Outbound Audio Drops - NE Massachusetts - any one else?

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 28, 2007 Posts: 1

I think this isn't really a Vonage problem but more my ISP's. But here it is anyway.

Outbound audio drop has surfaced again (it happened in may last year and seems to have resolved itself by fall 2006, problem has recurred).

Over the past few weeks many of my calls (either originated by me or where I am the called party) have an intermitted outbound audio drop. I can hear the other party clearly and they can hear me drop out every now and then. The audio drop can extend to many seconds (as long as 5-10 seconds) making conversation very difficult. There are times where the other party just hung up thinking that the call has ended. It's really annoying.

Last year when this happened someone suggested running a ping-plotter log of the traffic and it did show packet losses on my ISP's network. Since the problem resolved by itself (presumably some other user following it up) I didn't have to do anything at the time.

This time around the problem is more severe. Happens quite frequently. Just not at this moment when I want to capture the data!

I am wondering if someone else following this up with Comcast?
Are there others with this issue? Will it improve if I switch to Earthlink (also on Cable)?

Here's my information:

Location: Andover/Lawrence Area, Massachusetts
Comcast Cable broadband
Modem: Motorola Surfboard SB5120
Vonage ATA : Linksys PAP2
Setup: Modem - Router (SMC 7004BR) --- PAP2
Router - PC

speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 5301016 bps
Upload speed: 2629664 bps
Quality of service: 73 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 70 ms
Average download pause: 3 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 31 ms
Average round trip time to server: 56 ms

Voip test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 7.9 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 8.4 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: 44
Estimated MOS score: 4.0

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 7:05 am Post subject:

Well, your numbers certainly look good! I've got an order of magnitude less upload speed than you do, also through Comcast here in Maine. Smile

Are you running any other heavy-bandwidth applications on your connection? In your case, it would have to be some pretty serious stuff, but worth asking. Keep in mind that if you are running a wireless router, and you have it set to open or WEP security, or WPA security with a relatively weak password - it may not be YOU that's running the heavy-bandwidth application.

Try hooking your PAP2 directly to the cable modem, and make a few test calls. If that helps, then you likely have a problem with your router or with some other application on your network hogging bandwidth.