is Network Externder worth buying?

[taz]

I have 8 Mps brodband conection. While using various computer items, I do notice a drop in computer speeds when the extender is being used. I am on the second phone and second extender with no improvements. now it's to late to return them. Even if I could return the extender, I would be suck with cell phones that don't work at my home.

Tech support says that 25 feet unobstructed, line of sight  is all that can be expected from an extender.I have log calls into them trying to get this fixed.

My only sollution is to continue to inform my neighbors that inspite of being the highest priced, verizon  has no intention of providing reliable service in this neighborhood.

No verizon network guys at work here!

I will see who provideds the best coverage, then I will follow!

[ColdnFrosty]

Sorry to hear that its not working out. You could try a zBoost 510 repeater with an external yagi. That might give you a better solution and it won't use the internet. But I doubt you'll have any improvement in the range within your house.

I see no losses of performance on my Broadband connection and I have several 'puters and a Vonage VoIP running most of the time.

The only other suggestion I have would be to look for the most central location in your home, and away from any heating/cooling ducts. If you look at the zBoost literature, they say the same thing - keep it located away from metalic structures in the home. Just a thought.

[jdimitriou]

I am having that problem with confused signals.  How did you adjust the settings ?

Thanks

 

[Derizon]

I've been using the Network Extender for about two months.  When it works, it works well.  I have it in the middle of the top floor of a 3 story 3800 sq ft. house and it provides good coverage throughout the home, and within 10-20 feet around it.

The setup is usually easy, depending on if you have a hardware firewall on your LAN.  It creates a tunnelled connection to the Verizon femtocell server to carry your voice traffic. 

People express concern over being "double charged", which may be partially true.  But whether or not your handset connects thru a Verizon tower, or over the Network Extender thru your internet connection, Verizion still provides a service to connect your call with another number. 

Therein lies my biggest problem so far with the Network Extender.  Verizon has had trouble keeping the server farm that responds to Network Extenders all over the country up and running.  Today is the third full-day outage that I've experienced since I got this thing a few weeks ago.  I can't hold cell calls in my house without it, so these Verizon server outages mean that my business calls get interrupted frequently and my investment in the Network Extender is useless.

Each Voice call on the Network Extender consumes about 40k bytes of bandwidth, and with the maximum of three simultanous calls, you won't use more than 120k bytes of bandwidth in each direction.  That's about 10% of a T1 (typical DSL) DOWNLOAD speed, and could be 45% of a DSL connection upload speed if your upload speed is only 256k.

If others on your home LAN are using Bit Torrent or similar high-demand services, your Network Extender calls may be un-intelligible.  Verizon recommends that you buy and configure a router or switch that permits you to prioritize traffic for the Network Extender if you have this problem.

If you want to test your internet setup's ability to handle VOIP, go to   myspeed.visualware.com/voip     where you can run free tests.  Use a computer that's connected to the LAN port you plan to use for the Network Extender.

Is it worth it?  I'm not totally happy with the reliability, but it still is the least expensive way to get decent cell service at my home.  And I suspect that Verizon will continue to get their act together with respect to their service reliability for Network Extenders.  At least I hope so!   I pay my minutes for it, and about $17 per year for the electricty to keep the Network Extender up. 

Like I said, when it is working, it works very well.