Chopped calls after wireless router switch - solution found

Posts: 15 · Last edited by reverseswing on Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:59 pm; edited 1 time in total

1. Fort Lee, NJ, USA
2. Time Warner - Cable (I use my own wireless router)
3. Download: 4.86MBps, Upload: 369 kbps
4. Belkin Pre N Mimo
5. Linksys RT31P2 (vonage)
6. Modem --> Belkin Mimo (wireless PC) --> Vonage
7. Choppy audio on Uniden PoweMax 5.8GHz
8. Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 4862288 bps
Upload speed: 369536 bps
Quality of service: 96 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 101 ms
Average download pause: 7 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 18 ms
Average round trip time to server: 54 ms

Voip test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 6.5 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 9.1 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 63.5 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 65.2 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported Voip lines: 6
Estimated MOS score: 3.2

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Ok so I had a modem --> Belking a/b wireless router --> Vonage configuration until today. I decided to upgrade my wireless router to a Belkin Pre N1 Mimo. The wireless speeds have increased dramatically and I had no issues setting up anything. Even the Vonage router connected flawlessly with all appropriate lights green.

The only problem is the choppy audio. Every other word is missing. I read other posts stating the same problem so I decided to change my config to modem --> Vonage --> Belkin and that fixed my issue.

I was wondering though if an option like port forwarding would allow me to keep my modem --> belkin --> Vonage config. I have tried everything other than this one option. One by one I have enabled and disable every single option, even the firewall on my Belkin to no avail.

Please let me know if something is possible.

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

My question to you is why do you need the Belkin mimo inbetween the Vonage router and the modem? If you said that everything wasa fine when you put the Vonage router first, then go ahead and do that. What you have done is make the Vonage router determine what traffic goes first (i.e. your Voip first over anything else). Your Belkin mimo was apparently not distinguishing any of the signals and was letting everything take it's turn.

This feature is built into the Vonage routers and it's called QoS. If your Belkin mimo has QoS, enable it and configure it to give your Vonage router the highest priority. Otherwise, it's going to result in choppy calls.

Posts: 15 · Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:21 pm Post subject:

Hey thanks for the reply. Well the Belkiin does have QoS enabled by default but I think it's for the wireless only (it's titled 802.11e QoS).

I'll let it be for now as the Vonage router does seem to be taking care of QoS for now.

The only thing is I find it very irritating when something like this happens and I don't have ther perfect solution for it cuz in my mind re-organizing the configuration was a copout :p.

Thanks for the help though. If you have any other ideas I'll be very interested.

Posts: 400 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: May 05, 2005 Posts: 400

As with most Belkin routers if not all they have very high security levels enabled by default. The firewall is enabled by default which I suspect is the culprit. The firewall is believing that your network is under attack due to amount of packet traffic related to Voip and will not issue a IP address usally when the phone is in use. I had the same issues on the Belking 54G and resolved my issues related to dropped calls,choppy calls and sometimes no dailtone because the router would not issue the phone adapter a IP address. Just disable the routers firewall and DMZ and that should resolve your problem.

Posts: 94 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Sep 15, 2006 Posts: 94

Check out the other thread regarding Belkin's router -- apparently it does not play nice with Vonage.

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

I saw the other post on the Belkin Pre-N routers. But disabling the firewall for your entire network is not the best idea. It's better to switch the order: Modem -> Vonage Adapter -> Belkin -> computers.

that way your computers will get the full protection of the firewall while Vonage gets its priority it needs.

Posts: 400 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: May 05, 2005 Posts: 400

Any decent internet security will protect your computers and in the event that your network is compromised you always pull the plug.

Posts: 135 · Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 10:55 am Post subject:

for me you dont have to do port forwarding
try first to reboot the device then check the audio
then if doenst work try to call the tech support
because they can try tom change some settings on the device for you to have the maximum quality of your device

Posts: 15 · Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 6:11 pm Post subject: I have the solution

So the problem was my Belkin Pre-N router. Turns out it was a UK router (don't know why Best Buy was selling it here in NJ) and for some reason it wasn't working correctly. I don't know if it was due to the fact that the router was bad or the fact that it was a UK router and it's not supposed to work with US services (vonage). It kept picking up the voice packets as a DoS attack causing the patchy calls.

I called Belkin (never called tech support, just the regular customer service) and as soon as they heard the router was the UK model, they sent a replacement which happens to be the N1 router so I got a free upgrade.

I have now set it up like I wanted all along, Cable modem --> Belkin N1 wireless router --> Vonage router (linksys) and I also have an ftp server on a Landisk NAS and everything is working fine.

If someone has similar issues with Belkin and Linksys compatibility, I would suggest give Belkin a call.

Posts: 15 · Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 6:14 pm Post subject: latest test results

Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 6849408 bps
Upload speed: 491352 bps
Quality of service: 96 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 98 ms
Average download pause: 5 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 19 ms
Average round trip time to server: 23 ms

Voip test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 7.9 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 8.7 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.8 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported Voip lines: 8
Estimated MOS score: 3.6