internet connections voice over ip

[waright]

getting prices on internet service to my wash. I would like to bundle with my 2 phone lines in order to get a better deal.

I have 2 Hamilton acw's with dial up credit card acceptance. Century link (formerly Qwest) is the main provider in our area for phone service, however they are unable to provide internet at our wash location due to problems with the infrastructure of their network. They either have too many internet subscribers in the area or the phone lines are just too old. They said this is the case with any internet provider in the area wanting to use the phone lines as means of providing internet service.

That leaves Mediacom cable as the only good option for us. Here's my question: Mediacom offers phone service in a bundle, but they said it is voice over ip and that some equipment may not be able to use that kind of phone service. Will my Hamilton dial up system work with voice over ip phone service?

 

[wash4me]

This doesn't answer your question but i may mention a couple other potential options. If you have line of sight....even miles away you can use directional antennas to get internet to that location. Also there are areas where you can actually get internet from a company that provides it with these same antennas.....still need line of site to a water tower or wherever their equipment is. Lastly, satellite internet is available anywhere but I have no knowledge on this.

 

[Randy]

Flip a coin on that one. Sometimes it works well and sometimes you have a lot of problems sending data over VOIP. Sometimes the analog dialup modem in the ACW has a difficult time communicating with the VOIP system. If you’ve got a good clear line on the VOIP it will work, if it’s questionable then you could have problems. I have Comcast VOIP at my house and it’s garbled up a lot of the time. About the only thing you can do is to try it

 

[bigleo48]

I have worked extensively in this area and the answer is...likely will work. VoIP uses vocoders that are made to recognize natural voice. The modems in your Hamilton ACWs uses tones Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM) and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) (not natural voice). However, when clearing credit cards, modems usually handshake (agree) at a much lower speed and robust error correction. They do this to ensure the data gets across properly without errors. You wouldn't want to to this to exchange a large amount of data, but for little burst like CC transactions, its fine.

You may run into a few problems, but be able to make it work.

First, the handshake process. When the modems at both ends negotiate what to connect at, they usually start at the fasted rate and drop from there as they discover the connections limits. The modems may take a while to back down to the slow speeds they can work with or are configured not to allow a connection at such slow speeds. This may make the handshaking process long (like 30 or 40 sec) depending on how the modems are configured. This can be fixed by a knowledgeable modem guy who would instruct your modems to only work at slow speeds via AT command string that is saved in the modem. So then they would start at the slow speed instead, right off the bat, making the modems agree much more quickly (like 5 to 10 seconds).

Second, you would want to put the VoIP device at the entry point (demarcation point or DEMARC) of your internet service. They are usually configured to prioritize VoIP and so other data on your network would not interfere with the CC clearing traffic from the modems.

Third, Some VoIP carriers such as Vonage allow you to set the voice quality (Vocoder bit rate). Higher the bit rate, the better success rate with your cc clearing. Cable Companies voice quality is usually a higher bit rate and their network prioritizes VoIP traffic. So you are likely good.

 

[cwguy.com]

Try asking if you can fax with the voip line.

Also with internet.... if it's just for fun or for security footage. Why not become "friends" with a business around you? Even pay to be "friends" it will be cheaper.