EXTREMELY Poor Sound Quality (Choppy)

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 25, 2004 Posts: 6

I have been dwelling over this problem all weekend. I have just been testing my phone quality and have come to this observation.

I have 2 Vonage customer friends. One guy the quality is extremely poor on both sides. I can barely hear him. He can barely hear me. He has 2 Vonage friends. He says everything is clear on both sides when he calls both of them.

My other friend, the quality is much better but can hear little choppy noise. He hears me perfectly.

When I call a phone company (Verizon) person, I thought it was perfect. I hear him perfectly but he says he hears me extremely distorted.

I have tried putting a new Linksys box that Vonage sent me on the outside of my firewall and called these people, same thing.

I put the origional Motorola box outside and inside my firewall, exactly the same thing.

I opened all the ports as instructed on the Vonage website, same thing.

I have a brand new 5.8 GHz Panasonic cordless phone. I tried 2 different phones. Same thing.

I just purchased a new router too. My speed tests are 2.9MB download and 256k upload. Much better with the new router. Same thing.

I have brand new Ethernet wiring. Disconnected the rest of my network. Same poor quality.

I have an RCA cable modem. I went out today and bought a new Motorola cable modem, called Comcast and switched the MAC address. Same thing.

I am extremely frustrated with the poor quality of sound from Vonage. My cell phone sounds 200% better than Vonage.

I am a network administrator for a company and know how this works. I have firmware upgraded on all my hardware.

I called Comcast and they tested my line, excellent signal, no packet loss.

One last observation, I am currently waiting for my phone number transfer. When people call my number from Vonage it gets forwarded to my Virtual Vonage number. Is there a possibility that if it gets bounced to my virtual number that it could cause a degradation in quality?

Another thing that stinks is since my number transfer is in limbo (3 months and counting) I am afraid that I will not be able to put it back with Verizon. I should have never left.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Darren

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 25, 2004 Posts: 6

Replaced motorola with NEW Linksys wireless 54g Vonage unit at Best Buy. Fixed my problem.

Dont know why but must have some new technology implemented into the new unit.

Hopefully Vonage will reimburse me for the unit and for my time and effort.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 25, 2004 Posts: 6

The Linksys/Vonage router worked great with one problem. I VPN into my home server and could not find a way to VPN into my VPN server at home. Linksys worked with me for 2 hours, we tried everything. They told me that Vonage has full control of that box and must be blocking some ports on it. 1723 was open. Terminal Services worked fine 3389.

Anyway, I have found my final solution. I bought the WRT54G Linksys wireless 54g router, upgraded the firmware with QOS. Got the Linksys/Vonage PAP2 unit, configed that with a static IP address. Pointed the QOS on the router to the Vonage port with 250k. Everything is back to being perfect.

I found 2 ways to get perfect quality out of Vonage.

Best Buy is selling the PAP2 for $60 with $50 rebate, $10 bucks, cant beat that.

QOS is definitely the way to go. I have spent so many hours on this thing that my wife is ready to leave me Smile

Just kidding.

I can now VPN into my server flawlessly and everything is great.

I was probably about 24 hours from just giving up on this Vonage thing. I am back to being happy.

Peace out.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 14, 2004 Posts: 3

After scouring these forums I would like to post that I just signed up service and the product they now ship is the Linksys RT31P2 Device.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Posts: 10

I am in Canada and up here we have the same problem with my line. Some of my friends can't call me from their cells, and naturally, Vonage insists that I call the carriers involved. So I did. We went through some MAJOR log files and lots of other stuff, made calls at specified times so they could trace the calls, etc., and Fido couldn't find anything wrong. Vonage still insists it's not their problem.

Obviously, we're still getting out money's worth, but JUST that amount. Using Vonage sure cuts on my long distance bills, but once I am more on my feet after all the expenses of moving up here, I'm going to go back to my $150/month phone bills. The money you save comes out of the customer in other ways that eventually I'm going to find totally unacceptable.

C5

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 22, 2004 Posts: 6

darrenj191 wrote:

The Linksys/Vonage router worked great with one problem. I VPN into my home server and could not find a way to VPN into my VPN server at home. Linksys worked with me for 2 hours, we tried everything. They told me that Vonage has full control of that box and must be blocking some ports on it. 1723 was open. Terminal Services worked fine 3389.

Anyway, I have found my final solution. I bought the WRT54G Linksys wireless 54g router, upgraded the firmware with QOS. Got the Linksys/Vonage PAP2 unit, configed that with a static IP address. Pointed the QOS on the router to the Vonage port with 250k. Everything is back to being perfect.

I found 2 ways to get perfect quality out of Vonage.

Best Buy is selling the PAP2 for $60 with $50 rebate, $10 bucks, cant beat that.

QOS is definitely the way to go. I have spent so many hours on this thing that my wife is ready to leave me Smile

Just kidding.

I can now VPN into my server flawlessly and everything is great.

I was probably about 24 hours from just giving up on this Vonage thing. I am back to being happy.

Peace out.

Were you trying to use PPTP through the Linksys router? I tried getting that to work, and it simply won't work through a Linksys. I had to get a Netgear to allow PPTP to passthrough.

I am having call Quality issues also. I have a Netgear WGR614v4 as my "backbone" with the Linksys RT3P2 connected to that. For the first 25 days, our call quality was great. Then it went downhill. I'm getting aggrevated. 3 phone calls today to my wife and I'm about to pull my hair out!

Craig

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 25, 2004 Posts: 6

Yes I am using PPTP. I use it to VPN into my server at home. If I understand correctly, you are using the Netgear as your main router. You need to open port 1723 to allow VPN connectivity.

If you are using the RT3P2 as your main router (connected directly to the cable modem) then you WILL NOT be able to VPN into your server. Vonage must be blocking that incoming port. It didnt work with the new wireless Vonage router too (I forget the model number). There must be a reason for it but Vonage could not tell me why. I had Linksys tech support on the phone for 2 hours and nothing. They told me it must be Vonage.

As I said in my previous posts, buy new equipment. It isnt that costly now with sales. It will relieve lots of frustration. Trust me, I have been thru everything with this thing. The new Linksys router Wireless (WRT54G) without Vonage built in has QOS (Quality of Service). This will push more bandwidth to one of your ports (PAP2).

I had so much trouble with static before I did this.

I can VPN (1723) and Terminal Service (3389) into my server with out problems.

The PAP2 is made to be inside my firewall.

Been crystal clear since I made the switch.

Hope I answered your question.

I know your frustration.

Bill

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 25, 2004 Posts: 6

BTW, the Linksys WRT54G needs the latest firmware to include QOS.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 22, 2004 Posts: 6

Actually, I had a really old Linksys BEFW11S4 or something, that wouldn't pass incoming PPTP traffic. Also, the Linksys Wireless VPN device (don't get me started on that) wouldn't pass PPTP either, so it's not just a Vonage thing.

At least it sounds like they got the firmware right on the new 54G router.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 15, 2004 Posts: 2

Darren - ? for you when you said:

"If you are using the RT3P2 as your main router (connected directly to the cable modem) then you WILL NOT be able to VPN into your server. Vonage must be blocking that incoming port. It didnt work with the new wireless Vonage router too (I forget the model number). There must be a reason for it but Vonage could not tell me why. I had Linksys tech support on the phone for 2 hours and nothing. They told me it must be Vonage."

Did you try to put the server into the DMZ? Yes, I realize that you then have no protection from the Internet, but I'm curious to know you could then VPN into the server. What I'm specifically after, is when a node is placed into the DMZ on the RT3P2 Linksys device that Vonage includes when you sign up for their service, does it truly forward all traffic to that device or are there limitations imposed on a node in the DMZ - specifically, if the RT3P2 is blocking ports (such that a VPN connection will not work) are those ports still blocked for nodes in the DMZ??