VOIP Hardware

May 22, 2006 · VoIP · (No comments)

Well I have been using VOIP for a while now and for the most part it has been very worth while, the only niggling problem has the the occasional degredation of voice quality. For 90% of calls it is as good if not better than PSTN, 5% are a bit choppy but Ok and clear up but the other 5% are just downright annoying and I can not hold a conversation.

Unfortunately when it goes wrong it really goes wrong and in most cases I can hear the other end perfectly, they can not hear me. Hanging up and trying again can help, rebooting the PC seems to clear it up. So by trial and error it seems to come down to the software phone I have been using, testing has shown that when it goes bad I can jump over to Skype and things are clear, same hardware and line just different software on my end.

This week I went out and purchased a brand new LinkSys SPA-3000 this is an Analogue Telephone Adapter or ATA, with this you plug in your broadband connection in one side and a normal phone in the other (the phone needs to be self powered so a cordless works really well) you can also plug in your normal telephone line in as well and have the benifit of using the one phone for both systems.

Configuration took about 15 minutes and then you have to set up the dial plans, that took about an hour to work out just what I needed but the guides over at the whirlpool forums were a great help :) In the end I had it all ready so now I can make calls STD and international just by dialing the full number and the ATA checks the call and dials out using my VOIP carrier of choice. Local Brisbane calls get switched out over the PSTN network and I can receive calls on PSTN and VOIP on the same handset. Being a cordless means that I am no longer tied to my PC to make a VOIP call and the quality is even better. All major codecs are supported including G.729a and G.711 both U and A law so you can use the codec that is best for your situation.

Is it worth it? Well at $140 for the ATA if you are serious about VOIP then I would say yes! The original Engin voicebox is the older model the SPA-1000 and the new Voicebox 2 is the SPA-2000 you can buy either of these units and they also offer great quality as well but the new SPA-3000 has the ablity to run up to 5 VOIP carriers for outgoing so you can choose the route you wish.

 

WEBY Store – update

May 9, 2006 · News, Software · (No comments)

Wow it’s been over a month since I though I was finished, well BETA is supposed to be fun. Initial testing went well and there were no major problems.

The product entry and display worked as planned same with the ordering process and the PayPal integration, the checkout had to be completely rewritten although it now looks a lot better. One thing that had been overlooked was GST calculation and additional shipping for overseas customers, we had the simple on/off option if the merchant was registered but had not taken into account GST free sales to overseas customers.

Now all rewitten and ready for the public our first store is about to go live in the next couple of days. The term trial by fire comes to mind as the company who are about to use it get 10,000 – 15,000 unique visits a month not including their RSS feed and we are not talking generated driven traffic here! The products they are going to start with are ones that people have been asking for so we shall see how it goes, to be honest we are 99.99% certain that there will be no problems as the Cart system was hand coded from the ground up and tested at every stage.

Who are they and where is the site, well they will be getting enough real traffic :) . A fully fuctioning demo will be available as soon as there are no obvious problems, say after two weeks then everyone can have a look see.