Motorola SURFboard SB5120 Adequate?

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jul 10, 2006 Posts: 4

I have spent the last month trying to make Vonage work for me. We have a brand new modem (Motorola SURFboard SB5120) and brand new cables, Service through Adelphia, good upload and download speeds, and still have lost or garbled audio for the person on the other end. I hear just fine and they ask where I am.

Anyhow, the calls to the tech support have yielded the same results: Nothing. Finally, one of the advanced techies told me that the modem was the problem, to call my provider, and insist that they exchange it for a SB5100 or a SB5101. I did, and the provider says that this is nonsense, but they are willing to come by and check it out tomorrow. Are there any thoughts as to the adequacy of the SB5120, or better yet, how I can make Vonage preform as promised? Thanks in advance
Rainiebear

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 8:37 pm Post subject:

There have indeed been reported problems with the SB5200 series modems & Voip, but I don't remember the specific problems. I do recall the 5100 being a very good performing modem.

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 8:50 pm Post subject:

There have been reports in the forum that the 5120 often does not work when the 5100 will. It was claimed initially that this was due to DOCSIS 2.0 support in the 5120, but the 5101 also has DOCSIS 2.0 support. Some people have no issues with the 5120.

The biggest difference I can see between the two is the TurboDOX bandwidth optimization software on the 5120. It sure would be nice to get to the bottom of this issue.

Apparently TurboDOX can be turned off on your modem by Adelphia. It might be worth a shot to see if that resolves the issue. If so, please, please post back so that others will have a concrete answer.

As a side note, apparently the Motorola modems have something called propane that is like TurboDOX. One feature of propane is that it supposedly differentiates between voice/video and data packets. You want to make sure they have that turned off too.

Posts: 30 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Sep 30, 2005 Posts: 30

you can try to get into your 5120 and try to disable that feature if its even in there. i think the ip address of the modem is 192.168.100.1

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 9:05 pm Post subject:

My understanding (from Broadband Reports forum) is that this is not a user controllable feature. It can only be enabled/disabled by the service provider.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jul 10, 2006 Posts: 4

I just got of the phone with an Adelphia Techie. She said that she could not make any changes to the TurboDOX as it was part of a standard file that was the same on all modems.

Any suggestions for getting rid of choppy and dropped audio? Thanks

Rainiebear

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 10:23 pm Post subject:

rainiebear wrote:

I just got of the phone with an Adelphia Techie. She said that she could not make any changes to the TurboDOX as it was part of a standard file that was the same on all modems.

Any suggestions for getting rid of choppy and dropped audio? Thanks

Rainiebear

Since the problem is your cable modem, changing to a different modem is probably your best answer.

Posts: 21

rainiebear wrote:

I have spent the last month trying to make Vonage work for me. We have a brand new modem (Motorola SURFboard SB5120) and brand new cables, Service through Adelphia, good upload and download speeds, and still have lost or garbled audio for the person on the other end. I hear just fine and they ask where I am.

Anyhow, the calls to the tech support have yielded the same results: Nothing. Finally, one of the advanced techies told me that the modem was the problem, to call my provider, and insist that they exchange it for a SB5100 or a SB5101. I did, and the provider says that this is nonsense, but they are willing to come by and check it out tomorrow. Are there any thoughts as to the adequacy of the SB5120, or better yet, how I can make Vonage preform as promised? Thanks in advance
Rainiebear

The Motorola SB51xx modem series has proven to be one of the best performers available for high-speed data customers of cable companies. I have purchased 4-different cable modems and have had the choppy audio with all of them. Your ISP is telling you the truth about the modem, most likely, not being the problem.

When I experience choppy audio with Vonage, I call the person back using the free SKYPE Voip service and have a clear connection using the same cable modem.

The intermittent choppy audio problem is an ongoing issue that Vonage does not have an answer to at this time. You can save yourself time and money by letting Vonage and your ISP work out the issues. You do not want to get yourself into the middle of a finger pointing game between the ISP and Vonage.

Make sure you give Vonage written notice that you do not expect to be billed until you are provided acceptable service.

Good Luck!

Posts: 48 · Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 2:01 am Post subject:

I had drop outs, poor audio and disconnects On a few occasions I had to disconnect and call back because of garbled sound and poor volume.

I had no problems whatsoever with non-VoIP use on the 'Net.

A tech at the New Jersey center suggested I replace my old Zoom DOCSIS 1.0 modem with a new one. He thought the Motorola would be a good bet.

I installed an SB5120 about a month ago. For that month, Vonage has been about 99.9% of POTS quality. I'd of said 100% but I'm sure someone here would chime in and tell me I've been drinking again. Lol

With rebates at Circuit City I ended up paying $46. That $46 has restored my faith in Vonage.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jul 10, 2006 Posts: 4

scerruti wrote:

The biggest difference I can see between the two is the TurboDOX bandwidth optimization software on the 5120. It sure would be nice to get to the bottom of this issue.

Apparently TurboDOX can be turned off on your modem by Adelphia. It might be worth a shot to see if that resolves the issue. If so, please, please post back so that others will have a concrete answer.

Thanks for all of your advice.
Here is a follow-up:

I took the advice in other posts about customer service and took it straight to the VP over customer care in a polite yet detailed complaint about the lack of customer care. I got a call this morning around 9:00 am from the executive response team, who spent the better part of an hour working with me to correct the problem.

At the same time, I had a service tech from Adelphia come to the house, run some tests, replace the cable and the modem (I am now renting a terayon tj715x). After getting booted up, I called my landline and spoke with my spouse for about 10 minutes with no dropped audio. Perhaps the Modem will fix it after all! (This specific modem is set for DOCSIS 2.0) However, I called later this evening and found that the recipient had a difficult time hearing me, so, I will continue to probe this issue.

As a side note, I noticed that my upload speed has jumped to over 400 kbps, but the Download speed has decreased from a reliable 3.5 Mbps and up to a 0.6-1.0 Mbps. Adelphia is sending out another tech to check this problem out.
Here are the results to the Voip test

Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 2500464 bps
Upload speed: 438712 bps
Quality of service: 46 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 146 ms
Average download pause: 8 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 68 ms
Average round trip time to server: 71 ms

Voip test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 13.1 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 8.5 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported Voip lines: 5
Estimated MOS score: 3.8
Any more advice would be appreciated.

Rainiebear