Pierre’s Lab

We have an account with Vonage – 4 lines. We switched one line to Vonage some 3 years ago to try it, we added a fax line and then switched the 2 remaining lines last year.

Vonage first quality is cost. We have a total monthly cost around $90 with long distance and very low cost international, compared to the $35 per line we were paying previously with out long distance. That’s already a neat savings.

The overall phone quality is very good even for long distance and international. Vonage is not a low cost/low-quality provider like Net2phone and others. In fact I even can say that the quality is equivalent to land lines.

Vonage is using VoIP as transport but the end user is a standard phone, not a VoIP one and this makes a big difference as you can’t directly connect your Vonage account into a VoIP router, switch or server. You need a POTS interface which can be costly. I haven’t found any Vonage interface or setup to connect directly from Vonage to an Asterisk server. We used a small PBX from BBS telecom with 4 IVT10 and 2 IVT16, very nice equipment without voicemail but all the features of a big one.

My next generation of hone phone system will be full VoIP based on an Asterisk system.

My first Home network was based on a Microsoft Small Business Server, dual CPU, 2 GB Memory, dual NIC card and two 75 Gig Hard Drives. Very sweet machine, always running, no crashes, one of the most reliable appliances in the house.
Behind the server I had a 24 Ethernet ports 10/100Mb HP switch to distribute to a network printer, 3 PCs, 2 laptops and a wireless ‘extender’. In front of the Server I had a cable modem connected to a firewall with the 1st NAT layer and 4 Vonage VoIP interfaces.
The wiring was made of good plain Cat5 cables.
Everything worked well but the wireless network. The box I had didn’t offer IP pass-through as an option so it had its own NAT and it was impossible then to logon onto the server! I never resolved that problem entirely.
Microsoft Small Business Server is quite an expensive tool for a home ($1,500 for 10 seats) but it offers all the features to make life easier: exchange server, file sharing, printer sharing, fax sharing, access control (great for kids), powerful firewall, internal website, media server etc…
Bottom line, I was very pleased with my home network!

Five, six years ago I implemented an X10 network mainly by replacing the existing switches, outlets by X10 ones, adding lamp and appliances modules and installing an X10 software on my computer.
It was a quite easy task even if and because the house was quite old - built in 1957 and expanded in the early 70s. The fuse panel system was quite confusing with a total of 3 in different rooms, a 25amps fuse for a mix of switches and outlets in different rooms etc…
Several problems occurred mainly due to the age of the electrical installation:

• Noisy electrical lines, this problem was partially resolved with numerous filters.
• Phase coupling issues as the previous owners ran cables without real considerations. This problem was solved with couplers.
• Loss of signal on the line, resolved with repeaters.
• Lack of real control because my switches and modules were mainly one way.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed it even if few lights were going on or off just by themselves.

I decided to create a blog to talk about my Home Automation, network and VoIP Systems. I had those one already based on older technologies and when the house burnt down, I had to redo it based on past experience and new technologies.

Feel free to comment and to ask, I’ll be pleased helping around.