VoIP Advantage - News & Blog

We can Port telephone numbers from Virgin Media

2008-07-24T15:54:00.002+01:00

We can now Port Virgin Media (Telewest/NTL) as well as BT, Energis, VoIP numbers and Directory Enquiries!

It is now possible to port all BT and Virgin Media geographic area code telephone numbers. Non-geographic numbers beginning with 08 (e.g 0800, 0870, 0845) supplied by BT or Energis can also be ported. We regret that we cannot port Virgin Media non-geographic numbers beginning with 08.

We are also able to port numbers from some existing VoIP providers such as Sipgate (providing you have their agreement to do so). This takes up to 3 days to complete once permission is granted.

NB: Any numbers with services attached/associated to them (e.g. fax, broadband, alarm systems, credit card machines) will be ceased when the number is ported over to VoIP Advantage. If this is the case you must arrange to transfer these services to new number with BT or Virgin Media before attempting to port.

New Service - Remote Call Forwarding

2008-07-22T16:29:00.003+01:00

I'm pleased to announce that we have a new service available to our customers: Remote Call Forwarding.

This is a simple and cost effective way of routing any number to any existing PSTN number. This is normally used if you want to add a new telephone number, probably a 'professional' number (e.g. an 0800 or 0845 number or a 'memorable' number in your home area code) for a new business or new reason within an existing business (dedicated sales line for instance).

There is no set up fee.
£3.00 per month rental.
UK Calls forwarded at just 1.25 pence per minute.
UK Mobile Calls forwarded from just 10 pence per minute.

New VoIP Client - Hatt Adventures

2008-06-10T12:33:00.002+01:00

We're pleased to welcome Hatt Adventures as a new VoIP Advantage customer. Hatt Adventures have selected our Centrex package to manage their calls and particularly to pass calls to the right member of staff, wherever they may be having an adventure. For more information about Hatt Adventures and something a little different to the norm please visit http://www.thehatt.co.uk/adventures/

New VoIP Client - Kids-Biz Limited

2008-05-23T11:21:00.003+01:00

We're pleased to welcome Kids-Biz Limited as a new VoIP Advantage customer. Kids-Biz have selected our Centrex package combined with a Fax to Email package as their preferred VoIP solution. For more information about Kids-Biz and their cool clothes for kids please visit http://www.kids-biz.co.uk/

wireless08 - The Invisible Threat

2008-05-22T16:13:00.000+01:00

A pretty good talk on interference affecting Wireless LANs by Mohamed Zouire of AirMagnet Inc.

Roughly divided into two types:

1) Interference caused by Wireless (802.11) devices. Main causes being: too many devices on the same channel; and adjacent channels being used (leave a 3 channel gap if possible).

2) Interference caused by other stuff on the same frequencies (2.4GHz & 5GHz): microwaves; bluetooth devices; video cameras; DECT phones; wireless mikes; and jammers.

Having tracked the cause of the interference (possibly by using AirMagnet's Spectrum Analyser) the general order to fix it might be: move it; shield it; try to work around it.

Good summary I thought.

wireless08 - Taking VoIP on the Road

2008-05-22T14:02:00.001+01:00

I heard a good talk from Marcus Birkl (Siemens) this morning. Some great statistics:

* 41% of employees operate away from their desks (Yankee Group);
* 33% of mobile calls originate within the enterprise's premises (Frost & Sullivan).

He talked about convenience causing more mobile than deskphone calls. This made me think that convenience leads naturally to wireless connectivity & unified communications on one device. In turn this means more convergence of services onto all singing & dancing hardware devices.

For voice, this probably means being reachable on a single corporate number, and using VoIP on the mobile phone (with gives a bonus of reducing roaming charges when abroad).

I'll keep looking for a decent VoIP client for my mobile then!

Load Balancing Routers

2008-04-15T18:52:00.005+01:00

One of the potential drawbacks of VoIP is that your calls come in over your internet (generally broadband or cable) connection and that has a limited capacity. A busy office might only be able to handle 3 or 4 phone calls at once over their standard broadband connection. So, what happens when you want to have more people making calls?

One option is to set new people up in new locations, and this way the VoIP service is pretty much infinitely expandable. i.e. if every employee works from home over their home broadband connection then there is no sharing of the connection with the other employees.

In many companies this is not an option (or maybe not the whole answer). Many companies thrive on having teams working in the same offices, learning and being motivated by working together. So, what is your next option?

First up is checking the speed and quality of your existing connection. ISPs like Be Broadband can offer up to 24Mb download speeds (and as importantly for VoIP pretty high upload speeds too) where they have their unbundled equipment in your local exchange. Even in normal BT Exchanges you can choose an ISP like Zen Internet to get you better quality connections. These improvements could well take you up to perhaps even 20 calls being made over the connection (that is not a promise!).

Some people can then even add an extra broadband line and dedicate that to just VoIP calls while the old line continues to be used for just internet surfing. This does require a bit more knowledge about how to manage your network. The more broadband lines then the more complicated this can get. A drawback to this is that generally the upload speeds available are not nearly as high as the download speed you get, I've often seen it at around a 5th of the received download speed (i.e. 8Mb ADSL download, may be getting just over 1Mb upload speed) and a VoIP call uses equal amounts of upload and download bandwidth).

The next answer could well be an SDSL connection. This is a Synchronous connection giving you equal upload and download speeds (and those people I know with SDSL connections love them) but this can still be a pretty major step up in monthly costs (a 2Mbps SDSL from Zen Internet currently costs £299/month).

I believe that for small businesses the answer at this point lies with Load Balancing Routers. You can take additional normal broadband connections (could be ADSL, Cable, even Leased Line) and aggregate them in one router. This then lets you share the aggregated upload and download speeds easily over your network. Generally these load balanced routers can accept 2 to 4 (WAN) connections. The beauty about this is you get the full benefit of all the upload bandwidth from all of the connections.

A second benefit is that if one ISP experiences some downtime, you won't be shutdown, you'll only be slowed down as the Router automatically keeps you connected on the other connections. Work continues, even if not as effectively or fast as normal until the broken connection is repaired. I believe this gives a small business the best levels of availability, scalability, and performance.

What I don't know yet is which Load Balancing Routers are the best, most cost effective, easiest to setup. Based on my research I've listed below Load Balancing Routers from the key suppliers (along with a very quick bit of research as to an online price for each) and would be very interested in anyones experiences and comments on any of these:

1) Draytek Vigor 3300v MultiService Security VoIP Load Balancer w/2 Module Slots (£289.98 ex VAT)

Load-balanced WAN Ports: Connect up to four Internet feeds for increased Internet bandwidth, fault-tolerance and redunancy. In basic load-balancing mode, the Draytek Vigor 3300V will distribute WAN traffic requests evenly. This means that if you have two 512Kb/s feeds, two LAN users can download at 512Kb/s simultaneously. Alternatively you can select traffic preferences for the load balancing, selecting specific Internet feeds for traffic types of traffic (e.g. VoIP, VPN), by source/destination IP address or TCP/UDP Port ranges.

2) Draytek Vigor 2930 VPN Dual-WAN Broadband Router (£150.08 ex VAT)

The two dedicated ethernet WAN ports can provide load balancing, WAN failover or bandwidth aggregation (increasing total bandwidth onto the Internet). High Speed total WAN througput of up to 70Mb/s is available, and IPSec VPN throughput of up to 40Mb/s. Extensive QoS support and comprehensive Web Content filtering features help you make the most efficient use of your bandwidth.

3) Billion BiGuard 50G Wireless-G Security Dual WAN VPN Load Balancer (£153.59 ex VAT)

Enjoy effective, always-on Internet sharing for all the PCs in your office thanks to load-balancing delivered by two integrated broadband WAN ports to ensure optimal bandwidth sharing, and provide network redundancy in case one of the Internet services fails. The BiGuard 50G offers flexible WAN connectivity via Cable, XDSL, or FTTX for video conferencing, data transmission, VoIP and bandwidth-consuming applications. Load balancing provides the ability to distribute the outgoing traffic across the two connections, and meet growing business needs requiring more bandwidth and network scalability so you can offer users Internet-business applications. The Auto fail-over feature can be configured for a second connection to assure redundant connectivity when the primary line fails.

4) Linksys RV042 4-Port Load Balancer w/VPN Endpoint (£93.42 ex VAT)

The unique dual Internet ports on the 10/100 4-Port VPN Router let you connect a second Internet line as a backup to insure that you're never disconnected. Or, use both Internet ports at the same time, and let the router balance your office's requirements between them for maximum bandwidth efficiency.

5) NETGEAR FVS124G ProSafe Dual WAN Gigabit Firewall Router (£84.06 ex VAT)

Dual WAN ports for maximum Internet connectivity. You can use both ports at the same time, and let the router balance your office’s requirements between them for maximum bandwidth efficiency.

6) D-Link DI-LB604 > 4-Port Load Balancing Router (£69.00 ex VAT)

One of the main differentiators the DI-LB604 has from most routers is its dual WAN ports. With the ability to connect up to two Internet connections, the total available bandwidth doubles in capacity and therefore provides a tremendous increase in network efficiency and user productivity. Dual WAN ports also provide a fast-acting failover response mechanism; if one Internet connection goes down, the other automatically takes control to ensure continuous network uptime.

7) Edimax BR-6641 (£229.03 ex VAT)

Auto Load Balancing (Inbound/Outbound). With real-time load sharing and load balancing, BR-6641 intelligent routing engine directs each session or connection to the best available link. BR-6641 can aggregate multiple connections and increases bandwidth by trunking various types of connection (Leased-line, xDSL, and Cable Modem) to form a single virtual WAN trunk. BR-6641 Provides 4 WAN ports for internet connection . The function provides you not only increase bandwidth but also backup internet connection each other. Whenever a link fails or is unstable, traffic is automatically re-routed to other healthy and available links to ensure uninterrupted connectivity. After the faulty link resumes functioning, on-line traffic is redistributed across all available connections to optimize the network performance.

8) ZyXEL ZyWALL 35 UTM Appliance (£349.99 ex VAT)

Dual WAN ports for WAN backup and Load Balancing.

We can now route calls to 118 numbers

2008-04-04T18:28:00.001+01:00

We are pleased to announce that VoIP Advantage now route calls to 118 numbers!

Inclusive minute packages improved

2008-04-03T10:41:00.002+01:00

We have now amended our inclusive minute packages to aggregate all the bundled minutes to be used across all extensions designated to use unlimited packages. So if we have three UK packages with 4000 minutes then there are 12000 minutes available in total to be shared by all the nominated extensions. Please note, the call packages must be the same i.e. either UK unlimited or Global unlimited.

VoIP user moves from Voiptalk to VoIP Advantage

2008-03-25T08:25:00.002Z

New client to VoIP Advantage, Extreme Element Ltd, was suffering poor call quality with a voip service from Voiptalk. After a successful month's trial of our VoIP Advantage service they have now moved completely over to our service. Extreme Element offers extreme sports courses & experiences, click here for more information: http://www.exelement.co.uk/

New: Guide to configuring VoIP Advantage using SJphone on a Mac

2008-02-11T16:59:00.000Z

We have just created a guide (with screenshots) for configuring SJphone to run on a Mac computer with our VoIP Advantage service. You can view the guide here:

http://voipadvantage.co.uk/setting%20up%20sjphone%20on%20a%20mac%20to%20use%20voip%20advantage.pdf

VoIP Advantage website improved

2008-01-29T16:34:00.000Z

We have received quite a lot of feedback about our website (www.voipadvantage.co.uk) and the user friendliness (or otherwise) of it. I'm pleased to say that based on this feedback we've just improved the website. Visitors should now find it easier to navigate and the content on each page is now laid out in a more logical fashion. Hopefully this should make it a lot easier for you to find exactly the information you're looking for. Please keep the feedback coming! Thank you.

Signed new VoIP client Bestmag!

2008-01-24T15:52:00.000Z

We are pleased to announce we have a new client for our VoIP services: Bestmag (Batteries and Energy Storage Technology Magazine) now have our VoIP setup to look after the phone and fax needs of workers in the UK, the USA and in China all managed from one online Control Panel.

SJphone versus eyeBeam softphones

2008-01-23T17:39:00.000Z

For a while now I have been testing SJphone as an alternative to eyeBeam for our own use softphones. This week we completely migrated our internal usage to SJphone from eyeBeam.

We appear to have far better sound quality in the calls. Call transferring seems to work absolutely fine. It is pretty easy to use and to setup. It is also a free download.

I recently recorded a video showing how to configure SJphone here: http://voipadvantage.co.uk/userguidevideosjphone.htm

and just now I've put up a video showing how to transfer a call using SJphone: http://voipadvantage.co.uk/userguidevideosjphonecalltransfer.htm.

3 Mobile Call Cost Reduction

2008-01-23T15:11:00.001Z

We are pleased to announce that effective immediately, we have reduced the cost of calling 3 mobile numbers. Our pricing is now in line with calling costs to all other mobile networks. Peak Calls are now 10ppm, off-peak 9ppm, and weekend calls 6ppm.

USA Toll Free Numbers

2008-01-23T14:47:00.000Z

We now offer USA Toll Free Numbers in the format +1 866 xxxxxxx and +1 877 xxxxxxx for just a low £1 per month supplement to our standard package prices. Calls to Toll Free numbers are charged to you at 3 pence per minute.

Updated Porting Guide and Form

2008-01-21T15:42:00.000Z

Our guide to Porting your telephone number (usually from BT) has just been updated and we've updated our Porting Form so that you should only need to complete one form from now on.

The guide and form are available on http://www.voipadvantage.co.uk/voipadvantageporting.htm or you can access them from the support page on our http://www.voipadvantage.co.uk website.

Planned Server Platform for 2008

2008-01-17T15:13:00.000Z

You may be interested to note our planned server and hardware revamp for 2008:

VoIP Servers

In/outbound asterisk call processing servers (for iax + newsip) x10
Sip Registration x2
Sip Call routing x3
Mysql database cluster x4 for newsip to back off on
Prepay permissions servers x3
Voicemail servers x3

More information available here: http://www.gradwell.com/company/blog/2007/12/21/server-plans-for-2008/

VoIP Advantage launches a fax to email service.

2007-12-12T14:21:00.000Z

VoIP Advantage has launched a simple Fax-to-Email service. For a £10.00 setup fee and £3.00 per month you can have faxes to a telephone number (a local number, non-geographical - i.e. 0800, 0845 - or even international number) automatically converted into an pdf document and sent to the email address of your choice.

August 2007 - Statistics update

2007-08-17T17:01:00.000+01:00

Gradwell's VoIP servers now have 13000 numbers in use, with an average of 4750 extensions logged on the service. They support 2000 SIP Inbound and 4000 IAX Inbound trunks. Gradwell have also ported over 2600 BT numbers to date.

There were over 1 million outbound call minutes in July, and nearly 2 million inbound call minutes.

August 2007 - Development update

2007-08-16T17:00:00.000+01:00

999 calls – all the development work has been done and we are in the process of training our Call Handling company to make sure the correct location details are provided to BT in the event that the automatic system fails. Planned to go live in September 2007.