Update:
We have had Vonage for several months now. I give it my highest recommendation. It works, it's better than the old technology, it's cheaper by far, what's not to like.
Oh. Yeah. It's voice only. Crap.
Our eldest son will be departing for college in a couple of hours, and since he's deaf, the cool phone service will be useless. Enter videoconferenceing.
We're the proud (and frustrated) owners of a videophone system now. It's from
Sorenson, the
VP-100 (don't those low model numbers just give the early-adopter-chills?) This unit is really nice. It's especially nice to be able to make a call away from the computer, unlike the standard webcam. The latency is minimal, there's very little jerking in the image. The image is large, full sound, muting (privacy) for audio and video.
I only have connected it just in the last hour, and my boy is chatting up some cute girl. I bet he can't wait to get his own unit in his dorm room. :wink: Actually, I don't want to know
.
I am having one important technical difficulty still. This device requires a different router, a D-Link DL-604, than the one I already have (Linksys wrt54Gs). The VP-100 needs *something* it can't deliver, according to the technician. Oh well. I couldn't make it work either. So at this point, I have inserted the D-Link into my network in place if the Linksys. That means the Vonage is offline, and all the house wiring is dark, the wireless is off the air.
The crux of the problem is that I am unable to get a public IP address for both routers through my DSL modem, Cisco 678. I have a small block of public addresses reserved through my ISP (Yay
Blarg! Online Services One plug, seriously--I chose them because they only charged me *ONCE* to provision the block of IP addresses, instead of a monthly charge. I find this very honest, since the addresses are not the property of a given isp, to charge me a monthly rental, like it's their property! Don't get me started.)
Any-damn-way. I can't get both routers to co-exist. I'm open to suggestions. I expect I'll get some in the daytime. (the corollary to a small local isp is that they don't have 24*7 phone support. boo hoo.)
Videoconferencing rocks!
About the only thing left to get via broadband is entertainment (cable, etc). I hate the cable company too!