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Welcome!
This is the first installment of the FeatureTel Newsletter. We hope to use this monthly communication to 'stay in touch' with our clients and friends and share helpful information. Please let us know if there are any particular topics you would like to see covered in future issues.
We all appreciate your business!
-The FeatureTel Team
Important 911 Information |
In our community, FeatureTel is leading the way in the transformation of the telecommunications industry. We are North Carolina's first VoIP Telephone Company for Business.
Part of that commitment includes providing our clients with access to emergency services by dialing 9-911 from their IP Phones (9 first for an outgoing line). Every phone has an associated DID number or 'private phone number'. That number gets associated with a physical address when we set up your FeatureTel service - so that if the phone dials 9-911, the operator will be provided with the correct physical address.
It is important to let FeatureTel know if a particular phone is moved from its primary office location so we can update our records. If you would like to check the address we have on record for your telephones, please e-mail us at support@featuretel.com and we will reply with our current database information.
We all know that word-of-mouth is the most effective way that people share new ideas. FeatureTel's mission is to develop every client into a 'raving fan' - someone who is so pleased with our service that they tell others.
We'd like to reward you for recommending new clients to us and helping us grow our business by sending them our way. You can earn up to $20 per new user (a 10-user office = $200!)
Please contact Paul with your referral information at paul@featuretel.com.
Tech Corner: QoS for SOHO Users |
As you may know we often recommend the Linksys WRT54GS because it can do both prioritization and bandwidth shaping. Prioritization works fine as long as the router buffers are not overloaded. Traffic enters the buffer and Voice is assigned a high priority so it flows swiftly across the router. However, as soon as the router buffers become saturated prioritization fails; the traffic can't get into the buffer to be prioritized. When the buffers are full, all network traffic is simply rejected.
To keep traffic from filling the buffers we often use Bandwidth Shaping. We test how fast data will flow out of the router (and through the DSL or Cable connection). Then we limit the throughput of TCP data to something less than that amount.
As an example, we have DSL here at our office. I use Speakeasy to test our bandwidth (choosing the Washington DC node). I'm mainly looking at the Upload speed. http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
I take three different measurements and choose the lowest one... DSL quality and speed shifts throughout the day so you have to test at least a few times to get a reasonable and real limit on the Upload speed that is actually available.
For our office I get a speed of 345kb. We have 5 phones in this office so I subtract 100kb (5 x 20kb) which I will reserve for phone use, and leave a total of 245kb for data to use. I set the router at the office to allow TCP traffic a total of 245kb of outbound bandwidth.
Now when I do a bandwidth test it shows that I have only about 240kb of upload bandwidth. Also, my voice conversation does NOT break up while I'm doing the speed test. Everything is working well for the office. Data traffic is not allowed to fill up the buffers on the router, and the router is giving my Voice traffic high priority as it should!
I hope you find this useful. Feel free to give me a call and we can discuss this in more detail. Jon Carnes, CTO FeatureTel 919.459.2309
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