Vonage VoIP Forum Digest

July 24, 2008

By Daniel Connor

Welcome to the Vonage VoIP Forum Digest

In the Forums
Hmm, using Vonage on AT&T's Triple Play Uverse offering, which offers VoIP of their own. Seems like strange bedfellows, eh? Well maybe not for the cost-conscious. Read this thread for more.

Here's a teaser of an interesting 2-page thread going on about calls being disconnected after just 5-10s. Apparently, newer D-Link routers contain a "feature" called Application Later Gateway. What it does is re-write the packets going through the router so that they contain the public IP address of your internet connection instead of the private IP address of the device behind the router. Now that sounds like it should be a good thing...but in most cases its not. D-Link's Application Layer Gateway also tends to "eat" some packets randomly. The poster explains, "Now for your problem... the SIP protocol (which VoIP uses for call setup) requires an acknowledgement packet sent to the other end when you answer a call. If that acknowledgement is not received, the other end thinks you're not there and ends the call, within about 5-10 seconds." So, the solution for this issue might just be to disable ALG. This is another interesting tidbit - "Many of today's commercial routers implement SIP ALG (Application-level gateway), coming with this feature enabled by default. While ALG could help in solving NAT related problems in client LAN side, the fact is that many routers ALG implementation has wrong behavior and breaks SIP protocol making, more or less, impossible the communication."

In the News
Vonage today said it has signed a commitment letter with Silver Point Finance LLC, a Greenwich, CT-based firm establishing the terms and conditions of up to $215 million in private debt financing to refinance debt that is due at the end of 2008. One of the conditions states Silver Point Finance will provide $125 million if Vonage comes up with financing from other lenders to provide at least another $60 million in private debt financing.

Vonage plans to use the financing, plus cash on hand to repurchase $253 million in convertible notes due in December. This fact that with a slow economy that financers still see value in Vonage is certainly great news for the company. Financers don't fork up $125 million without some sort of business plan, studying the balance sheets, and figuring out the return on investment. Now that Vonage has settled some patent disputes and has financing, perhaps Vonage has finally turned the corner?

In others news, a little bird told me that VonagePro (currently in beta) is going to be launching soon.

Vonage Stock Report
Today, Vonage is currently trading at $1.59 (-$0.01) and closed Wednesday at $1.60 or 1 cent lower from Wednesday's close.

Vonage VoIP Forum Digest - July 24, 2008