http://neil.ideasip.com Increasing the Signal to Noise Ratio Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:34:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Skype recently created a pretty flimsy excuse for their outage last Thursday, blaming the outage on a statistically unlikely massive reboot of Windows systems after a Windows Update. While several blogs have their own take on the explanation, with some picking apart the explanation, to some coming up with possible, ... http://neil.ideasip.com/2007/08/20/skypes-flimsy-excuse-and-the-reliance-on-secrecy/ I was noticing something earlier today when reading the USAC's (Universal Service Administrative Company) interpretation of who must contribute to the USF (Universal Service Fund) according to FCC 06-94. The FCC 06-94 order specifically states that interconnected VoIP providers must pay into the USF, and they go on to define ... http://neil.ideasip.com/2007/07/18/wait-who-pays-into-the-universal-service-fund/ Telephone conversations, while these days often taking place on mobile phones in public places, have often been considered to be, by many people, private conversations. Even when one person (or a whole crowded room) can hear half of a conversation, it's not always readily apparent what the entire discourse is ... http://neil.ideasip.com/2007/05/02/telephony-security/ While it still hasn't reached mass acceptance, VoIP communication is rapidly insinuating itself into every facet of our daily lives. Many long-distance and calling-card providers have used VoIP to reduce costs for years now, and consumers are getting more and more choices for VoIP services every day. VoIP companies are ... http://neil.ideasip.com/2007/04/20/the-hurdles-of-wi-fi-voip/ Stanaphone, one of the better consumer-targeted VoIP companies, shut down its consumer operations at the beginning of this month. It had been a holdout for quite some time, and I'm honestly surprised they lasted as long as they did. They were one of those companies that offered free DIDs to ... http://neil.ideasip.com/2007/04/19/and-another-one-bites-the-dust/ You can't escape the news these days about how Verizon is suing Vonage for patent infringement. Every week, there's a new legal twist. The latest of these was that Verizon got the court to issue an injunction against Vonage, disallowing Vonage to sign up new customers. Vonage almost immediately got ... http://neil.ideasip.com/2007/04/11/verizon-vs-vonage-and-the-patent-madness/ In my last post, I talked about the disappointing performance of embedded Asterisk on a mini router. Today, I'm going to discuss Trixbox (formerly Asterisk@home). Trixbox is a handy little open-source software package containing a combination ready-to-go linux install combined with an install of Asterisk with all the bells and whistles. ... http://neil.ideasip.com/2007/03/16/wrangling-trixbox/ For those who've not yet explored the world of Asterisk, I urge you to do so. Asterisk is open-source PBX software that more and more large companies are using to replace their old, expensive, and often horribly antiquated PBX systems. Why spend $50,000 on a Lucent system when you ... http://neil.ideasip.com/2007/03/14/embedded-asterisk/ CompUSA, in a restructuring bid, is closing massive numbers of its stores across the US. I happened to near a CompUSA in Atlanta this past weekend, so I thought I'd stop in and see if they had any deals. First off, I have to say, the store looked like it had ... http://neil.ideasip.com/2007/03/12/compusa-deals/ This is something I wrote to the UTStarCom wi-fi phone forum.  You have to sign up for a support account and jump through hoops galore just to get to their forum, so I thought I'd share it openly as a sort of review. In 10 words or less: Don't buy it ... http://neil.ideasip.com/2006/08/15/utstarcom-f3000-off-the-mark/