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Ask HN: Voice over IP solutions?

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Re: Ask HN: Voice over IP solutions?

#11

Post by darklajid »

viraptor wrote: post #9

There are loads of local providers available, so I'd recommend just looking for one located in a country you're in the most. Or even open a couple of accounts and make sure they all redirect to a single one for incoming calls. They offer various levels of quality, so be sure to try it a couple of times first... Majority of the providers seem to be only resellers - many of them not understanding the technology behind…

Ah yeah - I like the idea. But that's not gonna work. Just moved to a country where I don't know the language, don't know the alphabet and - frankly - no one likes to talk in english unless pressed, although the locals say otherwise. So - I need another solution.

Re: Ask HN: Voice over IP solutions?

#14

Post by petedoyle »

I think SIP is definitely the way to go. A while back I was looking for a provider in the EU and found voxbeam.com. Their servers are in Amsterdam and have good connectivity. Traceroute to sip.voxbeam.com to get an idea of the latency you'll see. They also do point-to-point audio so if they hand your call to another provider's server, they get out of the media stream (reduces latency).

One potential issue with SIP is that you might have issues behind some firewalls. Not sure how big a deal that is in practice while traveling (I think its probably fine). If not it might be useful to use Asterisk+IAX. I'm not sure what Android clients exist for IAX.

I ended up building an Asterisk box on EC2 EU-WEST-1 (Ireland), which, at ~20ms from sip.voxbeam.com, doesn't add a ton of latency. It works fine on a Micro instance, which is free for a year if you don't already have an AWS account.

Re: Ask HN: Voice over IP solutions?

#15

Post by jan_g »

darklajid wrote: post #13
simonb wrote: post #4

Have you tried vox.io [ http://www.vox.io ]?

No.. and going to their website tells me that - I need an invite - They are doing.. "stuff". I've no idea what they are offering from the first couple minutes on the website. Can you recommend them? Why?

Service is not open for the public yet, but will be soon. However, there are many invites available on twitter and elsewhere.

Here's one: http://www.vox.io/r/KZZwni

You'll get 0.5€ of free credit which should be enough to test the service and see if you like it or not. Note that you need a real (existing) number for validation purposes (you'll receive an SMS with validation code), unless account is validated, calling isn't possible.

Apart from regular calls there are also other features like syncing with google contacts, anonymous calling (service generates a link and you can email it to someone and they can call you without registration), CLI.

Re: Ask HN: Voice over IP solutions?

#16

Post by darklajid »

jan_g wrote: post #15
darklajid wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No.. and going to their website tells me that - I need an invite - They are doing.. "stuff". I've no idea what they are offering from the first couple minutes on the website. Can you recommend them? Why?

Service is not open for the public yet, but will be soon. However, there are many invites available on twitter and elsewhere. Here's one: http://www.vox.io/r/KZZwni You'll get 0.5€ of free credit which should be enough to test the service and see if you like it or not. Note that you need a real (existing) number for validation purposes (you'll receive an SMS with validation code), unless account is validated, calling…

Thanks a lot. Used that link, signed up. Got 0.5 EUR (which is a lot, with these rates. Nice!) and tried a first call.

Call was excellent on my side, very bad on the other side. "GTalk's better", "Lots of noise" and it got dropped after roughly 1:30 with both parties not hearing anything. I hang up after 20 more seconds and verified the results via GTalk with the other side.

First impression: Generous credit on sign up, slick and cool interface, but - yeah - first call was a miss so far. :( In other words: I'd love to love it. Will try again later/tomorrow.

Re: Ask HN: Voice over IP solutions?

#17

Post by darklajid »

DeanCollinsLCC wrote: post #12

asterisk on your home server with a SIP client on your android/laptop etc

This on its own won't help me. I need to call land lines and mobiles. If this would be just about a very restricted set of people I probably could direct them to use some technology. But - it's not. I need to call people that are 'offline'.

Re: Ask HN: Voice over IP solutions?

#18

Post by darklajid »

fez wrote: post #10

I set up an Elastix PBX with a VoicePulse.com SIP trunk. Elastix is Asterisk and free. The GUI looks pretty good and I was able to get everything set up in a couple of hours. I have never set up a PBX in my life.

Thanks, the Asterisk suggestion comes up a lot. I had a server like that in the past (more as a PBX and directly attached to the phone network, not using voip). Maybe that makes sense again.

VoicePulse.com is - inappropriate. They seem to be highly US centric (according to their plans and site) and I want to call from the Near East to Europe, mostly. So - not for me I guess.

Re: Ask HN: Voice over IP solutions?

#19

Post by jan_g »

darklajid wrote: post #16
jan_g wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Service is not open for the public yet, but will be soon. However, there are many invites available on twitter and elsewhere. Here's one: http://www.vox.io/r/KZZwni You'll get 0.5€ of free credit which should be enough to test the service and see if you like it or not. Note that you need a real (existing) number for validation purposes (you'll receive an SMS with validation code), unless account is validated, calling…

Thanks a lot. Used that link, signed up. Got 0.5 EUR (which is a lot, with these rates. Nice!) and tried a first call. Call was excellent on my side, very bad on the other side. "GTalk's better", "Lots of noise" and it got dropped after roughly 1:30 with both parties not hearing anything. I hang up after 20 more seconds and verified the results via GTalk with the other side. First impression: Generous credit on sign…

Did you try calling the test bot? It's just an echo service that we've provided with which user can test if the connectivity is ok between his machine and vox.io server (and if mic settings are ok). Also, you can try to call yourself (I mean your mobile/fixed number), just to check the quality of audio. We try to route the calls through high quality gateways but sometimes a call is still not good.

Re: Ask HN: Voice over IP solutions?

#20

Post by mike-cardwell »

Check out localphone.com. You can point a VOIP client at their service, but you don't have to. You can also just phone whatever their local number is in each country and bounce through that. So you end up paying for a local call in the country you're in, and a local call in the country you're phoning.
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