Background

With the cost of plain old telephone service continuing to rise, and the fact that such a large number of people also have cellular phone bills to pay, it's no wonder that for the first time since its invention, people have been going land-line free.  With the emergence of high-speed Internet connections comes the possibility of using Voice-over-IP for the home to provide a cheap "land-line". Vonage was the first major operator of this type of phone service in the US and has hundreds-of-thousands of subscribers. I'm a Vonage subscriber.

What you get

The VTech IP8100-2 for Vonage comes with a base unit and two "handset units."  A "handset unit" is just a handset and a charging cradle.  The base unit gets hooked up to you Internet connection and the handsets roam the house.  The manual spends a lot of time telling you how to operate the phone--not enough time telling you how to set it up correctly so that you don't chuck it out the window.

The Manual is wrong

If you only have one computer in your house, then great!  This manual is for you. do this:

But even those with only one computer may have a laptop going to a wireless router.  Forget what the manual says.  Do this:

This will put your phone at the head of the line.  Your phone calls will absolutely get top priority on your network.  And why not? I would presume you want to have an actual conversation, not a fun time with echoes.