Forum

Dial-up over VOIP
 

I just ordered the MajicJack. You know the voip phone service that is $20 a year. Any of you guys know if I can use it as a dial up connection for those times I want to completely change my IP? I heard people fax over it, so I figured maybe connecting to a dial up modem with it would work? Any insights?

I have heard of some users using it for dialup.. I remember they said it worked.

I need one of those things myself if they work for fax.

Aspkin :
Official magicjack doesnt support faxing, but many people swear by it. I'm guessing the quality of your ISP is the main variable from what I have read. I should have mine in the next few days so Ill let you know how my experience goes. There are so many varied opinions . Mostly good (for regular phone service) . Im just hoping I have a good experience with the dial up but for $40 bucks even if its junk - its no big deal. Plus you could always resell it back on Ebay to the next guy. I figure? lol

Can't you buy Magicjack at Walgreens or some local stores?

I'll go get one tonight if they're around. I do really need to fax lot's of stuff asap.

You can buy it at Walmart or BestBuy- I am pretty sure. You may want to call and verify before you go to a particular one. You can also always use the one of the online faxing services, if you have a scanner.

I would, but I'm faxing pretty sensitive information that shouldn't be sent with a free online fax service.

You could always get a paid service that uses encryption. Im sure if you Google it. Youll find one that you like. I dont know anything about "secure faxing" , so I couldnt advise you there.

So did anyone verify that it works for dial up?

Im still waiting for mine to come in the mail. It should be just a few days or Ill have to threaten the seller with negative feedback.lol Ill let you guys know my experience once I get it.

I don't know about MajicJack, but I did do some research on trying to get a dial up connection through VOIP.

Bottom line? I haven't seen ONE way you can accomplish this. I have read about Vonage subscribers entering *90 before they make fax calls. Even then, most users had to turn their modems down to like 9600 baud. But with dial up via VOIP, nobody seemed successful.

On other sites, most talk about the fact that VOIP by definition is digital and not analog. This is the problem. I think it was discussed on this board somewhere also. When I tried all the methods I could find, I get the modem to dial out but the handshake never gets completed.

If some techie in here knows how to get a dial up connection via VOIP, PLEASE post, I'd be VERY interested and grateful.
:thumb:

PS: I use TMobile VOIP.

Sorry I haven't posted a follow up yet on the MagicJack but my purchase , never made it to me. I was expecting it to arrive the 16th and my tracking # from the post office even says it was delivered on the 16th but I never laid my eyes on the package. Which means it was either stolen by a neighbor or delivered to the wrong address. I am in the middle of investigating the possibilities and will do a follow up post when I get my hands on it. It shouldn't be more than a week because I plan on ordering another one by Tuesday if the first one is still missing. Hopefully I will get my hands on one soon and I will let you guys know if the dial-up over VOIP works. Thanks

So I went to four different places to look for a magicjack.. none of them had one.

I'm pretty sure RadioShack would have them, but by the time got there, they were closed. :(

Will try again tomorrow.

anyone ever find out if it works?

Sorry Ebayfiredme, I have been soooo busy. I just got started about 2 weeks ago with a new broker/dealer company in my other career that I haven't had the time to give it a good try. I did try it at least 30 different times with various baud rate settings and turned on/off flow control and modem compression but never got it to hold a real connection. I cant say for sure it doesnt work and I know Aspkin and others have had success with faxing but so far me using it as Dial up over voip has been unsuccessful. If any body else has had better luck and has any advice please let me know. I will continue to play with it over time and report any progress, if any is made.

I had good luck in the past with Vonage and Time Warner Digital Phone. I had Vonage on a Comcast connection in Michigan and a Charter connection in West Virginia.

It has a lot to do with your connection quality. Ping times, number of hops to VOIP provider, signal strength, ports being blocked or not forwarded, many things. It's complicated actually. But if you know much about network settings, you can make adjustments.

For the magic jack, add in the usb port. Processor speed, number of open applications, TCP/IP settings, the windows open connection limits, that kind of stuff.

If you have a quality connection that does not block everything you do and your system performance is decent, you should have no troubles with dialup or fax via the rj-11 connector.

vicvelcro - You have actually got a dial up connection to work over vonage? If so at what speed and for how long? We actually have a few vonage boxes in the office.

Best case scenario I have experienced: 51.4k with compression and error correction through a U.S. Robotics Sportster WinModem on a Linksys Vonage box connected through a Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless 802.11B router and an Ambit 250 (model #U10C018.10) stock cable modem subscribed to Charter Communications in Charleston, West Virginia on an AMD Athlon XP 1700+TBred overclocked to 2.9GHz with 512 MB RAM on a Gigabyte GA-7ZXE Rev 1.2 motherboard (still have and use it daily - not the Vonage box). I could get that speed consistently as long as it wasn't above 95 degrees on a sunny day. Somehow, that messed up the physical connections enough to drop the speed to 33.6k. I did use a replacement TCP/IP.SYS file to get around the 10 connection limit and the 80% speed cap of WinXP Pro SP2 Corp. There's more specs, if you really want to be bored to tears.

Wow. Thats incredible. Even at 33.6. Why do you think I was unable to even get a connection on the Magic Jack. I used a t1 at work ...so the speed and response time was good. Do I need to enable any special codecs or protocols when I do the dial out?

Optimize the internet settings in your computer and un-bottleneck the USB, if you can. Also, find the TCP/IP fix (if you run XP). There's supposed to be one for Windows Fistya, but I don't run it, so I can't say for sure. I think the file name was Evil223something.zip had to do with TCP/IP and worked fabulously. The biggest fix I ever implemented. Also, there's a thing in system management to set the QoS for 5% reserved instead of 20%. That helps too. If you want the fix, I'll dig it up.

Kool. Ill try it over the weekend. Thanks

The info page for the TCP/IP patch and the download link. Some anti-virus scanners will produce a false positive on this because it handles the patch in an unusual and unexpected manner. You don't need this patch for Fistya or Windows 7.

The QoS settings I mentioned DO NOT apply to XP SP3 or Fistya.

For the USB, you'll need to turn off all power saving settings for the port and a couple other tweaks that I can't remember. They should be somewhat obvious when you go into the device properties page. If not, let me know and I'll go over to the 32bit box and dig around.

I just PM'd you regarding my issues. Thanks in advance:)