porting my landline to VOIP or XFINITY

Fusion Voice service, features and help.
5 posts Page 1 of 1
by groncal1 » Tue Jul 18, 2017 2:02 pm
Recently SONIC knocked out my super slow internet pipe which crawled along at 4 Mbps.

Now I have to figure our porting options - has anyone had any experience porting to Google Voice or other VOIP Providers.

Second question has anyone ported to XFINITY or AT T?

Thank you.
by jthon » Wed Jul 19, 2017 8:46 pm
Hi,

No experience but I'm in a similar boat. Google Voice requires you to first port to a cell phone plan of some sort. Easiest seems to find a pay as you go plan from t-mobile or att and port to that before going to Google.

The other option is to find a VOIP provider. From what I can tell no providers encrypt the audio stream, so your VOIP is just going across the internet unencrypted. I'm not sure if that anything I'd want to mess with.

Frankly Comcast doesn't actually encrypt their VOIP either so I'm not sure if going with them is any better than going with cheaper option like voip.ms. Though in theory they keep the data all within their network for VOIP so you're probably a bit safer than if it's traveling across the entire internet.

Maybe encryption is just overrated?

Side note, you can get land-line from Sonic, but it's $150 for the installation fee.
by virtualmike » Wed Jul 19, 2017 10:36 pm
jthon wrote:... VOIP provider. From what I can tell no providers encrypt the audio stream, so your VOIP is just going across the internet unencrypted.
An analog line is much more susceptible to eavesdropping than any digital line. It would be very easy for someone to tap into the circuit and connect a butt set to the line and listen to the conversation.

On a digital line, however, someone would need to actually sync with the carrier to be able to intercept the traffic, which would cause the line to drop.It's not a simple matter of connecting a modem to the line. There are some very very very expensive pieces of equipment that may have some luck in finding the relevant bits to partially reconstruct a conversation, but it would be much easier to get into a carrier's switch.
by jthon » Thu Jul 20, 2017 7:10 am
@virtualmike,

I disagree. You are correct to tap analog someone just needs to hook up some wires. But they have to physically gain access to the line (not hard) and hook it up. The effort to tap it just isn't worth the return unless I'm being specifically targeted.

On the other hand SIP isn't really that secure and susceptible to MITM attacks. It's essentially like regular http without SSL. (https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/xjian ... ACCS09.pdf)

Are you telling me that because you have a digital line you'd go ahead and do all your banking and shopping without SSL? I wouldn't.

If I were nefarious I'd MITM a VOIP provider, use caller ID to filter conversations to/from banks and then run the unencrypted stream through voice recognition to find SSNs/accounts.
by virtualmike » Thu Jul 20, 2017 10:38 pm
I'm saying the risk of using VOIP is no greater than using an analog line, and possibly less. I'll insert "for most people" after "VOIP"; i.e., people receiving VOIP service through their ISP.

Yes, a MITM attack is possible for VOIP users, but it's also possible for someone using an analog line with a telco that is using cut-rate connections to the PSTN.

I'd have no more issue using a VOIP phone than I would an analog phone. It's even easier for me to determine whether I've reached the party I'd intended, and the odds of a conversation's being monitored are no greater than with an analog line.

Of course, I use appropriate encryption from my computer and other devices, because the risk of MITM is greater. I don't use VPN when at home or work, but I certainly do when using any other network.
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