Comcast vs. Vonage

Posts: 409 · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 6:15 pm Post subject:

BigDaveB wrote:

maryjane wrote:

crap crap crap im so angry i could spit like a man........ If any vonage rep tech worker anyone can give me tips on changing my router settings to compensate for whatever comcast is doing please contact me. I NEED my phone!!!!

Its to the point of when i call vonage cs they have a pre recored message for comcast users in the midwest to call comcast instead then your call is ended.

I'm not yet 100% convinced that this is a Comcast issue. I also don't think that this is a router settings issue. The problem is much too widespread. That said, I would not be surpised to find out that the AT&T bandwidth is being exhausted during the day and that home users and VoIP specifically is being limited for higher priority customers. It could even be a bandwidth limitation caused directly by contractual arrangements.

Note: I can't yet prove any of this!

I honestly don't know how the push for FTTH and increased bandwidth demands are going to be resolved if the providers cannot supply the bandwidth and play nice together.

This is not the first time telecom battles have been waged. Is it possible that AT&T is paying both ends against the middle for the use the THEIR lines?

First off, I know its not a router issue - I wanted to see if my router could be re set to compensate for whatever comcast has done.

Secondly, When this happened before (Comcast service issue)I was getting dropped calls and a person on this forum (who works for vonage) fixed my settings so i could get back to normal.. and it worked.

Had to do with packet loss discards a bunch of awful things going on.

This person is not here now. Im bummen

but in reading your bandwidth theory with AT and T...... how would one test for this?

Posts: 44 · Full Forum Member Joined: Feb 21, 2006 Posts: 44

maryjane wrote:

but in reading your bandwidth theory with AT and T...... how would one test for this?

I'm still thinking about this and going to talk with some friends who are more into the networking side of telecom/datacom. I think ultimately if we can determine other Internet services that branch off the same route we could further isolate the problem.

Posts: 409 · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 6:35 pm Post subject:

This might be an off the wall question but i shall ask it anyways ...keep in mind im not that much of a technical person

I happened upon a site that gave me a password so i can log into all my modems settings...

there is a log of events and I dont know how to decipher if anything odd has been going on .....

So i will post it here :Event Log

Date (Y/M/D) Time Event ID Counter Level Event Text
1970/01/01 00:00:17 82000200 7 Critical No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out.
2006/02/22 14:57:16 2242905917 1 Notice SNMP Poll - Mac Link Up.
2006/02/22 14:57:16 2242905786 1 Notice SNMP Poll - DS Link Up.
2006/02/22 14:57:16 2242905803 1 Notice SNMP Poll - US Link Up.
2006/02/22 14:57:16 2242905723 1 Notice SNMP_AGENT_COLD_START
2006/02/22 14:59:06 2242905932 1 Notice SNMP Poll - Eth Link Up.
2006/02/22 16:31:57 66060300 29 Error Map Request Retry Timeout

According to this I had 29 error's in the map request... What does this mean?

Posts: 21 · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 7:35 pm Post subject: Re: comcast vonage michigan

shidokan wrote:

File a Complaint

Consumers with a complaint about VoIP may contact the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division at:

Consumer Protection Division

P.O. Box 30213

Lansing, MI 48909

517-373-1140

Toll Free: 877-765-8388

Fax: 517-241-3771

www.michigan.gov/ag (on-line complaint form)

I implore every Michigan Comcast/Vonage suscriber to file a complaint against both Comcast and Vonage (there's a choice for a secondary company) as we have done, and point the AG's office to this thread. To make it simple, here's the information:

Quote:

Comcast Corporation
1500 Market Street
Philadelphia PA 19102
215.665.1700

Vonage Holdings Corp.
23 Main Street
Holmdel, NJ 07733
732.528.2600

Here's what I said in my complaint:

Quote:

As can be seen by reviewing the discussion board thread found here, vonage-forum.com/ftopic11377.html," target="_blank">http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic11377.html, Comcast and Vonage are playing games with one another which is resulting in customers who use Comcast for their broadband internet access and Vonage for their VoIP telephone service to suffer nearly unusable phone service and seriously deteriorated broadband internet access despite paying hansomly for both. It appears that Vonage customers are being targeted by Comcast (Comcast would be capable of doing this by identifying which ports are being used to access the network, and it appears as if this is, in fact, what they are doing); or, at the very least, it is highly coincidental that all network diagnostics point to a problem on Comcast's end and Comcast is presently launching its own VoIP service (at non-competitive pricing).

This has potential public safety implications because, as you are aware, the Vonage VoIP service utilizes the broadband internet connection purchased from Comcast to make telephone calls -- 9-1-1 emergency calls being among them. Users, myself included, pay approximately $80.00/month to Comcast for basic cable television and broadband internet access together with approximately $25.00/month to Vonage for handling the VoIP telephone service.

As a citizen of Michigan, I implore the AG's office to fully review the discussion board at vonage-forum.com/ftopic11377.html," target="_blank">http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic11377.html, and then step in as soon as possible to force the parties to reach an agreement and stop crippling their joint customers' service.

Thank you.

Posts: 63 · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 7:36 pm Post subject:

raudi77 wrote:

It is clear to me that they are maliciously attempting to create service disruptions for Vonage customers since they will be rolling out their own product in Chicago shortly.

I appreciate your post. I've had a poster on another board tell me that the issues are not widespred and that there are just a small band of people fanning these flames like Comcast's "issues" are really only issues for a small # of people. I think it's clear this issue is in fact widespread and that there is some funny business with Vonage customers in particular.

However, we're presumably having issues connecting to other sites as well so I wouldn't say it is 100% malicious. What troubles me is a news report I saw a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal saying that cable and DSL providers wanted to start charging companies (i.e. Google, other bandwidth-intensive sites) a surcharge for giving their traffic priority. I don't see why Vonage would be specifically targeted aside from the fact they offer a service that Comcast clearly wants to, because I can't see how Vonage takes up a lot of bandwidth. Yet I cannot help but wonder if we're seeing the first signs of traffic being prioritized on a more intensive basis.

All I've been asking for from both Vonage and Comcast is some clarity on what the issue is and what is being done to resolve it. The blame game can only go on so long.

Posts: 44 · Full Forum Member Joined: Feb 21, 2006 Posts: 44

I'm a little disappointed that my other thread was closed and I was pointed to this one but what are you going to do?

Posts: 409 · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 8:42 pm Post subject:

BigDaveB wrote:

I'm a little disappointed that my other thread was closed and I was pointed to this one but what are you going to do?

hhhmmmmmmmmmmmm....... I know! scroll up three posts and see if you can answer that one hehehhehehhe Wink

Posts: 26 · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:26 pm Post subject:

I do not know if the problem is widespread, but if it was not, why would vonage find it necessary to post a service announcement. It seems to me, its takes big ones to issue a service announcement blaming someone else for your own problem. If I were comcast, I would be calling my legal department, unless it was my problem.

By the way, I see they changed it again. since this morning, they started with a service announcement, then they deleted the service announcement, they added the original service announcement, they changed the service announcement, and they have now changed it back. A lot of work for something that is not widespread.

I do not know if this is a vonage problem or a comcast problem. seems to me the voice mail problems they were experiencing earlier had to be vonage, not comcast. and yes I experienced that problem also. but it could have been caused by trying to get around the comcast issue (assuming there is one)

As for other web access issues, I have only vonage issues. I can surf anywhere without problems but that could mean it is a vonage
problem or a comcast "blocking" problem, I do not know.

On January 6 2006, Vonage CFO John Rego, spoke of the potential of this very problem.

Quote

Still, cable companies have the technical means to terminate Vonage's access. But Rego said such a move would be akin to cutting off access to electronic-mail or streaming-media providers.

"No one has done it yet. I just don't think it's going to happen. I think the public outcry would be huge," Rego said.

Unquote

Coincidence?

As for the AG complaint, I also listed both comcast and vonage, and let them figure out where the problem is. Let the public outcry start!

I agree, the louder the complaint to the AG is, the more likely they are to act, and hopefully before someone needs to call 911 and dies because they can not get help.

Posts: 409 · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 10:08 pm Post subject:

On a serious note, yes that would be very tragic if someone could not get through to 911 and there life was altered because of it.

I do hope people that can influence this issue do something.

The hard part is pinpointing the orgin of this issue.

Its time for the blame game to stop. Focus on the orgin and a fix.

Good night all

Posts: 63 · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 9:16 am Post subject:

Hello all. I found this in a Comcast customer forum and was wondering what some of the experts here think? I tested the IP on my own connection and indeed, it started with a 24.xx.xx.xx. According to this post, Comcast has been routing these IPs to another network. Any thoughts??

COMCAST QOS'ing Vonage-LinkSys MAC addys? Jan 28, 2006 2:49 PM

Is Comcast working to control Vonage usage on their lines in TX?

I've been using Vonage in DFW Texas since May (WRT54GP device) and I had 6 months of GREAT service until recently when Comcast started having outages for my house.

I know that Comcast fixed some valid issues with their upstream/downstream power (as well as EMI in my area) so I know they've been very honest with me on that front; however, I still seem to have a perfectly-sync'ed modem that experiences latency and packet loss. Further, I noticed something odd that makes it appear that Comcast is corraling Vonage users into a special nework branch??

Here's what I see:
When I use a regular NON-Vonage router (with a differing MAC address) my cable modem pulls down a 67.187.x.x IP address. If I use my Vonage router I get a 24.1.x.x address EVERY TIME!

This is completely reproduceable, and very odd. I did some traceroutes to see where these two different IP networks are, and the 67.x.x.x ip goes to a "TEXAS-16" network in Cherry Hill, NJ and the 24.x.x.x goes to Mt Laurel, NJ "TEXAS-8" network (I'm in TX but I guess NJ is where my Comcast has its peer-point from TX? Weird.)

When I do Speakeasy.net tests with the non-Vonage router I get great speeds of about 3000kbps downstream, and when I do speakeasy.net tests using my Vonage router (with my phone NOT in use) I see about 1700-1800kbps downstream with a lot of packet drops.

My non-Vonage Router is a LinkSys RV042, my Vonage router is a Linksys WRT54GP.

If I do a MAC-Clone and point my Vonage router's MAC --> to the NON-Vonage router, it too gets DHCP'ed to this 24.x.x.x network. No Vonage MAC involved and I get the other 67.x.x.x network EVERY TIME.

Anyone have any thoughts or is anyone else experiencing this with Comcast or any other ISP? Is this just QOS or is it something else??

I may have drop Vonage to make my COMCAST problems would go away entirely?? Right now, my vonage is completely offline and my service is great.

Help!

Re: COMCAST QOS'ing Vonage-LinkSys MAC addys? Jan 28, 2006 9:27 PM

Hi Anon1553143,
I did not pay attention to the IP address that I got when I placed the Vonage router downstream of my modem and upstream of my US Robotics 8054 wireless router. What I did notice is that I got better speed when I placed the US Robotics router immediately downstream of the modem and upstream of the Vonage router. So thats what I do now..... modem to wan port of my US robotics router to Vonage router (just run the ethernet cable from one of the 4 ports on the USR wireless router to Wan port of the Vonage router). I give the Vonage router a static IP address off of the US Robotics Router. Vonage claims the placing the its router downstream of the main router could compromise voice quality but I have had no problems with that (of course I pay $10 more per month for the 768K upload speed since upload speed is supposed to be the crucial factor in VOIP). Also another trick....run the male-male phone cord from the Vonage adapter/router directly into the nearest phone jack (instead of into the nearest phone). By doing that, I have dial tone on all the jacks (4) from the 2nd floor, 1st floor and basement (powering 4 base stations 2 more corded phones and a fax machine with VOIP..... using splitters of course. I'm sure this works with any VOIP adapter/router. I just happen to have Vonage.
Wayne

Re: COMCAST QOS'ing Vonage-LinkSys MAC addys? Jan 28, 2006 9:44 PM

Bottom line from (my long-winded) post above: Connect the ethernet cable from your cable modem to the Wan port of your LinkSys RV042 (non-Vonage router) then run an ethernet cable from your LinkSys RV042 in to the Wan port of your Linksys WRT54GP (Vonage router). Give your Vonage router a static IP address that does not conflict with your DHCP range but consistent with your router (for linksys usually 192.168.1.XXX). If you have multiple jacks in your apartment or house, run the phone cable to the wall jack and power the place. Man I can't escape being long-winded! Good luck with your VOIP!
Wayne