Experiences using VoIP with blueface.ie ???

causal

I'm with NTL bb (750/128kbps) and am planning on ditching Eircom completely (stop cheering at the back! ) and using VoIP :cool: .

I am considering moving to the Euro 9.99 per month VoIP offering from blueface.ie

Can anyone give me their experiences of blueface in terms of call quality & anything else that might be relevant.
Also for reference could you say what bb provider you're with and what your connection speed is 512/128kb, 1/1Mb etc.

Thanks in advance,
causAl

Narj

The only issues I have with VoIP is the ISP - Irish Broadband. Blueface are great. I have a friend who uses blueface over NTL and it is perfect.

Download the sofphone and give it a go...

Rew

Are Blueface providing incoming calls from regular phones via your 076 number?

wrafter

OT: But that's got to be one of the most poorly designed websites I've encountered. It breaks badly in both IE and FF, content hidden, content overlapping, text too large. www.blueface.ie

causal

Rew wrote:

Are Blueface providing incoming calls from regular phones via your 076 number?

Yes, if you are on one of the monthly subscriptions, but
the 076- is being rolled out (by Eircom) with a 6 month project plan (starting Jan 2005 iirc). It's anticiapted that it will actually be in place by the end of the year (that's 6 months in Eircom time :rolleyes: ).

However, blueface can give you a Dublin geographic number (01-xxxxxxx) that ppl can still call you from fixed/mobile etc at usual rates. They can also port your existing phone number and apparently there are no charges for this.
afaik there is a comreg regulation that you have to be normally resident in Dublin to use a Dublin geographic number. Is this policed - I dunno, but you have to supply an address when subscribing.

hth,
causAl

causal

wrafter wrote:

OT: But that's got to be one of the most poorly designed websites I've encountered. It breaks badly in both IE and FF, content hidden, content overlapping, text too large. www.blueface.ie

I've IE6 and the website seems fine to me, just a bit of overlap on one of the pages briefly during load but it sorts itself in less than a second.

Now I don't mean to eircom-bash here but I think it'd be easier to navigate through a field of fast moving icebergs at night in a ship with a broken rudder while suffering sensory deprivation than it is to navigate through their website :eek:


causAl

irishguy

Narj wrote:

The only issues I have with VoIP is the ISP - Irish Broadband. Blueface are great. I have a friend who uses blueface over NTL and it is perfect.

Download the sofphone and give it a go...

How bad are the pings on IBB, is it possible to use is for VOIP at all??

Rew

OT: I was at the Digital Media Awards the other night and Eircom won a number of awards including best Broadband provider and Best Service provider and then the top award of Best Media Paerson of the year went to the CEO. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic...

A VoIP software company that was up for 2 awards got none...

bazooka

highly recommend blueface.ie, support is excellent, some issues with firewall configuration becuase the adapter/phone needs to be configured for reverse NAT for their server to maintain connection for inbound calls...

they have a FRA rented from Eircom, which means that they are able to allocate a dublin local number instead of an 076...

Mutant_Fruit

IBB currently pinging boards at 7ms, not half bad if you ask me. Its been quite good to me for the last few months (>6) except for an issue with international traffic, but the connection itself has been perfect, very little packet loss (the occasional packet lost). I'm just signing up for a free trial to see what its like.

The only downside to this is that if your connection goes down, you can't get calls or make calls. Which would be quite a bugger. I don't know if i'd trust IBB that much yet.

irishguy

From Narj's commet i taught IBB werent great. I was thinking of getting IBB for home [i hear they are coming to limerick next month]but i have to sign a 12 month contract and i wont be around for most of it but if VOIP works well enough with it atleast the parents will get the use of it when i am not around.

balrog_beag

bazooka wrote:

highly recommend blueface.ie, support is excellent, some issues with firewall configuration becuase the adapter/phone needs to be configured for reverse NAT for their server to maintain connection for inbound calls...

they have a FRA rented from Eircom, which means that they are able to allocate a dublin local number instead of an 076...

Just want to echo bazookas comments and say I would highly recommend them. In the process of porting my Eircom number at present.
I am on the NTL 750k package and it works like a dream.. So far I have I found the BlueFace service to be very reliable, only dropped a call once and echo on the line a couple of times but other than that voice quality has been excellent.

seamus

Only thing is that mobile calls look a wee bit expensive. You can call Australia for 2c a minute, but it costs you 17c a minute to ring your mate 1 mile away.

wideband

I love the idea.....anything to get away from eircoms line rental, but the only issue is the handset....I dont want to fork out €125 for it..

Using the pc for a phone just isnt practical for me and probably most others imo.

Blaster99

I think perhaps it's a bit disingenious to advertise the service as "no more line rental" when you have to pay €10pm for what is in effect line rental. A lot better than Eircom's line rental for sure, but it's still line rental.

Mobile calls are expensive no matter who you use so can't really blame Blueface for that.

The device cost is quite high but I would guess that routers will have SIP support as a general rule soon enough, so you can just plug your normal phone into the router.

irishguy

ya i would say another 12 months and we should have SIP enabled routers and another 18 to 24 months you will have SIP wireless routers so you can use cordless phones with it

kazzer

I love the idea.....anything to get away from eircoms line rental, but the only issue is the handset....I dont want to fork out €125 for it.

Using the pc for a phone just isnt practical for me and probably most others imo

Is there any way a bluetooth headset could be used with this?

irishguy

Short answer yes, but in reality no unless you what to write some code and want to stay in the same room to make a phone call.
I am suprised why people havent written and marketed java applications that would do VOIP on mobile phones, granted most phones dont really have the processing power but phones like the xda or the new 3G phones should be fast enough. There would be a huge market for it and there would be no hardware cost just a simple download.

Mutant_Fruit

are there any routers supporting sip available at the moment? And if i was to obtain one, would that mean i can use a standard phone for VOIP?

Rew

irishguy wrote:

Short answer yes, but in reality no unless you what to write some code and want to stay in the same room to make a phone call.
I am suprised why people havent written and marketed java applications that would do VOIP on mobile phones, granted most phones dont really have the processing power but phones like the xda or the new 3G phones should be fast enough. There would be a huge market for it and there would be no hardware cost just a simple download.

You could use a Bluetooth dongle on you PC that supports the headset profile and a softphone app. Should work easily enough.

Re: VoIP on a phone

Irish company:

http://www.ciceronetworks.com/products/index.html#phone

Cicero Phone
Cicero Phone is an easy-to-use, lightweight softphone that operates across a range of platforms including mobile phones, PDAs and PCs. The softphone is specifically designed to operate in devices where both processing power and memory are in short supply.

It supports a range of standard codecs (voice compression and decompression routines), allowing the choice of codec to be made on the basis of the capabilities of the connecting devices and the quality of the IP connection between them.

Obo

blueface link to this device which does SIP2.0, as well as QoS and acts as a NATing router, which will let you plug in analogue phones/faxes.

http://www.grandstream.com/y-ht486.htm
http://www.grandstream.com/HandyTone486English.pdf

I’m wondering if this would be sufficient as a gateway device to use with IBB Breeze (NAT providing some minor security), and use ZoneAlarm on any PCs. Or would a hardware firewall need to be WAN side of this device?

Also from the blueface T&C’s…

VoIP telephone calls are carried in the public domain over the internet and therefore security of these calls is not guaranteed in the absence of further security measures as advised by Blue Face.

Blue Face will endeavor to use appropriate security measures but accepts no liability with respect to call confidentiality.

What sort of “further security measures” are we talking about here? Is the VoIP traffic typically unencrypted and would require some form of VPN type tunnelling to the provider to make it secure? Would the above device do that?

I know someone who is looking at Breeze and blueface as an option (others being various DSL/landline bundles), but just had some reservations on the security side, and price of whatever hardware would be needed.

irishguy

come to think of it there are routers out now http://www.grandstream.com/y-ht486.htm You can use a standard phone, but there is only 1 rj45 jack so you would have to plug it into a switch so your pc could use the net too. i havent come accross any routers with SIP support that have built in switches

Rew

WiFi SIP Phones
http://joi.typepad.com/stuff/2004/03/wisip_wifi_sip_.html

Few out there as far as I know.

Loads of wired handsets, attached is a **** pic of 2 we are looking at from Cisco and Polycom.

SIP Router

http://www.voip-news.com/sp/bos/claro.htm

If you watch 24 they use alot of VoIP kit in CTU HQ.

Rew

Obo wrote:

What sort of “further security measures” are we talking about here? Is the VoIP traffic typically unencrypted and would require some form of VPN type tunnelling to the provider to make it secure? Would the above device do that?

SIP and be scured using SSL/TLS no idea if that unit does it...

causal

irishguy wrote:

come to think of it there are routers out now http://www.grandstream.com/y-ht486.htm You can use a standard phone, but there is only 1 rj45 jack so you would have to plug it into a switch so your pc could use the net too. i havent come accross any routers with SIP support that have built in switches

I think the 286 model only has the one rj45 jack - but the 486 you linked above has 2 rj45 jacks - one for wan and one for lan. It has has a 'lifelin' rj11 for connection to your normal landline in the event of fallover - not much use when you've disconnected it like I will. Well, still got a mobile!

causAl

causal

Thanks for all the feedback guys - I'm planning on going with blueface.

I've bought a Grandstream HandyTone 486 on eBay - about Euro80 incl. P&P as opposed to Euro120 over here.

It is a proper gateway device, with most all the things you'd expect:
Router, Gateway, NAT, DHCP, VPN, MAC address filtering, DMZ etc.
BUT I didn't see specific mention that it has an inbuilt firewall - unless the above things constitute a firewall?

I already have a gateway/switch/router jobbie so I'll connect them as appropriate (i.e. hack away until it works)

fwiw I'm planning on getting some DECT handsets from Argos - I can plug the DECT base station into the HandyTone 486 - and then place the additional handsets around the house for 'wireless VoIP'

Well that's the plan anyway,
causAl

Rew

causal wrote:

I think the 286 model only has the one rj45 jack - but the 486 you linked above has 2 rj45 jacks - one for wan and one for lan. It has has a 'lifelin' rj11 for connection to your normal landline in the event of fallover - not much use when you've disconnected it like I will. Well, still got a mobile!

The RJ11 port is for a regular handset the unit bridges the VoIP service back to analog. Its nothing to do with the unit falling over back to PSTN. The whole idea of the unit is that you dont have a regular line.

causal

Rew wrote:

The RJ11 port is for a regular handset the unit bridges the VoIP service back to analog. Its nothing to do with the unit falling over back to PSTN. The whole idea of the unit is that you dont have a regular line.

Sorry, I should have been more specific:

The 486 has two rj11 ports - one as you described, and one as I described.
The 286 has one rj11 port - as you described.

causAl

Rew

causal wrote:

Sorry, I should have been more specific:

The 486 has two rj11 ports - one as you described, and one as I described.
The 286 has one rj11 port - as you described.

causAl

Ahhh IC

aaronc

Disclaimer: I am one of the partners involved in running Blue Face.

People may be interested in these units as well:

http://www.voipsupply.com/product_info.php?products_id=419

WiFi Router + 2 x ATA + 3 x Ethernet + 1 x WAN (plus firewall, QoS and all the other bells and whistles).

Cost: EURO120 ( USD$118 + 21% for customs + $5 to $10 for delivery)

They are a bit tough to get due to restrictive licensing agreements between Sipura and Linksys but if anyone wants one we would be happy to order and pass on for cost (aaronc@blueface.ie).

Aaron

T17cH

anyone any opinions on this
http://www.skype.com
i use it for free pc to pc calls to america.cheaper:rolleyes: