Linksys WRTP54G - choppy voice quality, no dial tone

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 28, 2008 Posts: 5

1. Your location - Concord, NC
2. Your ISP name and type - Time warner Cable road runner lite - wireless
3. Upload and download speeds - Download 711,360 bps
Upload 122,824 bps
4. Modem make and model - Linksys WRTP54G
6. Setup of Network. Cable Modem --> Linksys Router/Adapter combo --> laptop via wireless internet (no pc hooked up directly)
7. Problems - choppy voice quality, and loss of dial tone almost daily
8. Voip Test:
Download 711,360 bps
Upload 122,824 bps
QOS 91%
RTT 114 ms
MaxPause 713 ms

OK so I haven't had Vonage for very long, got it in the begining of January. It has given me troubles since the begining, very choppy calls where people can't understand me, or I can't understand them and people will try calling and it will go straight to voicemail so I find myself resetting the router almost every day. I've never looked into it heavily until now because I'm not very techy and last time I screwed it up so I couldn't make any calls. It is getting to the point where I need important phone calls and I can't have them, and this is my only phone line. Help please! Thanks for the help, I tried calling Vonage but they are no use since they always mess it up then can't call me back (don't they advertise that this should be your home phone?, yet they sound so suprised when I say this is my only phone line)

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 28, 2008 Posts: 5

Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 711360 bps
Upload speed: 122824 bps
Quality of service: 91 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 713 ms
Average download pause: 19 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 114 ms
Average round trip time to server: 485 ms

Voip test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 4.2 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 0.0 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.1 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 100.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported Voip lines: 2
Estimated MOS score: 3.5

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:31 pm Post subject:

Maximum download pause: 713 ms
Packet loss: server --> you: 100.0 %

Those two numbers scare me, for starters.

Is this test done with your computer hooked directly to your modem/access point? If not, try that, just to make sure your connection really is that bad (no offense).

Another thing to check - in the upper right corner of the login screen for your WRTP54G is the firmware version. It'll probably be 1.00.something or 5.01.04. If it is less than 1.00.62, and especially if it's down around 1.00.18 or so, turn off the wireless access point on it and let it run for a few hours. That should allow it to upgrade to a more recent firmware. Probably not related to your issue, but a long-term known problem with the WRTP54G units (I have one myself).

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 28, 2008 Posts: 5

Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 738296 bps
Upload speed: 123296 bps
Quality of service: 99 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 34 ms
Average download pause: 15 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 27 ms
Average round trip time to server: 403 ms

Voip test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 4.0 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 8.2 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.5 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported Voip lines: 2
Estimated MOS score: 3.7

Those results are from my computer directly hooked up to the modem, not through the router. Are they better?
I'll try what you said and I"ll let you know, I don't even know if I'll be able to because I had difficulties from the begining (I can't get in to put a password on my router, the "admin" generic password won't work.. so I think I'm going to have to uninstall it and do it again or something)

Posts: 433 · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:16 pm Post subject:

Average round trip time to server: 485 ms
That's approaching satellite broadband results. Which is not good!

If your results don't improve dramatically when hardwired via ethernet to the router, you should try running the test with your laptop directly connected to your cable modem. Could be a flaky adapter/router or if you still get the same terrible results directly connected to the modem, it's an isp issue that RR needs to fix for you.

Posts: 433 · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:25 pm Post subject:

Sorry, you must have posted while I was writing a reply. Most of the results look better except the average round trip time to server. That number is still horrible which would indicate a lot of latency and choppy and broken calls. You are in the states and that number should at least be below 100ms. Can you run a ping -t www.yahoo.com test from a command prompt? If you are getting similar times of around 400ms, that is an isp issue that RR needs to fix. Ideally you should see times around 50-60ms while running that ping test.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 28, 2008 Posts: 5

ok well I have never done one of those before, or really know what it is (i should have just got a normal phone lol)
anyway, i think I might have done it right? I used http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/pinger.asp to help me haha

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 28, 2008 Posts: 5

I'm still having problems with my phone cutting out after about 5 min on the phone.. people can't understand me so I just have to hang up then e-mail them! Any ideas to what the problem could be?

Posts: 831 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Jun 08, 2007 Posts: 831

I had a couple of issues whenI first set up Vonage. A number of calls to technical support and they would keep changing settings on the Vonage device/router.

Things only got worse, so I called again, the Vonage tech said I don't know what they did, and told me to do a hard reset on the adapter, putting it back to factory defaults. That and lowering the Bandwidth saver to it's lowest, as well as putting the Vonage device in front of my older router, fixed it. Some complain the lower settings on the bandwidth saver degrades the voice quality, I do not have any problem with voice quality, still better than my POTS line and cell phone..