Improving voice reliability

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 10

As a Vonage user for the last 5 1/2 years, I feel that I get value - but - having moved 8 months ago, my service seems to become less and less reliable.
I'm questioning my internet configuration, my equipment and mostly Comcast. Having moved only 1.5 miles all except the Cable trunk are the same.
My configuration consists of d-Link DCM202 cable modem with a Linksys RT31P2 phone adaptor attached. I then have two phone lines connected into my home phone wiring. Three phones are plugged in, one for my wife's office and two to wireless phone consoles (one Siemens and one Uniden) In addition, I have two more routers, an old d-Link wired and a newer d-link wired/wireless plugges into the Linksys router/phone adaptor. Everything participates in the same subnet with DHCP configured only on the Linksys router.
Performance seems to average about 6 MB downloading and 600 KB uploading. Rebooting everything seems to solve the problems about half the time.
Perhaps the easiest upgrade is to go to Comcast Voip, as they keep trying to sell me, but I'm too obstinate to listen.
The next easiest upgrade is to replace the 6 year old (???) Linsys router/voice adaptor, but with what, and why?
For the most obstinate, I wish to know is Voip something Comcast can detect and degrade? (I've several friends in the same boat).
Any knowledgeable response would be appreciated.

Posts: 80 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Oct 24, 2007 Posts: 80

By less and less reliable, what are you saying? Do you get no dial tone or is it just an issue with voice?

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 10

Over time (a period of days usually, but sometimes sooner) quality declines in all areas. Sometimes there is no dial tone, more often a much higher incidence of fast busy, and even more often people are not able to hear us when we talk. We also have a high (10%) incidence of interrupted/droped calls. Talking to people I talk to frequently, they often grade the voice quality (and usually find it wanting).
My wife works from home 2 days a week. I try to reboot the internet each time as that offers the best chance of her being productive.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 10

Sorry - forgot to mention the choppy voice syndrome where people listening to what I say are obviously loosing voice packets. Occasionally that happens on incoming but probably 10 times more often on outgoing voice segments.

Posts: 80 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Oct 24, 2007 Posts: 80

Sounds very much like an internet issue. Either not enough bandwidth or latency, or jitter, or packet loss. Here are a couple of tests you can try
1. Do a bandwidth test - I recommend speedtest.net
Make sure you have enough upload speed. (remember at highest setting Vonage takes 90)

Sounds more like the following though...

2. click start, then run, type cmd and hit ok. this will bring up your command prompt. Type in

ping yahoo.com -n 50

hit enter. This will send 50 packets to yahoo. When the test is complete, 4 lines from the bottom you should see packets sent = 50 received = 50. (anything less than 50 received is packet loss. Two lines below that you should see minimum / maximum / average. The minimum and maximum should ideally be under 100 and within 25 of each other. Over 100 means latency (which may be able to be fixed by Vonage adjusting your jitter buffer - over 150 contact your ISP). If the numbers are more that 25 apart, again may be able to be caught by an adjustment with your jitter buffer, but too far apart contact your ISP. Lost packets is an issue for your ISP.

Let me know how the tests go.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 10

Okay, done. Thanks for the help.

Using speedtest (a new site for me) I show 7.614 Mb download and 360Kb up, with phone lines idle.
With one phone line active that goes to 7.559 and 236, which seems reasonable, compared to the idle times.

Pinging Yahoo with the phone inactive, on 2 tests, I ran a min/max/avg of 93/97/94 and 32/70/33 and all packets sent/received. With one phone line active I got 32/78/37 with one lost packet, which doesn't bode well for a 2nd active phone line does it?

What next boss?

Posts: 80 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Oct 24, 2007 Posts: 80

According to the 2 first tests with no active phones, your numbers were completely different. This means that your internet is not constant. At this point (especially with the test with the one phone line active) I would recommend you call Vonage and have them change your bandwidth and jitter settings. You can actually change your own bandwidth to normal from within your web account, but unfortunately, there is nothing that you can personally change for your jitter.

Hope this helped!

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 10

Thanks for your help. I suppose I understand bandwith (samples[packets]/sec), but what is jitter?

Whould I improve my service my moving to the router which prioritizes voice packets? Would a defined IP address from Comcast improve the service? Should I demand that Comcast deliver on their advertised throughput?

This can only get worse as traffice on this trunk increases, correct?

S

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 13, 2005 Posts: 7

Your D-Link modem has 2 firmwares listed on the D-link site

http://support.dlink.com/products/view.asp?productid=DCM%2D202

One for comcast users, and another for all other ISP's. You should check and see if your using the proper firmware.

Also the jitter setting will not do much.
I would try a normal bandwidth, with a packet setting of 1. This setting needs to be adjusted by a Vonage level 2 tech support rep. There are three choices for this setting 1, 2, 3. This setting is for the millisecond between packets sent. Default is usually 2. Ask the rep what your setting is, and have them adjust it up or down 1 notch.

I personally would go to a more modern router with the d-link phone adapter. If you call the account management department, and push them real hard they will either give you a new device, or a good discount.

Former Tier2 tech support Rep.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 21, 2007 Posts: 5

Ok, I am also having problem with voice quality --- Voices drop out for a second or two.

Set-up
I have the cable going to the comcast cable modem (arris TM402) then to the Vonage router ( motorola VT2542) then to the phone.

I ran the Vonage test, results below:

Download speed 14553 Kbps (socket test)
Upload speed 2312 Kbps (socket test)
Quality of service 35 %
Maximum pause 28 ms
Round trip time 38 ms
Upstream jitter 2.0 ms
Upstream packet loss 0 %
Upstream packet order 100 %
Upstream discards 0 %
Downstream jitter 8.4 ms
Downstream packet loss 0 %
Downstream packet order 100 %
Downstream discards 0 %

and also pinged yahoo...results below

C:\>ping yahoo.com -n 50

Ping statistics for 216.109.112.135:
Packets: Sent = 50, Received = 50, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 21ms, Maximum = 856ms, Average = 55ms

I have tried resetting all the devices numerous times without success...does anyone have any other suggestions?