End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

Today’s VOIP Users Call & My SIP URI

Well it certainly was a pity that today’s VOIP Users Conference call didn’t happen. Randulo, our host, was just about to start the call when he lost IP connectivity with the world. As such he lost control of the Talkshoe conference bridge. People could call in, but he could not unmute anyone.

Judging from irc channel and the Talkshoe web app there were a number of people trying to be on the call. However, the conference bridge kept us all muted. Too bad.

You may not know that Randulo & Co. are now in California for a few weeks of vacation. This change in location was part of the problem. He was relying upon a Cox cable modem for IP. When Cox had the problem much of the immediate area went offline. He could connect to a neighbors wifi router but still was not able to actually get to the ‘net.

What with the problems of the past two weeks you might get the impression that Talkshoe is somehow flaky. Given the number of different calls that he hosts Randulo spends a lot of time on Talkshoe . He has tremendous experience working with them. They’re not perfect but they are a mature platform.

I heard from Randulo a little later in the day. His IP restored he called me by way of my SIP URI. That may be a first. I’ve had this SIP URI for around a year. I’ve published it in a number of places, including in a couple of articles at www.smallnetbuilder.com. The idea was to see if anyone ever call it.

Until Randulo‘s call this afternoon literally no-one has called it. Perhaps even more interestingly, he called it from what I suspect was one of his IAX hard phones. I’m guessing as he was in a bit of ahurry and we didn’t discuss it in depth. His voice quality was ok but not great, and for some reason prone to sibilance.

There’s a lesson to take from today’s experience. Backup plans matter. It’s good to have redundant connectivity. We have both DSL and a cable modem into maison du Graves.

The DSL is my primary connection as it’s just more reliable, if not as fast. We actually use the cable modem mostly for streaming video work (Slingbox) and large downloads, including when my wife downloads movie to our TivoHD from Amazon’s Unbox service.

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. I was lucky enough to have DSL through a fiber connection in South Florida in the early 2000’s. The reliability and speed was nothing short of amazing. So when I moved 300 miles north, I chose the same company, same service, and had completely different results. I’ve switched to a cable connection which provides me reliable service (both up and down). When people ask me which is better, DSL or Cable, I say the only answer I can possibly think of. Every city, every street, and every home is different. The only way to know which is better for you is to try one and see. As Mr. Miller would say… but that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.

  2. Fair enough. I’ve lived in the same general area for the past 10 years. Cable was not especially reliable, but always faster and cheaper than DSL.

  3. Minor correction: we’re on Cox here, not Comcast. It would be bad luck (and I am very superstitious about connectivity) to say “‘The problem seems to have …

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