a nice way of quickly changing the configuration or even installing a completely new configuration to the unit. It’s also useful for backups. You can output the current config and then if you need to migrate to a new unit you can simply paste the configuration into the batch command screen. The Elfiq web page also shows cumulative statistics and SNMP support allows you to pull statistics from the Elfiq device.

Cumulative Stats. Click for Larger view

The reporting capabilities are pretty good. We really liked the dashboard view, which showed overall bandwidth consumption for each link.

Overview of Bandwidth Usage

You can view current upload/download statistics per link real-time, last 4 hours, last 24 hours, last 3 days, and last 7 days, as seen here:

The built-in probe lets you see active IP sessions bandwidth usage on a per link basis, link usage and history, reports on a per IP address, application/port basis. The probe lets you see the current top 30 sessions (“top talkers”), which you can then sort by column headings, including the link port, top in kilobytes, top out kilobytes, and more. (elfiq-probe-sessions.jpg) You can also see both the inside and outside IP address for each session and the port number (80, 443, 21, 3389, etc.) to determine traffic type. You can also export the chart data as a .csv file for importing into a reporting package or Excel.

The line of Elfiq Link Balancers let you choose different algorithms for each traffic flow you want (ACL based), which includes the following algorithms: Round Robin, Weight, Least Traffic, Equalized Traffic, Order Preferred, Equalized Traffic First within Weight, Best SitePath First, Round Trip Time (fastest path in ms), and multiplexing (MTPX). Each method has its advantages. WFA (Weight First Algorithm) is an interesting option. It prefers the lowest configured weight conditional to saturation. In our setup, Optimum Lightpath fiber was assigned a weight of ‘2’, which is less than weight of ‘5’ for the Cablevision line. What this does is keep all traffic on the primary link and only if the primary saturates (or fails), then spill over into Cablevision link. Sample outgoing load balancing rules:

Significantly, the device has a LAN failsafe feature, in the event of equipment failure, allowing you to power off the Elfiq and your firewall will still communicate with its default gateway through the inactive Elfiq unit. These ports are labeled in groups of two as “Bypass” on the unit to make it clear that there in actual physical connections between each pair. Depending on the model number you can have multiple bypass pairs.

During one of our tests, we took one of our ISP links down to see if our test web server would switch over to the secondary link. The Elfiq device sent us an email alert and we attempted to connect to the web server. Initially, we could not connect, but that was because our DNS has already cached the IP address to the primary (now offline) ISP link. We flushed our DNS cache and then we successful in connecting to the web server over the secondary link. It was doing exactly as promised – ensuring business continuity by automatically switching to a secondary ISP link and we were quite impressed.

Featured Specs:

Maximum throughput Full Duplex: 480 Mbps
Maximum number of sessions: 64,000
Maximum number of new sessions per second: 12,000
DHCP, PPPoE, Dynamic MTU/MSS support, 802.1Q (vlan)
Speed of network interfaces (Mbps) 10 / 100 & 10 / 100 / 1000

Ratings
Score

Installation

Documentation

GUI

Features

Overall

Conclusion:
Because the Elfiq LB-800E is Layer 2, it eliminates the use of the BGP protocol for link redundancy and eliminates the high costs associated with it. The Elfiq Link Balancer can actively manage sessions between multiple links, it can use all the links concurrently and can failover between links very quickly. Conversely, BGP is often used to re-route whole ranges of IP addresses, a lengthy process requiring hardware and human resources. The Elfiq Link Balancer saves time and money while optimizing the use of all your WAN/Internet links. The Elfiq Link Balancer can eliminate expensive links by replacing them with multiple less expensive links, without reducing performance and adding in additional redundancy to both. We almost never give perfect scores (5) for every rating, but this is a polished product that is feature-rich and easy to use. We really liked that this device required virtually no changes to the network infrastructure. Add in its native support for QoS policies, session persistence, and is VoIP SIP-aware capabilities, and we had no doubts in awarding the Elfiq LB-800E an Internet Telephony Editors’ Choice Award.

Tags: bandwidth, bonding, dns, elfiq, isp, lb-800e, load balancer, redundancy, sip, voip
Related tags: elfiq device, traffic balancing, multiple links, business continuity, available links, elfiq

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Raising The Bar: Continuing Advances In Voip Technology

Voipworld — Wed, 16 May 2012 23:56:21 +0000

Raising The Bar: Continuing Advances In Voip Technology

VOIP technology has advanced to a stage where VOIP is no longer an interesting start up, but a strong and valid technological force that offers so many benefits, not the least of which is huge savings in long distance phone calls. Many businesses have gone from expensive and complicated intra-office phone systems to switching to a VOIP system because of the increase in efficiency and strong decrease in cost. The continuing advancement of VOIP technology is what makes this possible.

Residential VOIP refers to the software that allows you to download the technology onto your computer and then communicate with family, friends, and acquaintances in the same way you would on the telephone, but your computer is used as a telephone instead. Because the technology is based on phone communication through the Internet, anyone you want to contact will also need to download the same technological software on their computers, but don’t worry, this is actually very easy!

What if you still want to call people who don’t have VOIP? One of the smartest technological advances by the companies encouraging the development of VOIP technology was creating an adaptor. An adaptor hooks up to a regular phone, and hooks it up to your VOIP so you can still use the residential VOIP to call any phone, whether it is a VOIP phone, a landline, or even a cell phone! This little piece of equipment allows you all the benefits of VOIP without any of the potential restrictions that could make people hesitant to invest in this service.

With the advancement of portable VOIP phones (Vonage is perhaps the best known company that provides this service), the question has been brought up of whether or not VOIP phones will be able to ever replace cell phones, and what would the difference be? While the technology is there for this to happen, the infrastructure isn’t there yet; though it is getting closer with each passing day.

The advantage of this would be that VOIP would be far cheaper, since long distance wouldn’t cost nearly anything and there would be no restriction on minutes. A wireless VOIP phone is also referred to as a “Wi-Fi VOIP phone,” and needs networks in the same way wireless internet needs networks, to work, but more are popping up every day, and many cities plan to increase the number of hot spots, which would make this a more and more viable option.

Many cell phone companies, sensing ahead of time what this could mean for them if they refuse to adapt, now design phones that not only work as regular cell phones, but also have features that allow the user to switch to their VOIP account if they are close enough to a hot spot. While complete VOIP is a long ways off, the beginning structures are there, and as the VOIP technology improves, it would not be surprising to head towards the day where VOIP isn’t a side game, but the main choice available to all phone users.

For more VOIP information please visit http://www.voiptransmission.com – a popular VOIP website that provides tips, advice and VOIP resources. Don’t forget to check out our page on VOIP Technology.

A brief introduction to the Voice over IP (VoIP) technology by SigVoice Corporation. This presentation highlights key components (ATA, IP Phones, IP PBX, PC-to-PC) of VoIP technology.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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