Callers can't hear me speaking at times

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 18, 2006 Posts: 6

Hello. I'm new to the forum but you all seem very knowledgable and I need some help. I live in Northeast Iowa and use Mediacom Cable Internet (http://www.mediacomcc.com/). My router is the Linksys WRTP54G (wireless modem bought directly through Vonage). I'm not sure which Vonage adapter I use (though I am technically knowledgable so if somebody tells me where to find it out, I can let you know). My modem hooks to my router, which has the phone plugged into it. It's a wireless modem so that's how it goes to my computer.

My problem has just started happening within the past two weeks. I returned from vacation to find that in mid-conversation, the person I am talking to will oftentimes hear me fade out in mid-sentence and then they can't hear me anymore but I can still hear them as they are asking what happened to me. Sometimes, after a second or two, I will come back into the conversation but other times the person will give up after 30 seconds or so and hang up. I've tried calling Vonage on three occasions and they have reduced my bandwith settings and such and on the latest call, I had my incident happen to me while on the phone with the guy. It seems that this is happening more frequently lately and since talking with the tech people but it may just be my imagination as I grow more frustrated with the problem.

Another issue (though it may just be part of using Vonage, I don't know) is that I cannot use the internet while on the phone.

Here are my test results...

Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 440496 bps
Upload speed: 226752 bps
Quality of service: -- %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 2389 ms
Average download pause: 31 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 45 ms
Average round trip time to server: 442 ms

Voip test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 9.2 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 10.9 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.2 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported Voip lines: 3
Estimated MOS score: 3.7

Thanks in advance for any help at all that you all can give me. It is greatly appreciated.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 18, 2006 Posts: 6

I was browsing through other posts on this forum and noticed that somebody mentioned that 2.4 GhZ phones can sometimes interfere with the whole setup. I do have a 2.4 GhZ cordless phone. Could this be the cause to my problems?

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

Yes, it definitely could. Also, if you're using MAC cloning, that can cause the issue of being unable to use the internet while you're on the phone. In this case, I'm voting for the cordless as the source of your problem.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 18, 2006 Posts: 6

I double-checked and my MAC Cloning is disabled for my router. So that's not the trouble. But I will go out and buy a different phone as soon as I can and see if that works (unless somebody else has some quick suggestions).

By the way, thanks very much, Steve. I appreciate your help.

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 08, 2006 Posts: 13

lgloeckner,

I was having similar problems with my new service. My cable provider, Comcast, came and gave me a new cable modem, same model just new and it corrected the problem immediately.

I was experience a tremendous amount of packet loss, hence the voice drops. To confirm this you may want to download and run PingPlotter (www.pingplotter.com). I took me a little while to figure out what I was looking at but their tutorial is quite good. I ran a ping evey second to several different site and had similar results. I thought it was a problem on Comcast end, but once they replaced the modem Vonage is working great.

Hope this helps.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 18, 2006 Posts: 6

Thanks so much for the reply, EdK. I was out of town but just returned and read your response. I'll contact my cable provider and hope that I have similar results. I'll also give that PingPlotter a try. Thanks again.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 18, 2006 Posts: 6

If you do see this again, EdK, I was also wondering if your new modem fixed the problem of disconnecting from the internet while using the phone (if you also had that problem). Thanks again.

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 08, 2006 Posts: 13

I did not notice that I had that problem, sorry. However, the new modem seems to have fixed a few other issues. For example, my VPN connection to my office would fail three to four times a day, now it is down to once every two or three days.

Hope that helps.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: May 24, 2006 Posts: 3

I'm having the same issue and I have a 2.4 Ghz cordless phone as well. Does a 2.4 Ghz cordless phone only interfere with the whole setup if the router is wireless? or can it interfere with a wired router? I'm not running wireless and I have disabled the wireless function on my router. Also, as I was trying different configs to troubleshoot, I've tried to connect my cable modem directly to the PAP2 but I don't get a dial tone, is this normal? Below are the results from a Voip Test

Thanks!

ISP: Comcast
Router: Motorola WR850G
Cable Modem: Toshiba PCX2200
Phone Adapter: Linksys PAP2

Results from Voip Test
Date / time: Jun 12, 2006 10:09:27 PM
Download speed: 5.15 Mbps
Upload speed: 358 Kbps
Quality of service: 91 %
Round trip time: 56 ms
Max pause: 47 ms
Jitter: 3.1 ms
Packet loss: 0.0 %
Route hops: 17

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 08, 2006 Posts: 13

I use a 5.8 GHz phone, but I still had the problem until Comcast came out and replaced my cable modem. One difference was that my QoS score also dramatically increased. Your QoS score seems to be just fine. I suspect you have a difference problem than what was happening to me.