Linksys Vonage Broadband Phone Service

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Anyone have this new type of Broadband/Phone service? Been thinking about trying it out and want to see if anyone has any comments on it, or at least uses it.

I also was curious if the Vonage system (hardware) doubles as both a router for the phone as well as a router for any pc's that may be in the house (both wired and wireless)?

Also how does the phone system exactly work? Can I keep using the phones I have in my house?

Sorry, a bit of a noob when it comes to this whole broadband phone service.
 
I recently switched to Vonage from my local provider. The service is not great but for the price it does what I need it to do. The voice quality is not as good as a regular line would be and I can sence a bit of a delay when speaking but the cost is worth the small flaws.

I also was curious if the Vonage system (hardware) doubles as both a router for the phone as well as a router for any pc's that may be in the house (both wired and wireless)?
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The router that Vonage provided for me was a regular 3 port Linksys router (Not wireless). So it did work as a router for my home network.

Also how does the phone system exactly work? Can I keep using the phones I have in my house?
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One phone connects to the router instead of a wall connection and that phone sends out a signal to the rest of the phones in the house. I had to get new phones for whatever rooms in the house that wanted one.
 
I have to disagree with some of the above poster's experiences. I have Vonage for my summer office, and it's been great. I've also taken the unit to client sites when I've had multi-day projects (forward my office phone to it) and it's worked very well. Remember, VOIP is only as good as the bandwidth it runs over. Maybe Andantie has some ISP issues- I don't know. I do know the Linksys unit they send you is pre-configured for their service and your number. It also has QOS capabilities, to prioritize VOIP bandwidth. This is good, because if someone is downloading, you would hear static hiss in the background without QOS. Unfortunately, I have to play it behind my SonicWall, because I maintain multiple VPN tunnels, so I can't utilize the QOS feature.

For 25 bucks/month, I think it's amazing.
 
I have had Vonage for about a month and a half and love it. I bought the vonage box at Sams. Hooked everything up and signed up online, and within an hour the phone was working. I went out to the back of the house and isolated the phone lines and tied them all together, and boom, phone throughout the house.

So far quality has been great, and the only time I have a problem is when I am killing the download with a torrent file. I have streamed sirius, streamed Videos, surfed and talked at the same time with no problems. The torrents with a good connection tend to kill it though. I just pause them till I am done talking!!
 
While I didn't get the combo from a retail chain, they did send me that Linksys box when I ordered service. Do yourself a favor and buy the kit in the store (on sale of course) so you don't have to rent the box.

As for quality, its been superb so long as I don't go nuts with downloading, torrents, gaming etc. But since I've upgraded my Comcast connect to the 6MB/768KB option its been smooth sailing.
 
As for the phone setup... what you would do is disconnect your MAIN phone line comming in from your street. Then you plug in a phone cable from the router to the nearest phone jack.... so when you recieve a call, everyphone in the house will ring... so you don't need any special phones.
 
Ockie said:
As for the phone setup... what you would do is disconnect your MAIN phone line comming in from your street. Then you plug in a phone cable from the router to the nearest phone jack.... so when you recieve a call, everyphone in the house will ring... so you don't need any special phones.
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Yep, I got lucky since we built the house and never hookup a land line, all the phone lines ran out to the back and into nothing!! Just had to tie them in together!!
 
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