No Dialtone!! Anybody else having this problem this morning?

Posts: 153 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 11, 2007 Posts: 153

ya whatta mess all day. around 6:30pm to 8pm Eastern, all calls to my
Vonage numbers were going to the network unavailability number, even though I could call out from any of them. I keep thinking about porting my main POTS number, but stuff like this makes me think again.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:15 pm Post subject:

rebus wrote:

People demand and expect the phone company to be reliable. When they pickup the phone, they expect a dialtone, and expect that calls inbound and outbound will just plain work no matter what. I've lived in this (Tampa Bay) area for 30 years, and even through hurricanes, I can count on one hand the number of times our Verizon (formerly GTE) service ever went down in those 30 years. Even when we had no power for several days after the last round of hurricanes in 2005, the phone never stopped working.

Thank the old GTE engineers for some good foresight in their systems. I'd have to agree with you on their reliability. I miss the old GTE staff (friendly), but Verizon has done a very good job of keeping things going. Then again, I'm only 200 cable feet from the phone switch & DSLAM, so it's a bit difficult to sink this ship. Not sure what your experience with RoadRunner has been, but I only kept it for 2 months....too many issues with Time Wanker/BrightHouse's RR service for me to even consider keeping it. Verizon's DSL service has been very stable here.

On the other hand, my Embarq (fmrly Sprint) service in SW Florida has been absolutely pathetic. Outages are quite frequent and sometimes last waay too long. I've gone for as long as 2 weeks without service from them, all underground lines. About the only good thing I can say about Embarq is that they farm all of their customer service calls to the midwest somewhere, so I get someone who speaks English, but that doesn't necessarily help the situation.

Quote:

By the same token, it would take me 2 hands worth of fingers to count all the times Vonage has taken a dump since November 2004 when I ported my first Verizon numbers over. (real Vonage outages, not a problem with my Road Runner service)

I was maintaining 1 Vonage line as a backup to my other VoIP providers. Back in 2004-2005, Vonage really did have quite a few burps and outages. In recent times it had been pretty good, making me assume they'd learned their lessons and had built a distributed network for reliability. Apparently not.

Quote:

The problem is, Vonage bills itself as a bona fide, legitimate Phone Company--- yet their customer service attitude (and your attitude on this forum) suggests they're still a hobby-type service and if the service is unavailable for a few hours, it's no big deal.

Your attitude shows me you have not fully realized that real people, with real needs, and real businesses, COUNT on Vonage to deliver their phone calls reliably-- and that a few hours of downtime is NOT "just one of those things" to those who use it on a daily basis.

You said it best. Most of my work is done remotely anymore, with me sometimes never meeting my clients face-to-face, or maybe meeting them once or twice in the initial stages and working over the phone from that point forward. Telephone service is NOT an option for me, it is a requirement, hence the multiple VoIP providers. In cases like today, having multiple VoIP providers was a lifesaver.

and yep, TPA is the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) code for Tampa International Airport. Good guess. Smile

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 14, 2007 Posts: 7

Still seeing issues here placing and receiving calls...Not 100% down, but problems exist...

Posts: 43 · Full Forum Member Joined: Nov 27, 2006 Posts: 43

Though it worked later in the day, some phantom calls came in to the network availability number... But though inbound quality was good, outbound would cut off several times.

This is a new adapter, switched out since the techs could not figure out why I was getting cut off outbound...

So decided this morning to reboot modem/router/adapter. First incoming call got routed to the NAV. Calls after that had no problem...

But now in the afternoon, still having outbound quality issues.

I assume it'll be another couple of hours tonight trying to troubleshoot this darn thing...

Would have switched in a heartbeat if they haven't me locked in a contract until Nov...

Posts: 43 · Full Forum Member Joined: Nov 27, 2006 Posts: 43

what the F... I just got a call from someone to my cell - they intended to call home.

I hang up, and call from work my house line, and it worked fine...

Posts: 429 · Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:13 pm Post subject:

VonageTPA wrote:

Thank the old GTE engineers for some good foresight in their systems. I'd have to agree with you on their reliability.

Yep, back in the days when phone companies had a geographic monopoly, and thus were highly accountable to the public they served.

VonageTPA wrote:

Not sure what your experience with RoadRunner has been, but I only kept it for 2 months....too many issues with Time Wanker/BrightHouse's RR service for me to even consider keeping it. Verizon's DSL service has been very stable here.

It's interesting to see different experiences, as mine was exactly the opposite. Back in the 90's, 6 of the 7 counties that make up (what most consider) the Tampa Bay area were served by Time Warner Cable. I happen to live in the one county that was TCI Cablevision, and it wasn't until Time Warner absorbed the TCI territory that they could begin running fiber for broadband.

My only choice in 1999 was Verizon DSL and it was horrible. Always down, or always suffering heavy (30%++) packet loss. At one point I was down for 15 days straight. What happened was they installed a T-1 on copper that was in the same cable binder as the copper that held my phone line. T-carrier lines are affectionately called "disrupters" for a reason. It took them almost 2 weeks to run through all the troubleshooting. Once they found it, it took them another few days to get my service switched over to another copper pair in another trunk and bring me back online.

I waited patiently for Road Runner for 3 years. Once their fiber was layed and our neighborhood had service, they sent a guy door-to-door. I signed up on the spot and never looked back. With very few exceptions, my Road Runner connection has been rock solid.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 10:24 pm Post subject:

rebus wrote:

It's interesting to see different experiences, as mine was exactly the opposite. Back in the 90's, 6 of the 7 counties that make up (what most consider) the Tampa Bay area were served by Time Warner Cable. I happen to live in the one county that was TCI Cablevision, and it wasn't until Time Warner absorbed the TCI territory that they could begin running fiber for broadband.

I've not been around the area long enough to know the history on cable.. I do remember visiting the area in the late 90's and there was Time Warner in Pinellas, don't know how the rest of the area was, nor do I know the exact layout of headends and distribution lines. I do remember GTE trying to get their CATV service off the ground, but don't remember anything about it. Never saw it in action.

Quote:

My only choice in 1999 was Verizon DSL and it was horrible. Always down, or always suffering heavy (30%++) packet loss.

I'll admit that my early DSL dealings (mid 90's) were also troublesome, with Sprint as the local phone co. Similar type problems. It could very well be that ISP performance is very dependent upon the local network architecture, to the point of being different from one switch to another. I was just over at a friend's house on Thursday and had terrible ping times on their RR connection. It was to the point that it was taking ~10-15 seconds before I could get a response from any external server. Once the packets start to flow, they flow quite nice, but wow is it a long wait. Even worse than cell or satellite 'net in terms of latency. Cable modem had good upstream & downstream signal levels, and internal RR sites loaded quickly, but everything external was sluuuugish. This makes me think that RR performance in Tampa Bay might be highly dependent upon which neighborhood you're in.

The only time I was down for any length of time with Verizon was when I moved...and it took Verizon forever to move the DSL service and it also took forever to get them to understand that the DSL signal I was receiving was too strong. I will say that Verizon's tech support ****.. Offshore script readers. Like many large ISPs (Comcast comes to mind), NOTHING is ever their fault or on their end.