Do Old Dial-Up Modems Work with VOIP?

[wiseguyusa]

I couldn't get TiVo updates via telephone because the house had DSL and at exactly the same point every time I tried to update the DL would stall and timeout.

 

Does the same principle apply to a MagicJack and a 300/1200/2400 etc modem?

 

what a great BBS system could be running to support "8bit Orphans" with a old Pentium 4 and a few Magicjacks.

 

Realistic?

[fujidude]

I'll say right away this is not a definitive answer, but I'll give you my 2 cents. The basic answer is that modems, fax devices, etc. should work fine so long as there is sufficient bandwidth provided to the "voice" part of the line. So then the question becomes; in what situations is there and isn't there sufficient bandwidth?

 

I know a friend of mine had an issue with his 56kbps modem performance severely dropping after the phone company redid the phone line to his home back around '94 or '95 I think. This did not involve DSL or anything of the sort. After some research and contacting of the phone company,it turned out they had done away with the purely analog service that had always been in place since the beginning. Instead they had gone to a digital system, presumably with a healthy dose of compression and less allocated bandwidth. This digital system presented to his home as if it were the same old analog service it had always been, but up the chain a little ways, possibly in a concentrator right in his neighborhood, it had been digitized. Apparently the phone company thought they could get away with cramming too many circuits in too little digital bandwidth and no one would notice. His modem still worked, but rather than the 52,000 bps he usually got, it typically performed at around 27,000. Fax still worked fine at the level. Voice worked too, but not the quality of old. Just observe the utter crap quality of voice typical on cell networks these days. It wasn't that bad mind you, but not as good as it had been either. I wonder how many young people even realize what a proper quality phone conversation even sounds like anymore. but, I digress...

 

Over time, I have come to the following general conclusions regarding your original question:

 

Modems are made to work over "voice grade" bandwidth. It's just that "voice grade" is not as good as it used to be. It probably will work but perhaps not as quickly. It may not work though. It just depends on how badly the bandwidth allocated for voice has been squeezed. The squeezing of voice bandwidth for cell phones is so extreme, that I doubt even a fax would have much of a chance working let alone a high speed modem. With VOIP, you would, like anything else, need enough apparent bandwidth available, AND you would need low enough latency too. So yeah, it is possible as long as both conditions are met or exceeded. In practice, Im not sure.

[russg]

I couldn't get TiVo updates via telephone because the house had DSL and at exactly the same point every time I tried to update the DL would stall and timeout.

 

Does the same principle apply to a MagicJack and a 300/1200/2400 etc modem?

 

what a great BBS system could be running to support "8bit Orphans" with a old Pentium 4 and a few Magicjacks.

 

Realistic?

VOIP (internet voice) doesn't do pulse dialing. You can set tone dialing with ATT command, if your modem supports tone dialing.

ATP sets pulse dialing. VOIP is ATT Uverse and Magicjack.

Edited December 8, 2014 by russg

[bbking67]

I can't speak for MagicJack (which I think is pretty terrible by the way), but I have used Cisco and Linksys/Sipura VOIP ATA's to make modem and fax connections successfully.

 

One use for the modem connection is a home security system. My older Linksys SPA2102 ATA did not work at all until I found someone in a forum who had success with older firmware (two versions back from the latest). That's what I use and it works for my home security system and fax. I have not tried older modems with it, but I think it would work, at least with 300, 1200 and 2400 bps modems--maybe higher.

 

I've also used the newest Cisco SPA122 ATA which is really the evolution of the old Sipura SPA series) and there are a bunch of configurable settings for legacy modem support. With the Cisco I was able to use legacy fax and debit machine work for a local business using the latest firmware.

 

The VOIP providers used were Acanac and VOIP.MS.

[_The Doctor__]

Net Talk DUO works if you are in the right places, if you have problems a phone call to their support line sometimes gets you a fix... about 76 or so percent of the DUO users claim modem success, Vonage also works with modems in most places... both seem to be dependant upon what kind of internet you have going on.... (speed, jitter and latency)

 

the crappier the internet the less likely your modem is happy.... The better the internet service th Happier the modem/fax becomes!

[Joey Z]

I'll say right away this is not a definitive answer, but I'll give you my 2 cents. The basic answer is that modems, fax devices, etc. should work fine so long as there is sufficient bandwidth provided to the "voice" part of the line. So then the question becomes; in what situations is there and isn't there sufficient bandwidth?

 

I know a friend of mine had an issue with his 56kbps modem performance severely dropping after the phone company redid the phone line to his home back around '94 or '95 I think. This did not involve DSL or anything of the sort. After some research and contacting of the phone company,it turned out they had done away with the purely analog service that had always been in place since the beginning. Instead they had gone to a digital system, presumably with a healthy dose of compression and less allocated bandwidth. This digital system presented to his home as if it were the same old analog service it had always been, but up the chain a little ways, possibly in a concentrator right in his neighborhood, it had been digitized. Apparently the phone company thought they could get away with cramming too many circuits in too little digital bandwidth and no one would notice. His modem still worked, but rather than the 52,000 bps he usually got, it typically performed at around 27,000. Fax still worked fine at the level. Voice worked too, but not the quality of old. Just observe the utter crap quality of voice typical on cell networks these days. It wasn't that bad mind you, but not as good as it had been either. I wonder how many young people even realize what a proper quality phone conversation even sounds like anymore. but, I digress...

 

Over time, I have come to the following general conclusions regarding your original question:

 

Modems are made to work over "voice grade" bandwidth. It's just that "voice grade" is not as good as it used to be. It probably will work but perhaps not as quickly. It may not work though. It just depends on how badly the bandwidth allocated for voice has been squeezed. The squeezing of voice bandwidth for cell phones is so extreme, that I doubt even a fax would have much of a chance working let alone a high speed modem. With VOIP, you would, like anything else, need enough apparent bandwidth available, AND you would need low enough latency too. So yeah, it is possible as long as both conditions are met or exceeded. In practice, Im not sure.

Well, a full telephone conversation at voice quality only takes 8KB/s. The problem with VoIP turns out to packet loss more than anything. Most VoIP protocols use UDP instead of TCP, but this causes the occasional packet to get lost, sometimes a lot get lost and you'll see this in the modem's data stream as garbled characters, or you'll hear the modem trying to retrain the connection in higher bitrate modes. I've used google voice with a modem before, with varied success. When no one else was using the internet, I got decent results. But once other family members started using the connection, I'd start getting packet loss which would cause garbled characters to be received on the originating end, or false characters received on the answer end. I never tried fax, but I assume it probably wouldn't work at all. Higher speed modes worked better (to an extent) because of the automatic error correction, but occasionally the modem would completely lose connection entirely.

 

On the other hand, using VoIP services throught the same provider as your internet tends to work many times better. I think it likely has to do with the VoIP servers basically being directly connected to your POTS interface at your house without the rest of the internet in the way, resulting in significantly lower packet loss and better success. Through AT&T uverse, I had good success with modes up to even 14.4K, with little retraining of the modem and rarely any garbled text on BBS'es.

 

Point is, give it a try, see what happens. On some VoIP providers, there is a *xx code you can dial to have the line enter 'fax mode' or also to disable the automatic echo canceling of the VoIP hardware, you might want to see if these exist for your setup and try them, they might give more success.

[fibrewire]

You need ITU G.711 for data on both ends of the sip devices -OR- T.38 support for fax at the SIP device, at the PBX (if applicable), and at the VoIP provider on both sides of the connection. Yeah i know fax isn't relevant but just in case you wanted to know...

 

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Modem+over+VOIP

 

FYI - http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/ITU+G.711

Edited December 8, 2014 by fibrewire

[Joey Z]

you need ITU G.711 for data on both ends of the sip devices -OR- T.38 support for fax at the SIP device, at the PBX (if applicable), and at the VoIP provider on both sides of the connection. Yeah i know fax isn't relevant but just in case you wanted to know...

 

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Modem+over+VOIP

 

FYI - http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/ITU+G.711

yeah, ITU G.711 (mu-law and A-law) take such little bandwidth, yet providers continue to use lower quality codecs...

Really, it's ONLY 8KB/s! What's the big deal?

[fibrewire]

yeah, ITU G.711 (mu-law and A-law) take such little bandwidth, yet providers continue to use lower quality codecs...

Really, it's ONLY 8KB/s! What's the big deal?

UDP and other IP traffic pushes a call to 84Kbps - so overhead is the big deal. It would be a lot less if providers would clean up their channels.

 

EDIT - I just noticed you put KB/s instead of kbps.

Edited December 8, 2014 by fibrewire

[fujidude]

The problem with VoIP turns out to packet loss more than anything. Most VoIP protocols use UDP instead of TCP, but this causes the occasional packet to get lost,

 

For sure lost information can be problematic in voice communications (and other streaming too actually) if the losses become to common. However, using a guarenteed delivery protocol like TCP for it is not a solution at all. In fact it is worse for streaming. The reason is, streaming content needs to happen in sequence. It does no good at all in a stream to get the missing information later, AFTER it was needed. Things have already moved on and there is no going back for a do over. Not only would things sound just as messed up or more with jumbled steams, but if packets are getting lost, using more bandwidth for retransmissions just might make packet drops happen even more frequently. Thus UDP is (to my knowledge) ALWAYS used for VOIP, not just most of the time. It is actually not that uncommon for real time networked multiplayer games to use UDP as well for similar reasons. If TCP ever is used for VIOP (and I have personally not run into that, but hey, I learn new stuff all the time), then I would suppose it is done over extremely low latency (low among the low) networks where a retransmitted packet might actually arrive in time to be used still at the time it is needed. I would imagine that an appropritely short TTL (time to live) would also be utilized in this type of situation so that if a retrans would be delayed too long, it would just be discarded and not attempt to be used. So yeah, if the latency was really quick, and the lost packets were fairly rare, TCP MIGHT be workable. Any experts out there care to enlighten?

 

Downloading files though for example needs TCP and not UDP (unless a retransmit mechanism is built in at the session or aplication layers). Files MUST have all information, but it is okay if they arrive out of sequence. They will be assembled in sequence before the process is completed.

Edited December 18, 2014 by fujidude

[_The Doctor__]

make sure packets are time-stamped and marked as a high-priority packets (yes it adds 12 bytes in header overhead) but most people don't have any of the their network cards, dsl modems, cable modems, and drivers configured to do so... and this still may not get your connection going these days... many ISP's prioritize their internal and special services over common traffic... like netflix has and agreement with RCN, starpower etc.. when a few too many people stream in the neighborhood.,..,, we all suffer... even though it use to works just fine before... they get the pictures delivered at the highest data rates and quality at all times.. before this the quality might have been effected ever so slightly... Time used to lead to increased useful and efficient improvements in a product ... lately they have been re-distributing the wealth instead of creating more bandwidth.... just like many governments this leads to failures... and bandwidth/wealth envy... not cool....

Edited December 18, 2014 by _The Doctor__

[Atari-Collector]

I can defiantly say yes, a regular dial-up modem with work with a Magic Jack Plus, because I have in fact done it using a US Robotics 56K modem over my cable internet connection.

 

I'm in the final stages of getting my new Atari 800 system fully set up, and once don'e I plan on using that modem on it and find a couple real dialup bbs' to call

[_The Doctor__]

I have the plus and the net talk... net talk barely makes a connection.... Magic Jack plus never works for me....magic jack the original worked better for me years ago...congratulations you've been upgraded!(yeah that killed modem support)... net talk duo worked the best..

 

I will try again with the plus maybe they fixed something...

 

what settings codez isp speed etc. are you using?

Edited December 19, 2014 by _The Doctor__

[Atari-Collector]

I'm on a 10 Mbit cable connection, using a PfSense firewall and a Dell 24 port switch

[wiseguyusa]

I can defiantly say yes, a regular dial-up modem with work with a Magic Jack Plus, because I have in fact done it using a US Robotics 56K modem over my cable internet connection.

 

I'm in the final stages of getting my new Atari 800 system fully set up, and once don'e I plan on using that modem on it and find a couple real dialup bbs' to call

 

Let me know what kind of results you get with a SX212 !!! I have both an MJ & MJ+ so I can do some comparisons myself once I finish moving.

My untimate dream would be to run a Pentium 4 with multi-platform emulation so the Atari and Commedore users (for instance) could have ATASCII and whatever Commedore extended ASCII was called.

[kogden]

 

Let me know what kind of results you get with a SX212 !!! I have both an MJ & MJ+ so I can do some comparisons myself once I finish moving.

My untimate dream would be to run a Pentium 4 with multi-platform emulation so the Atari and Commedore users (for instance) could have ATASCII and whatever Commedore extended ASCII was called.

 

WWIV is open source and still seeing updates, so is Renegade. Someone is trying to write a modernized Telegard IIRC too.

 

Probably wouldn't be hard to hack WWIV to support ATASCII and/or PETSCII menus and such. WWIV will happily compile and run on Linux machines as well. Door games might be a problem but message bases, menus and such should be doable. With color turned off in ICE-T even most of the games might work. Tradewars 2002 and L.O.R.D. were fun.

 

I was more active in the later PC/Mac BBS scene than the early 8-bit BBS scene. WWIV and VBBS were the most common on the PC side. FirstClass (badass GUI BBS platform) and MuBBS were the most common on the Mac side in my area.

[rcamp48]

I would like to bump this thread , its been a while since anyone has responded here but I have 5 Magic Jack Plus devices and I think it would be neat to run a BBS that supports real phone lines. Is it doable however, and did anyone ever get it working ???? I would like to get my hands on 5 US Robotics modems that have not yet been turned into WiFi modems, again you would need 5 com ports to do this? I will let you all know just how good it works with two for now. I know a friend that scraped that plastic boxes of the modems but still has the hardware maybe a custom case with 5 modems would be neat. Russ

 

[BillC]

40 minutes ago, rcamp48 said:

I would like to get my hands on 5 US Robotics modems that have not yet been turned into WiFi modems, again you would need 5 com ports to do this?

There are solutions to the need for additional serial ports, I have an old 4 port card with 16650 UARTs capable of 460kbps/port but unfortunately it's an ISA card.