Gimme the straight dope on quality

Posts: 70 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 17, 2004 Posts: 70

rebus wrote:

Actually, not. I have 2 lines with Vonage and 2 adapters... one is noticeably more quiet than the other. Also doesn't matter whether I use it at home or at work. I'm the network operations manager of a regional ISP/ASP and we have some fairly substantial connectivity there.

Sorry & don't mean to berate you, but I've had to fix the computer on my network operations mgr's desk more than a few times.

Have you tried swapping the two adapters to see if the noise stayed with the line or moved with the adapter? If it moves, I'd replace it. If it stays, question the pair of copper that particular line is on.

Also, I'm not sure what the comment about Seattle"s imfamous pitted windshields is all about, but I replaced more friggin windshields living there than anywhere I've ever driven!

Posts: 49 · Full Forum Member Joined: Nov 27, 2004 Posts: 49

My pitted windshields reference doesn't reflect my opinion on whether or not the person has noise problems... it's just the subject, and the subjectivity of background noise, reminded me of when:

Shortly after the Russians launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite, people in Seattle began noticing that their car windshields were "pitted". At first there were just a few... as news spread it seemed everyone in Seattle had pitted windshields. Windshields were being replaced like crazy and people began to wonder if the Russians were doing something in space that was causing the windshields to become pitted.

After much scientific research the only conclusion that could be arrived at was that people in Seattle had actually never closely examined their windshields until reports of a few pitted windshields appeared in the press. Apparently everyone had had pitted windshields all along, but didn't notice until the news reports of the isolated incidents showed up.

People in Seattle have been closely observing their windshields ever since. I guess that's why you had to replace so many!

Posts: 70 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 17, 2004 Posts: 70

Hmmmm, and I figured it was because of all the dump trucks in the area. Growth here is unreal, far more than Texas or SoCal when I lived there.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to hear what swapping the two adapters reveals.

Posts: 448 · Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 5:03 pm Post subject:

Really, swapping the adapters isn't the solution, because they've been moved around to different phones and different locations and it makes no difference. They have been used at home, at work, and even on a business trip using the WiFi hot-spot in the hotel room. Quite simply, one adapter is "noisy" and the other one is "not quite as noisy".

For what it's worth, I just ordered and received yet another adapter (line #3) and it falls into the same category as "not quite as noisy" as the first one. Not too bad, but not as quiet as POTS either. Yesterday I spoke w/support and the guy did a firmware update on the noisiest adapter, plus changed a couple of settings (he didn't say which ones), but no joy. They're sending out a replacement.

In http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic2062-40.html user Cookem said he was told by a Vonage rep that new adapters are coming out which should fix the noise problem. I hope so!! I thought eventually I'd get used to it, but after 2-1/2 months the noise is still just as annoying. But at least I'm saving a pile of money each month on phone bills.

Posts: 15 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 21, 2004 Posts: 15

The service has been excellent, very clear and I love the web based service part of it -- but be sure that you have a new modem from your ISP! If your ISP tries to give you an older Toshiba 1000 (or 2000) model, tell them that you want something newer. These older models suffer from severe packet loss and you'll go out of your mind trying to deciper the problem.

I love Vonage...best thing since multigrain bread and/or jello shots.

Posts: 115 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 115

OK, transferred two lines to Vongage in September...I am transferring one of those back to my local POTS, MAINLY B/C of choppiness. I could make a 30 minute call and experience only one or two 1 second choppiness on the receive end (me hearing the other person), assuming all is perfect on the send (my voice) end. However, the choppiness can be more frequent like when my wife called the local PD three days ago... both the officer taking the call and my wife got irratated due to the multiple times they had to repeat themselves. Also, I have experienced several dropped calls and this still has not been resolved through many calls to tech support spanning weeks of debugging. I am thinking with some certainty (but not 100% certain) that the issues are due to the internet path my voice 'travels' (both ways), most of which is beyone Vonage's control...

Anyways, my experience so far is this: Vonage (VOIP) options and concept absolutely ROCKS, but the sometimes frequent choppiness on both ends of a call (send and receive) can make the user always wonder when the next choppiness will occur, when the other person cannot hear you talk and maybe not let you know...not a cool, pleasant feeling. Enough that I am transferring one (of two) Vonage line back to a 300 mins/mo measured local POTS service just to give some comfort to my wife who uses the phone more often during the day than I when she is home (and I am at work).

When internet traffic becomes more reliable, I will likely transfer my line back to Vonage or a competitor.

Posts: 70 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 17, 2004 Posts: 70

Any test results from http://www.testmyvoip.com or http://www.dslreports.com?

Posts: 115 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 115

AirJunky wrote:

Any test results from http://www.testmyvoip.com or http://www.dslreports.com?

I am assuming you are asking me.

Yes, tests to these two sites look decent – did this even before signing up w/ Vonage.

Where the problem lies is seen rather when I run Ping Plotter for long periods of time, let’s say a 72 hour period. There are very noticeable times when there are obvious issues on the ‘general’ internet path from my location to the target host (I normally use sprint.com, yahoo.com, etc.) where there are losses of packets up to 90-100%, these can last anywhere from a second to 10 seconds from the graph. Now, the more definitive way of determining whether the general internet is the issue or Vonage is the issue is to pingplot against the Vonage server which my phone ATA hits. Unfortunately, I do not know what the IP of the Vonage server is. If there is a way to pingplot the path from my location to the Vonage server, then from that point onward, I think the issue can be more definitively pinpointed.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 11:04 am Post subject:

what ISP do you have? what cable modem if applicable? would be nice to post your detailed results from testyourvoip.com and tell us your up/download speeds.

Posts: 70 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 17, 2004 Posts: 70

Sounds like you've found your problem, Winger. Not much Vonage can do about it either if thats the issue.