I have VOIP service for my home and have a question about it.
The company I signed up with sent me a gadget that plugs into my cable modem. Then my router is plugged into the phone company gadget, then two computers are plugged into the router.
So, does having these two extra pieces of equipment, namely the router and phone company adapter, delay data packets very much? Compared with just having a computer hooked directly to the cable modem.
Thank you.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Absolutely it does. Imagine a water pipe: only a certain amount can flow through the pipe at one time, no matter how much water is waiting on one side or the other. This is the same thing with cable internet and DSL. The router and the VOIP 'phone company adapter' don't delay the computer data all that much; actually it is the other way around. Having both computers going at once with large up/downloads and trying to use the phone adapter at the same time frequently causes the phone line to sound pretty awful. Have you ever noticed the phone audio appears to sometimes 'drop out' for a few seconds in a conversation, and you or the other party have to repeat what you said? That's the packets (of your voice transmission) getting lost or delayed or scrambled in the process. Some VOIP carriers send you an adapter box which _attempts_ to 'throttle' the data packets under the assumption your voice phone call should take priority over your data transmission. Sometimes it works but not always as well as desired. This involves the way you plug the the telco adapter box and the router together, having the telco adapter box plugged in 'ahead' of the router and computers, which it sounds to me is what you have done. My general rule of thumb is either transmit/recieve on the comptuer(s) or on the telephone, but not both (or all three!) at the same time. I have the same arrangement as what you have; if I am talking on my Vonage line I usually stop typing on my keyboard, even so my weather station computer once per minute sends a short little 'blip' (an FTP transfer to where it displays) and if I am on the phone I hear the phone cut off for just a second or two, and I lose a word or two of what the oher person is saying. PAT]