Voip & Consumer Satellite Internet: Does it Work?
For a fairly small but growing group of individuals and small businesses, voip via satellite internet is the only phone service available for some areas of the U.S. and Canada. Regretfully it suddenly stopped working for consumer customers of DirecWay last summer and has never worked very well for Wildblue users in the U.S. The ka band users in Canada (Telesat Canada) seem to be able to connect some voip products without too much difficulty. Why does it work for some and not others? Why did it work acceptably for U.S. DirecWay customers for a couple of years and suddenly stop working in the summer of 2005? I think I partially know the answer - it's called maximizing profitability!
Yes, the most likely reason voip has suddenly gone kaput in the U.S. for DirecWay users has a lot to do with the way DirecWay has chosen to handle upload data packets. Without boring you with a level of detail that would likely get me in over my head, I believe that DirecWay (and Wildblue for that matter) have discovered that by increasing the "burstiness" and packet handling (dropping more packets and not resending them) of the upload or inroute traffic and making some other changes at the Network Operations Centers that completely elude me (Wildblue calls them Gateway's), the two internet providers can all but eliminate voip traffic. Additionally, they can probably give users a bit better speeds during "prime time" usage. Whether it was done purposefully or by accident remains unknown and no one to my knowledge has been able to give a detailed reason or for the sudden voip crash. Theories abound, but that is another article and better done by Engineers.
Both companies have stated publicly or privately that they don't support voip traffic; however, DirecWay has indicated they are going to offer a "proprietary" voip product sometime in early 2006...very interesting! No public word from Wildblue, but they are in fierce competition with DirecWay for market share and are probably working on some type of offering as well. How will they do it? They will likely "route" this proprietary voip traffic that you buy from them through different equipment at the NOC's or Gateway's so it will not be subject to the degree of burst and jitter that is now present.
There has been a lot of energy expended by former voip users trying to get some product to work over a DirecWay or Wildblue connection. The only products that are remotely successful are outbound only calling products which use the Crystal Voice ( http://www.crystalvoice.com/ ) technology. It seems to be more "adaptive" to rapidly changing conditions of a satellite connection. They have their own product available and sell the technology to Net Zero and perhaps some others...all are outbound only as far as I've seen so far.
If you are buying satellite internet in order to get telephone connectivity to a remote area the only satellite connections I am sure will work with outbound/inbound calls are all considered "Enterprise" connections. Satellite Ground Stations like ku Band Surfbeam, iDirect or the DirecWay 7700 series will work with most any voip solution out there. You can get more information about all of these solutions here: www.vsatus.com , email: randy@vsatus.com or call Randy Scott toll free @ 1-866-978-4613.
Yes, the most likely reason voip has suddenly gone kaput in the U.S. for DirecWay users has a lot to do with the way DirecWay has chosen to handle upload data packets. Without boring you with a level of detail that would likely get me in over my head, I believe that DirecWay (and Wildblue for that matter) have discovered that by increasing the "burstiness" and packet handling (dropping more packets and not resending them) of the upload or inroute traffic and making some other changes at the Network Operations Centers that completely elude me (Wildblue calls them Gateway's), the two internet providers can all but eliminate voip traffic. Additionally, they can probably give users a bit better speeds during "prime time" usage. Whether it was done purposefully or by accident remains unknown and no one to my knowledge has been able to give a detailed reason or for the sudden voip crash. Theories abound, but that is another article and better done by Engineers.
Both companies have stated publicly or privately that they don't support voip traffic; however, DirecWay has indicated they are going to offer a "proprietary" voip product sometime in early 2006...very interesting! No public word from Wildblue, but they are in fierce competition with DirecWay for market share and are probably working on some type of offering as well. How will they do it? They will likely "route" this proprietary voip traffic that you buy from them through different equipment at the NOC's or Gateway's so it will not be subject to the degree of burst and jitter that is now present.
There has been a lot of energy expended by former voip users trying to get some product to work over a DirecWay or Wildblue connection. The only products that are remotely successful are outbound only calling products which use the Crystal Voice ( http://www.crystalvoice.com/ ) technology. It seems to be more "adaptive" to rapidly changing conditions of a satellite connection. They have their own product available and sell the technology to Net Zero and perhaps some others...all are outbound only as far as I've seen so far.
If you are buying satellite internet in order to get telephone connectivity to a remote area the only satellite connections I am sure will work with outbound/inbound calls are all considered "Enterprise" connections. Satellite Ground Stations like ku Band Surfbeam, iDirect or the DirecWay 7700 series will work with most any voip solution out there. You can get more information about all of these solutions here: www.vsatus.com , email: randy@vsatus.com or call Randy Scott toll free @ 1-866-978-4613.
posted by Randy Scott at 11:55 AM
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