Periodic garbling of received voice

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Dec 16, 2004 Posts: 10

The subject is the best way I can describe what is happening. I've been using Vonage for more than a year now, with few problems. The ones I had were related to my Internet connection. I'm now running a 4mb/384k line, and everything has been great until last week. Every 30 to 45 seconds, the person that I am talking to sounds garbled, like bad decoding of the encryption, that lasts for about 3 seconds. I figured that it was just my line, until tonight. I was listening to a voicemail that someone left me that was 2 minutes long, when at 35 seconds into it, I heard the same garbled speech, and then again at 1:38 seconds. Apparently this problem is beyond the control of my ISP since it is happening on the frontside connection to Vonage. Has anyone else noticed this? I have not heard that this is happening to my voice, so it appears to be only one way.

Ugh.

Posts: 19 · Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2004 12:31 am Post subject:

Let me guess -- You're in MN, IL, OH, or MI?

I am having the same problem, and so I grabbed a couple packet captures from my calls. For inbound calls to my number, it looks like the RTP stream originates from a gateway in IL. I have massive packet loss every 60 seconds from that gateway that lasts exactly 2 seconds. So in one of my traces, packet loss was:

20-22 seconds

82-84 seconds

144-146 seconds

My outbound calls seem to route out through Vonage's NJ POP, so outbound calls are unaffected by this issue.

I really hope someone at Vonage is working on this.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Dec 16, 2004 Posts: 10

Nice work. Yes, Ohio. I haven't thought to try this. It makes perfect sense.

It is extremely annoying to my customers when I ask them to repeat something continuously.

Maybe if we call support enough about this...

Anyone else experiencing this?

Posts: 19 · Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2004 9:56 am Post subject:

Calls are clear this morning, and packet captures are no longer showing massive bursts of loss every 60 seconds. Looks like this one may be resolved.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 11, 2005 Posts: 1

I have the exact same problem, except the garbling occurs at almost exactly 1 minute intervals. I live near Dallas, TX. A friend who also has Vonagae is having the same problem. It's been about a month.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 08, 2005 Posts: 10

vfior wrote:

I have the exact same problem, except the garbling occurs at almost exactly 1 minute intervals. I live near Dallas, TX. A friend who also has Vonagae is having the same problem. It's been about a month.

I'm having the same problem in Dallas on a Comcast 768k/6meg cable modem with a Linksys RT31P2 router on Vonage. I also get echoing at times.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2005 9:16 am Post subject:

shadow and vfior: what cable modems? what are your detailed results from testyourvoip.com?

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 09, 2005 Posts: 3

Count me in too. I use Charter cable service in Fort Worth, Texas on the Linksys RT31P2 router. Symptoms are exactly the same. Problem started occurring about 3-4 weeks ago. I PMed SSantana to get my bios updated but it add no effect. I also PMed him about this problem. He made some changes to my account but they also had no effect.

Its obvious from the thread so far that this is a Vonage infrastructure problem; not an ISP or customer acount problem. Someone probably made a change a month ago to the software that processes the voice calls that resulted in this issue.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2005 9:36 am Post subject:

how is this obvious? call garbling, dropped calls, etc. are almost always related to packet loss/discards which is more of an internet problem than anything, and much closer to an isp problem than a Vonage problem. Vonage goes over the internet, and therefore relies on the internet for call quality, and we all know the internet is far from perfect.
many people, especially comcast users, have had great success replacing their cable modems (specifically the toshiba pcx1100 series).
see these threads for more info if you have that modem:
http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic2172.html
http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic2310.html
http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic2197.html

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 09, 2005 Posts: 3

I don't have the toshiba modem you refer to. Even if the others did, your modem solution wouldn't explain my situation. The others including me all had great voice quality up until a month ago. If the modem was the problem, this is unlikely. Additionally, the problem also occurs on voicemails left which has no interaction with the customer's ISP or equipment.

As for overall internet reliability, etc. I agree with the principal you express. But it does not explain the consistent lack of voice quality on inbound calls only. Every inbound call has this problem. However, I can make a hour long outbound call with great voice quality for the entire time. Therefore general internet reliability would not explain these symptoms.

We are left with something that affect multiple users, using different ISPs and different cable modems (most likely) that occurs on all inbound calls only including voicemail. The problem did not exist but now does. To me this indicates a Vonage problem affecting at least parts of the DFW service area that was introduced by someone about a month ago. Only a Vonage person could do that.

P.S. No offense intended to any Vonage persons reading. The conclusion just seems logical to me.