Vonage VoIP Forum Digest - November 12, 2007

November 12, 2007

By Daniel Connor

Welcome to today's edition of the Vonage Voip Forum Digest. 

First, some good news. Over this weekend we went above 46 million page views since the Vonage Forum started up in March, 2003. Every time you click on a Vonage Forum page, that's one more page view. So let's just see how fast we can reach 47 million page views!

As for today, we'll go to two Vonage Forum threads, one about choppy voice quality on outgoing Vonage calls, and then here's a thread about private IP addresses to use along with Vonage service. We'll also check in on Vonage's stock price.

On The Vonage Voip Forum

New Vonage Forum Member fsiracusa has opened a new Vonage Forum thread to which he has given it the name of, Choppy voice outgoing.

In his thread-opening post, fsiracusa gives his Vonage connection info as well as describes this issue:

The cable service seems intermittent. Service was out Saturday and said they had had some problems "reprovisioning" and with DHCP that they had worked out. Service was good for about 72 hours but yesterday was very intermittent...both cable internet and obviously phone.

Connecticut
Charter Cable 5 Meg
Generic cable modem (no name on it)
Linksys RTP300
Modem--> Belkin wireless router-->Linksys
Choppy voice going out...others can't understand what I'm saying.

Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 3788616 bps
Upload speed: 493960 bps
Quality of service: 21 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 2092 ms
Average download pause: 4 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 36 ms
Average round trip time to server: 85 ms

VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 48.5 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 0.0 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 100.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported Voip lines: 8
Estimated MOS score: 3.5

After reviewing this information, fellow Vonage Forum Member Darrell_G advised:

"Remove the Belkin router and your Vonage device and connect your cable modem directly to your PC," Darrell_G writes. "Rerun the test and post your results.

This hasn't been done at the time that I wrote today's Vonage Forum Digest. Still, there is an interesting post from fellow Vonage Forum Member MrMark. He writes:

"Actually, I was just doing some testing on the line, and it sounds fine except when recording a voicemail greeting. When I listen to the outgoing quality on another phone line, it sounds fine. So, maybe there is a problem with the voicemail system...(?)

I did have a few customers who mentioned that they called and got no answer and no voicemail...I tried it myself on that day, and in fact, the line was not rolling to voicemail when busy...it just rang and rang...so maybe this is just a symptom of a larger problem."

We'll keep an eye on this thread for follow-up posts with additional info.

New Vonage Forum Member magaro has a question which he's turned into a new Vonage Forum thread bearing the title of, private IP adress.

"I want to know if is possible to have a Voip service with a private ip adress," magaro writes in his thread-opening post. "Maxcom in Mexico just give those kind of IP."

First comes a reply in a post from fellow Vonage Forum Member rgnok.

The exact answer to your very specific question is YES," rgnok writes. "Vonage will work fine with a private IP address; the Vonage hardware at your end emits a sort of "heartbeat" communication back to the Vonage servers and identifies its location -- it does not rely on you having a public IP address.

"That being said, there CAN be other obstacles, for instance if the provider that is giving you only a private address blocks voice ports or takes other steps (whether specifically meant to block services like Vonage or for other reasons), it could prevent Vonage from working, rgnok adds.

"But again, to your specific question, Vonage will work with only a private IP address."

Another Vonage Forum Member, that being tglea, offers another perspective:

"I am currently using Vonage through Maxcom in Mexico and it works fine. I have been using Maxcom for about 8 months now. I do experience some problems though. Sometimes Maxcom's service isn't very stable and that is when I have problems. They are not Vonage related. If I notice a bad quality phone call and then run some speed tests, I see that it is the internet connection. I have also used it with MegaCable(Mexico) in the past. Maxcom is no different than most DSL providers in the states in the fact that they give you an internal private IP.

Bottom line: It works fine most of the time. Occasional problems with the stability of Maxcom though. But this in Mexico and as you know, the choices aren't abundant."
 

Vonage Stock Report

Today on the New York Stock Exchange, Vonage stock closed at $2.10 a share, a drop of 16 cents (-7.08%) from Friday's closing price of $2.26  a share  but then again today's closing price was six cents more than today's lowest price for Vonage stock and that was $2.04 a share. Total trading volume today had been calculated as having climbed up to 1,067,000 shares.

Once again, our Vonage Stock Forum can be reached from this link.