[IP] Pulver Innovations WiSIP Phone
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 1, 2004 4:14:43 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Pulver Innovations WiSIP Phone
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[Note: I'm posting this not so much for the review of this particular
Wi-Fi VoIP phone, but for the discussion of the issues that come up in
the attempt of getting such devices to work with today's Wi-Fi
hotspots. As for myself, while tempted to get one of these things,
I'll stick with the soft SIP phone on my PowerBook for the short term.
In that environment, I have all of the tools that I need to deal with
the authentication/security issues. Something that I wouldn't have
with the Wi-Fi VoIP phone by itself. DLH]
Pulver Innovations WiSIP Phone
June 30, 2004
<http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/reviews/CD/article.php/3375891>
The first consumer Wi-Fi phones are a little like dancing bears. You're
so disarmed by the fact that they can do it at all that you're prepared
to overlook their occasional stumble.
Pulver Innovations is the product arm of Pulver.com, Jeff Pulver's VoIP
(Voice over IP) consulting and conference empire and it has one such
phone, the $250 WiSIP.
The good news is that the WiSIP phone works, quite well in fact. The
bad news: it doesn't yet work everywhere, and rarely where it would be
most useful -- at a Wi-Fi hotspot.
The Pulver phone is bigger than the smallest cell phones, but lighter
than most. In fact, it feels a little flimsy.
Its 3.6V Lithium battery theoretically provides 3.2 hours of talk time
and 21 to 23 hours of standby time. The latter is far less than the
best of the current cell phones and PDAs. RIM's latest Blackberry
models boast up to nine days of standby time, for example.
The only way to charge it is by putting it in the included cradle --
which, given the standby time, you'll have to bring along if you take
the phone traveling.
The Pulver Wi-Fi phone is built around Session Initiated Protocol
(SIP), a signaling protocol for Internet telephony and instant
messaging. The protocol initiates call setup, routing and
authentication on IP networks. SIP compliance is a good thing in a
Wi-Fi phone. It means the phone is compatible with most WLANs.
Unfortunately, it does not guarantee you can use it anywhere. To work,
the phone needs to associate with a local Wi-Fi network, then log on to
a VoIP server.
The problem at this point is not finding a compatible VoIP service,
it's finding a WLAN that will authenticate the phones. This product
only works for sure on home or office Wi- Fi networks where you can
control the authentication process or at Wi-Fi hotspots that require no
authentication -- which is to say, fewer and fewer of them.
The problem, says Pulver spokesperson Stu Milberg, is getting Wi-Fi
hotspot operators to agree to authenticate WiSIP phones. The technology
is there to do it, he says. Operators could authenticate by MAC
address, for example. The question is whether they want to authenticate
the phones.
Operators may be asking themselves, a) do I want a lot of relatively
high-bandwidth devices hogging capacity on my network, especially when,
b) somebody else is getting all the additional revenue for the
telephone service.
Pulver is talking to major commercial operators and expects to announce
some soon that will authenticate the phones. The company is hoping that
pressure from subscribers wanting to use Wi-Fi phones will force
operators to find ways to accommodate them.
In the meantime, you may be able to use the phone at some free hotspots
that require no authentication. Milberg has used his at airports and
convention centers, he says. I found no hotspots in my area that would
authenticate the phone.
Until the hotspot operators get onside, the Pulver WiSIP phone -- and
others like it, such as Viper Networks' WiFi vPhone, which comes from
the same factory as the Pulver product and, according to a Viper
spokesperson, is virtually identical to it -- make very expensive
cordless phones for around the home or office. However, with this
handset, you're not paying a telco for long distance.
The second part of the equation, getting the phone to work with a VoIP
service, turns out to be somewhat easier. Pulver has the WiSIP phone
working with several services, including the company's own Free World
Dialup, as well as commercial services such as VoicePulse, Broadvoice ,
Net2Phone and Vonage. Broadvoice is marketing the phone from its Web
site, as well.
It takes a little effort to set it up for use on these networks, as I
discovered. Pulver can ship the phone already configured for the
service provider of your choice, but I chose to do it myself to see how
difficult it was. The process starts, as with setup for most Wi-Fi
devices, by selecting the network mode -- usually DHCP (Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol) -- for the local network.
You may have to scan for a network and select your network Service Set
IDentifier (SSID) and/or input a gateway and subnet mask address. On
some networks you may also have to input a wired equivalent privacy
(WEP) encryption key.
This part of the process went fairly smoothly on my home office WLAN. I
was able to get the phone to associate with my Netgear Wireless Router.
The hard part was correctly configuring the phone's SIP settings so it
would work with Vonage Soft Phone VoIP service.
While the manual that comes with the product gives fairly clear and
detailed instructions on how to do this from the phone's keypad, you
can do it far more easily using a computer connected to the same
network. You access the phone's setup screens by surfing to its IP
address using a Web browser. If your network has a DHCP server, you'll
need to first select the Information item on the phone's main menu
where you'll find the IP address the DHCP service has assigned.
The manual failed to make it clear this option was available, and I
didn't find out until later when talking to a Pulver tech support
person. My first attempts at configuring the SIP settings involved
keying in a lot alpha characters on a telephone keypad -- a very
tedious process.
Before you can even start, though, you need the service provider to
give you some required information - the name or IP address of its VoIP
Proxy server and the correct TCP port number. You may also need a
separate address or name for the Outbound Proxy server. Even if the two
server addresses are the same, you need to input both.
The Vonage technical support agents I talked to had apparently had no
experience with SIP phones, but they were able to give me the setting
information I needed. The trouble is, it didn't work.
I called back and a second agent very confidently confirmed the
information the first had given. Only after Pulver tech support called
Vonage and asked the right questions -- a couple of hours into the
process -- was the issue resolved. Vonage had given me the wrong port
number.
This was not a problem with the phone itself, but it does underline the
fact that it's still early days with this technology and not everybody
is singing from the same hymnal yet.
On my network, I also had to go into the router's firewall settings and
explicitly permit the phone to have access to the TCP port.
Once all of this was done, the phone worked. It automatically
registered on the Vonage server and I was able to make calls -- though
unlike with wired broadband VoIP services using voice gateways or PC
soft phone services, you don't get a dial tone.
The phone also won't transmit Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) tones --
touch tones -- that can be received by some voice mail services,
Milberg says. However, I was able to use touch tones to collect my
telco voice mail.
In test calls around my small home, connection and voice quality were
as good on some calls as with any wired broadband VoIP service from
Vonage -- i.e. very good indeed. On others, there was some slight echo
and some break-up, though little discernible latency. Even at its
worst, it was better than a bad cellular connection.
As I moved outside and further from the access point -- up to 150 feet
away -- there was naturally more break-up, but it was still possible to
carry on a conversation and voice quality remained good.
On the whole, I was impressed, but I can't see many takers for a $250
product that only works for sure as a cordless phone in private
networks. We'll see how this plays out in the weeks and months ahead as
more Wi-Fi phones come on to the market and pressure builds on hotspot
operators to let them on.
Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/