Incoming Voice Choppy and Garbled

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Jul 01, 2006 Posts: 3

thanks steve, i am new to this and do not know what info you need .
here is my speed test
My Results
Download 338,808 bps
Upload 149,624 bps
QOS 58%
RTT 403 ms
MaxPause 1051 ms
they say this can support 1 line , but i still get the chopping breaking up. if there is any other info you need please advise.

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

Welcome aboard. Look at the message here, and try to give us all that information. Include any other details that you think may help. Give us everything on the advanced tab of the Vonage forum Voip test.

Posts: 49 · Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:36 am Post subject: To: batkoach Garbled/Choppy Audio

Have you run testing at the time of the problem with the audio?

There are many causes of Choppy/Garbled audio.

It may (or may not) have anything to do with your service.

You have to look at the path your calls are taking on the internet.

I recommend going to www.pingplotter.com, download their program and run it.

What you need to look for is Packet Loss, Timings over 100ms; all may contribute to the problem you are having.

And it could be in your area more subscribers are signing up (sounds like it since you said usually worse at night); Kids playing X-Box/360 and other onilne gaming.

If times are over 100ms, or packet loss is greater than 2% you need to contact your ISP to improve their service.

It does not sound like a Voip problem, regardless of the carrier.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 28, 2006 Posts: 1

Hi all,

I signed up for Vonage about 17 days ago. I've been using Voip in various forms for about 4 years (mostly ZipGlobal), and wanted some of the features Vonage offered.

Vonage voice quality was sometimes good, but often choppy on outgoing - so bad, in fact, that I had to re-record my voicemail greeting 3 times! On two other occasions, the call dropped completely - rather embarrassing.

I have 3M/680K DSL, PAP-2 Vonage adapter, and WRT54G router with upstream QOS - MAC address of PAP-2 set in QOS to "Highest" quality, and ran the Voip tests on both Vonage forum and testmyvoip.com, and there is no packet loss, lots of spare bandwidth, and sub 100ms latencies. As good as could be expected, better than necessary, IMHO.

I called to cancel Vonage today, and they suggested that they could remotely change the packet size in the PAP-2 to 10, from 30. Without any technical explanation, I don't exactly know what that means, but they suggested that would fix the choppy audio and dropped calls.

I didn't accept their offer, and for the past 3 days have been testing another Voip provider (I won't state name, I'm not spamming in the forum). It uses an RT31P2, the quality has been flawless, and I'm happy. This would strongly suggest that the Vonage problem was not on my side.

All this to say:
- it seems that Vonage can do something remotely to a PAP-2 that they claim can improve choppy audio issues, so it might be worth a try.
- it sure looks to me like Vonage is having some serious server-side bandwidth or capacity issues. There was some noise on the forums suggesting this, but forums can represent more complaints than satisfied customers. But I sure wish I had known what I did before I burned the hours I did trying to figure out what was wrong.

To those of you who are still experiencing good quality with Vonage, good luck, hope it continues!

Cheers,
Steve

Posts: 49 · Full Forum Member Joined: Nov 15, 2005 Posts: 49

I just wanted to chime in that I have been seeing the same "choppy incoming voice" problem, and am likewise a Verizon FiOS customer. Given the significant download speeds we all have, something fishy must be going on to cause this effect....

Posts: 21 · Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 11:31 pm Post subject: Re: choppy and garbled

batkoach wrote:

hi i have had Vonage for 1 year and have grabled and choppy audio on both inbound and out bound. that gets so bad you cannot even hear the other person and have to hang up.
not meaning to say anything bad about Vonage tech support but i could teach a hamster to do better tricks.
any ideas. i am deserate to get it fix or i will have to try a different Voip . i have wireless internet ant it works fine . it has 1meg down load and 384kbps upload . it also seems to happen more at night but it does happen at other times. and when it does work it works great. i am using a linksys router
serial number ch500e269878
lan mac address 001310226b82
wan mac address 001310226b83 please if anyone can help ,thanks

You are not alone with call quality issues and agree with Steve48 that you will get a lot better response by starting a new thread.