Traveling With Magic Jack
Moderators: Bill Smith, Pilot
Traveling With Magic Jack
I thought it would be interesting to post the different places that we've used Magic Jack from/to.
My fiancé' travels for work. So far we've used it on a trip to Mexico and it worked very well. This week she is on a business trip to Kenya, South Africa and the call quality was Very Good to Excellent.
When she was calling from the office XP Laptop connected via WiFi to a corporate LAN, the call was excellent. No delay and it sounded as if she was in the next room. She later called from her hotel, the connection was a little choppy at times and we experienced probably a .5 - 1 second delay at times. But not too disrupting to the conversation. Considering the lower bandwidth the hotel was probably using, I'd have to say the Magic Jack performed very well over such a large distance.
Does anyone else have any road warrior stories with the Magic Jack?
My fiancé' travels for work. So far we've used it on a trip to Mexico and it worked very well. This week she is on a business trip to Kenya, South Africa and the call quality was Very Good to Excellent.
When she was calling from the office XP Laptop connected via WiFi to a corporate LAN, the call was excellent. No delay and it sounded as if she was in the next room. She later called from her hotel, the connection was a little choppy at times and we experienced probably a .5 - 1 second delay at times. But not too disrupting to the conversation. Considering the lower bandwidth the hotel was probably using, I'd have to say the Magic Jack performed very well over such a large distance.
Does anyone else have any road warrior stories with the Magic Jack?
I live in France part time and the quality there is awesome. I've recorded several calls lasting 15 minutes or more, without a single lost or discarded packet! MJ is useful mostly for incoming, though, because the local triple-play (Internet / Phone / TV) service provides free calling to 49 countries, including the US.
I recently stayed at a hotel in Singapore, quality was also excellent, although the latency was a bit troublesome.
Presently in Bangkok. MJ wouldn't work at all until the ISP unblocked some ports for me. Now, the quality is acceptable but not great. It appears that it sucks by design. Packets are distributed among various routes -- one may go via Hong Kong, the next via Australia and a third via Japan. So there is lots of jitter, resulting in many discards.
I recently stayed at a hotel in Singapore, quality was also excellent, although the latency was a bit troublesome.
Presently in Bangkok. MJ wouldn't work at all until the ISP unblocked some ports for me. Now, the quality is acceptable but not great. It appears that it sucks by design. Packets are distributed among various routes -- one may go via Hong Kong, the next via Australia and a third via Japan. So there is lots of jitter, resulting in many discards.
One thing I would be wary of when travelling is plugging a MagicJack into a public computer. Once the device is plugged in, anyone with access to the device manager can see the serial # of the jack. Even after the jack has been removed. With this information, and the non-secure nature of authentication, anyone can get your SIP credentials.
Last edited by ChuckIL on Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Anyone who can sniff the wire can get your SIP Credentials. With a 4 digit password, it only takes a fraction of a second to brute force it! So, physical access to the magicJack machine is not even needed to obtain your SIP information.ChuckIL wrote:One thing I would be wary of when travelling is plugging a MagicJack into a public computer. Once the device is plugged in, anyone with access to the device manager can see the serial # of the jack. Even after the jack has been removed. With this information, and the non-secure nature of authentication, anyone with this information can get your SIP credentials.
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- MagicJack Expert
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It is not in the clear - it is standard WWW-Authentication... An ATA would use the same WWW-Authentication... The problem is that you can brute force a 4 digit password in a fraction of a second...MagicJacked wrote:Is SIP always in the clear, or just MJ?
What about an ATA?
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- magicJack Apprentice
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Re: Traveling With Magic Jack
I tried to use my MJ from the Madarin Oriental Hotel in Manila, Philippines but to no avail.
I could hear the other end fine but they said my conversation was garbled. I assume this was due to not enough upstream bandwidth.
I stopped in Tokyo on my return to the US and the MJ worked PERFECTLY from the Dai Ichi Hotel in Ryogoku - The quality was amazing - just as though I was on a land line back in the USA (maybe better!).
I could hear the other end fine but they said my conversation was garbled. I assume this was due to not enough upstream bandwidth.
I stopped in Tokyo on my return to the US and the MJ worked PERFECTLY from the Dai Ichi Hotel in Ryogoku - The quality was amazing - just as though I was on a land line back in the USA (maybe better!).
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- Dan isn't smart enough to hire me
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- magicJack Apprentice
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- Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:15 pm
- Location: Sterling, VA
Definitely a slow connection in Manila - I did try from the office of our vendor but they were blocking the necessary ports (MJ kept telling me I needed to connect to the Internet).digitalnomad wrote:Sounds like you had low speed in Manila, and as might be expected a super speed linkup in Japan.
The downstream was actually fast enough as I could hear the other end (in the US) but they could not hear me (or not well enough to understand what I was saying, LOL).
The speed in Tokyo was actually AMAZINGLY fast (for a hotel) - and I didn't even notice any lag in the conversation (I was calling the East coast of the US).
I may try a different hotel on my next trip to the Philippines to see if they have better upstream bandwidth.