Is it always so bad?

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 12, 2004 Posts: 9

I don't have my equipment yet so I thought that I play around with forwarding, etc.

I have my Vonage number set to transfer to my POTS line.

I had my wife call me to test it out. While it worked I felt like I was talking on a Sat phone. The latency was horrific.

As a test we did the following:

One person would count slowly and in beats to 10. The other person would join in and say the numbers with the counter. We each took turns being the counter. I was amazed at how much lag there was. I was aslo amazed at how much life it took out of the conversation.

Is this a double gateway issue?

Does this get better when it's the actual equipment?

Yikes!

Posts: 44 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jan 12, 2004 Posts: 44

I had AT&T's CLEC service on QWEST lines....all I can tell you is my Vonage service on a bad day ='s my AT&T service (which is now disconnected)

Posts: 37 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 12, 2004 Posts: 37

I've never noticed any latency in over two months of using the servce.

Posts: 104 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 31, 2004 Posts: 104

Excellent Test Situation
The test you did, each person counting slowly for 1 to 10 simultenously is designed to how good the full-duplex mode is working. This BTW is a great test to see how good a speakerphone is.

Latency
If you make a Vonage call to a user in the same room, the latency become quite obvious. In fact, all telephone system have some degree of latency (meaning a lag from the time the spoken word reaches the other side).

Voip systems actually introduce controlled latency in the form of a jitter buffer to ensure they have all of the voice samples before sending them to the speaker. Wouldn't you rather have good voice quality (with a bit of lag) rather than poor voice quality (but real time).

Humans don't think that fast and in fact most telephone conversations have huge % of time where no one is speaking (pauses, between words). As a result latency or delay, isn't preceivable to most of us until it passes about 250 ms (or 1/4 of a second). A normal telephone call though has latency of typically 60-90 ms.

So the short answer is that Voip does introduce latency/delay and unless you're in the same room with the calling party for the most part you won't notice until it gets out on the edge of time.[/b]

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 12, 2004 Posts: 9

My experience was that it was CERTAINLY noticable in forward mode. The conversation lost all zip.

If others run this test, what do they find? I was seconds behind.

Posts: 132 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 132

I have not tried forwarding my Vonage line to a conventinal phone, but I can report on a normal Vonage phone conversation.

There is certainly a delay, but nothing like "seconds behind". I think it would be measured in milliseconds...probably a little less lag than with my Sprint PCS phone.

-Mark

Posts: 61 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jan 29, 2004 Posts: 61

I have been using Vonage for several months. I use the forward features everyday when I am out of my office and the calls zip right through to my cell and no one knows the difference as far as I can tell.

I once tested Vonage in much the same way when I first got it. I noticed delay when in the same room with someone but this is true with even my POTS line in my house.

Give it a try when you get your equipment and I think that you will see how good the service can work.

Good luck and remember that there is a ton of help on this forum for you.