Vonage VOIP Saga

We recently switched from ATT DSL to Charter Cable for Internet. My bother-in-law has had cable modems for years and I have always enjoyed the speed when over at his house. So when my SBC DSL contract ran out I signed up for Charter Cable. So far I have been pleased.

Now that we were free of DSL, we could sign up for VOIP. I went with Vonage because it is popular and I knew some folks that were using it and they didn't have any complaints.

I also had decided to try out a online backup program called ElephantDrive. It turns out that ElephantDrive sucks up all the outgoing bandwidth it can get its hands on (makes sense because it was doing a complete backup). My initial backup took weeks since I didn't let it run all the time. BTW, I was trying ElephantDrive because it was free. It is still in Beta and I wouldn't recommend it at this time since it sucks the life out of your machine when it runs and it takes forever to do a backup. However, it makes an excellent test program for using available upload bandwidth.

What I quickly discovered is the WRTP54G router that I paid extra for because I wanted to upgrade from my old 802.11b to 802.11g didn't prioritize my line so that VOIP worked. It is suppose to and Vonage tech-support tried their hardest to configure it to, but they just couldn't get a good outgoing connection when ElephantDrive was running. I kept getting Choppy, One-way, Dropped Audio. Finally advanced tech-support told me that I just couldn't run a program like this and expect good audio. Well, I didn't believe it. I knew that this could be done by prioritizing the packets using QoS. Actually, to be fair, I did finally get a hold of an advanced tech-support person who confirmed that you would need a high-end non-consumer grade router to accomplish what I was attempting to do.

After a number of calls and hours on the phone with tech-support and customer service, I convinced Vonage to replace my WRTP54G with a Motorola VT2442. I wanted to switch to the VT2442 not because I think it will provide better QoS, but so that I could get my $50 back that I paid extra for the WRTP54G. My VT2442 should come today.

I took the $50 and put it toward a WRT54GL. The 'L' stands for Linux. The WRT54GL allows you to add third-party firmware. So my plan is to implement this solution.

Stay tuned as I attempt to get good VOIP while running file uploads at the same time.

If I get it to work I plan on posting step by step instructions. Although the link above does a good job of that already.

VS 2005 Debugging C++ and C#

I was having problems attempting to step into a C# method from C++ using Visual Studio 2005. I asked Charles if he was able to get it to work and he said that he wasn't but that it should be possible. A few minutes later he had found this:

A handy trick when debugging C++ and C# in VS 2005...

For a project, go to Properties->Debugging and set the Debugger Type to Mixed from Auto. It now properly detects the associated languages, so one can step into a C# call from C++ and back.

Emacs style indent line

One of the best features that Emacs provides is auto-formating of source code. When I moved to developing in Visual Studio 6, Justin provided the following macro that I mapped to the tab key that provided the same behavior.

Sub EmacsTab()
 ext = GetFileExt(ActiveDocument.FullName)
 if ext = "cpp" or ext = "h" or ext = "cxx" or ext = "hxx" or ext = "hpp" Then
 With ActiveDocument.Selection
    If .BottomLine > .TopLine Then
     .SmartFormat
   Else
     col = .CurrentColumn
     .StartOfLine dsFirstText
     first = .CurrentColumn
     .Indent
     .SmartFormat
     If col > first Then
       .MoveTo .CurrentLine, col
     End If
   End If
 End With
 Else
   ActiveDocument.Selection.Indent
 End If
End Sub

When I moved to Visual Studio .Net 2003, the above macro no longer worked. So the following was created. Unfortunately you can no longer map the tab key, so I mapped it to ctrl-;.

    Sub EmacsStyleIndentLine()
        Dim ts As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveWindow.Selection
        ts.SelectLine()
        ts.SmartFormat()
        ts.WordRight()
    End Sub

Recently I moved to Visual Studio .Net 2005 and have been doing some C# coding. I found the above macro does not seem to work. Today I changed it to the following which appears to work just fine.

    Sub EmacsStyleIndentLine()
        With DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection
            .LineUp()
            .EndOfLine()
            .Delete()
            .NewLine()
            .LineDown()
            DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.FormatSelection")
        End With
    End Sub

RTSJ - The Real-Time Specification for Java

The latest Java News Brief by Don Busch is about RTSJ - The Real-Time Specification for Java. I had the opportunity to review and make comments before Don put the finishing touches on the article. Its a nice overview of Real-Time Java. Check it out.

Command Prompt Here from Visual Studio

I use the explorer command prompt here capability all the time.

Today I was working in Visual Studio and thought wouldn't it be nice if you could just right click on a Solution Explorer file and select "Command Prompt Here". Well, I didn't find out how to do that, but I figured out how to do something even better. Add the command prompt as an External Tool.

Its rather easy to create an External Tool that opens a command prompt. Just select Tools.. External Tools...

Title: CommandPrompt
Command: c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe
Initial directory: $(ProjectDir)

Thats all there is to it. This will open a command prompt in the current project directory.

Now lets add one that opens a windows explorer to the project directory.

Title: Explorer
Command: explorer
Arguments: $(ProjectDir)

After you have created these external tools, you can then setup a shortcut or customize your menu to place them on the main menu.

Boost Training Opportunities In St. Louis

I'm still finishing up the course, but OCI has started advertising the class.

Boost is a quickly growing and widely utilized Open Source C++ collection of libraries that provide tomorrow's C++ today. Boost allows developers to more quickly develop high performance production ready tailored applications. Many of the libraries are either already part of the draft C++ Standards Committee's Library Technical Report (TR1) or are proposed for the upcoming TR2.

I'll be covering the following Boost libraries.

Boost Test Library
Boost Conversion Library
Boost Smart_ptr Library
Boost Container Library
Boost Bind Library
Boost Function Library
Boost Lambda Library
Boost Thread Library
Boost Regex Library
and more...

The first class is scheduled for April 26 - 28, 2006 with three more offerings in 2006. OCI offers onsite training as well.

Boost Training Class

Memory Management & Embedded Databases

There is an interesting article in the December, 2005 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal about various memory management schemes in C++ written by the creators of eXtremeDB.