VOIP / NTL QoS

jc1001

Hallo,

I have a quick query about NTL's broadband offering and whether it is sufficient for VOIP with reasonable reliability / minimal distortion etc. Some background is that I have VOIP as my sole phone line and find it great so far. I'm using IBB (I know they have their detractors) with a 3MB sync 24:1 line through a Linksys WRT52GP2 router and am using Blueface as the VOIP provider. The reason I have the 3MB line is that it was the cheapest I could find with a fixed IP, which I wanted for work. Usually when I check my line I have about 2.5+ up and down though I think the rated contention is 24:1. I find the service from both IBB and Blueface pretty good - has only gone down on a handful of occasions.

Now to get to the point - a friend has asked me to set up same for him so he can dump Eircom, and while I could highly recommend my setup he doesn't require the relatively pricey high(ish) bandwidth line and certainly not a fixed IP address. He is looking at NTL's Broadband Starter product. Has anyone any experience of using VOIP over this? Apparently it's a 1MB line (no mention of sync / non-sync figures or contention in the brochures - would guess 1MB down 128KB up with 18:1 contention?) with a 16GB cap per month for €24.99. Also are there issues with NTL's service reliability? The 1GB cap also seems a bit unnecessarily stingey. Thanks for any info you can give on whether this is a runner.

garlad

I am currently trialing blueface over NTL (for the last 2 months). Was on 1Mb down/100K up until last week, when I got upgraded to the 3Mb down/300K up package.
Also using Linksys WRT52GP2 router.
While on 1Mb package had a couple of outages (one due to blueface upgrades apparently), the other few was sorted with powering off and on modem and/or router.
Quality was fine until I started surfing, when it became unusable.
Tried setting up QoS on router, but it didnt seem to make a difference.
On 3Mb line now, quality still the same. Havent been surfing/downloading all week, so not sure about quality of phone line while downloading, but will let you know.

bk

Actually NTL have changed their packages, you can now get:

1m/100k for €19.99 or
2m/200k for €24.99

NTL don't really enforce that cap (unless you go over 100GB regularly) so I wouldn't worry about it.

NTL service is excellent with little or no down time and will work just fine with Blueface. In fact most Blueface users seem to be on NTL (go look on the VoIP forum).

paulm17781

Generally NTLs service is excellent. Lately it has been slightly dodgy but I think this is related to upgrades. I use NTL & Blueface and wouldn't look back.

jc1001

Thanks chaps, very helpful as ever. Garlad would appreciate info on how you find QoS while on phone & surfing at the same time if you get a chance - thanks again.