Vonage / Comcast long latency

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: May 27, 2004 Posts: 8

There are some days, that I wish I still had my 2500 set......

I've been using Vonage for my phone service since June, no major issues, and the price can't be beat.

Then in mid Dec. When I spoke,the listener on the other end started to experience poor audio quality. After escalating to Tier 2 at Vonage (and running ping plotter for a 2 hour sample), I was told that I had poor latency. When I called Comcast, I was told to ping www.yahoo.com, and to look at my response times, since they were all within 17/25 ms, I was told that I do not have an issue.....

So now what, and ideas?

Thanks, RichT.

Posts: 281 · Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 4:15 pm Post subject:

My guess is you have bad ping times to whereever ping tracer is going.... which could be a comcast issue or anywhere in between.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 4:20 pm Post subject:

you only mention this problem occured once in mid-december with one person. is it still happening now? is it just with one person? or is it everyy call?
testyourvoip.com is a good site to see latency and other Voip related connectivity data.

Posts: 34 · Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 5:38 pm Post subject: Re: Vonage / Comcast long latency

rtarabou wrote:

There are some days, that I wish I still had my 2500 set......

I've been using Vonage for my phone service since June, no major issues, and the price can't be beat.

Then in mid Dec. When I spoke,the listener on the other end started to experience poor audio quality. After escalating to Tier 2 at Vonage (and running ping plotter for a 2 hour sample), I was told that I had poor latency. When I called Comcast, I was told to ping www.yahoo.com, and to look at my response times, since they were all within 17/25 ms, I was told that I do not have an issue.....

So now what, and ideas?

Thanks, RichT.

I'm dealing with the exact same thing, Comcast in Detroit, MI. What I see after running ping plotter is a spike every 70 - 90 seconds where latency and response time drop way off. The issue I've had with Comcast Tech Support is that when I ping with them on the phone, my responses are fine (i.e. I'm not hitting the spike). After reviewing a few other posts, I'm pursuing the prospect that my modem (Toshiba PCX1100 has issues with latency) stinks -- it is well over 4 years old -- and as soon as my mailman arrives Friday with my new Motorola SB5100, we'll see how them apples work. For other history check out this thread http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic2172.html

Note -- as you'll see on the thread other Comcast users are fine with their Toshiba's, so the verdict is still way out on the whole modem thing...

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: May 27, 2004 Posts: 8

I've been running pingplotter for 24 hours now.

Average times 325 ms. Vonage suggest 200ms or less. Comcast is sending a tech out today. I still believe it's a network issue.

Any other ideas? Right now I'm not placing any outgoing calls, as the person on the other end is unable to hear me.

Help!!

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 07, 2005 Posts: 1

I have had the same problem. Ping Plotter showed progressively longer latency with each hop at all times and every few minutes a brief period (15 - 30 seconds) of complete packet loss across all hops. This corresponded with the other party on a Vonage call being unable to hear me. I sent the Ping Plotter data to Vonage tech support at their request and we both agreed that the packet loss each time involved the first hop in the trace. When Comcast would ping my cable modem the numbers were alway fine and they also said the first server in the trace had no problems. Unfortunately they never pinged my Toshiba modem when the problem was occurring. Prior to having a visit from Comcast I decided to spring for a new modem since the latency and packet loss problem could be due to problems on the path on each side of the first server, as has been suggested here.

I bought a Motorola SB5100 and have been running it and Ping Plotter now for over 48 hours without a single instance of sustained packet loss as before and all the calls have been fine. Ping Plotter shows minimal latency with each hop now. Also, my upload speeds have increased from 115 to 240 and my downloads from 1400 to 2500 on average.

Hopefully you have will see improvement also.

Posts: 34

mh wrote:

I have had the same problem. Ping Plotter showed progressively longer latency with each hop at all times and every few minutes a brief period (15 - 30 seconds) of complete packet loss across all hops. This corresponded with the other party on a Vonage call being unable to hear me. I sent the Ping Plotter data to Vonage tech support at their request and we both agreed that the packet loss each time involved the first hop in the trace. When Comcast would ping my cable modem the numbers were alway fine and they also said the first server in the trace had no problems. Unfortunately they never pinged my Toshiba modem when the problem was occurring. Prior to having a visit from Comcast I decided to spring for a new modem since the latency and packet loss problem could be due to problems on the path on each side of the first server, as has been suggested here.

I bought a Motorola SB5100 and have been running it and Ping Plotter now for over 48 hours without a single instance of sustained packet loss as before and all the calls have been fine. Ping Plotter shows minimal latency with each hop now. Also, my upload speeds have increased from 115 to 240 and my downloads from 1400 to 2500 on average.

Hopefully you have will see improvement also.

Can't agree more -- since replacing the modem, have also experienced excellent call quality and no interruption in network connectivity for base usage. My issue with quality was neither Vonage nor ISP, but simply old hardware. :-D

chrisp

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: May 27, 2004 Posts: 8

Help!!!

2 Tech's and one new RCA cable modem later, still no improvement. Pingplotter shows 300-500 ms latency tracing www.yahoo.com.

Tech & CSR's advise was to clear cache, delete cookies, and defrag hard disk. Interesting, but not helpful.

Last tech left a vmail for his supervisor. He wants to escalate to engineering. His diagnostic tools were :ping test, and the optimumonline speed test site. [please note that comcast is my provider]

Any other ideas?????

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2005 12:00 pm Post subject:

I would imagine it's a network/ISP issue if you're getting those kind of pings. Not sure where you're going to find help besides from your isp. Sounds like they're attempting to resolve the issue, but sometimes these things take time. wish I could think of something else to tell you. If you're really impatient, you could always go buy the motorola cable modem that's getting rave reviews, but personally I don't think that's your issue.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 23, 2006 Posts: 2

Well this isn't a great solution, but if Comcast is messing with their competitors (for VoIP), this worked for me:
Took the advise about buying a Motorola SB5120 - problem with voice still existed, but bandwidth increase to +7mb down / 380k up (download actually doubled Cool

Had Voip modem on a Linksys router with QOS set for the port already, so moved the modem upstream, connected to the Cable Modem - problem still existed.
Went to Vonage.com and dialed back my quality settings from 90k to 50k - worked like a charm.
So at this point, I could move the Voip modem behind my firewall again and the sound quality is very good still.