Have you tested your broadband?

Posts: 47 · Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 3:35 am Post subject:

yikes - is this good or bad ?

Download 7,059,384 bps
Upload 982,496 bps
QOS 97%
RTT 51 ms
MaxPause 47 ms

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 16, 2005 Posts: 9

Here are my numbers. Anyone else hear some echo on calls? I just got mine yesterday and noticed echo on my end only. Hope this service works! I sure don't want to go back to SBC.

My Results
Download 2,955,336 bps
Upload 366,440 bps
QOS 97%
RTT 54 ms
MaxPause 94 ms

It says I can have 4 simultaneous calls. Ya right.

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 09, 2005 Posts: 13

Hi,

Whenever I try the speed test, I get download speeds in the 200-300Kbps range, and the "My Results" box never shows anything. I can go to a site like http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/ and get 2.5Mbps downloads, which makes more sense, given I'm a Comcast cable customer. Any ideas, anybody?

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 13

In general, there is a great deal of droput and choppiness on my side of calls. Callers hear me fine.

testing shows 1 meg down and .85 meg up. However, QoS varies between 50 and 90% which I assume is the cause of the problem. RT time usually high at around 80ms and maxpause between 120 and 240. Doing ping tests, I can see variability (but no packet loss) through my ISP. On another ISP at another place I do not seem to have a quality probem but have not run the test there.

I have a Motorola adapter.

So the questions:

1. am I right in assuming that relatively low QoS compared to what I see other people posting is the immediate cause of the problem?

2. assuming I can't get the ISP to fix this immediately, is there a way to tweak the jitter or other settings in the ATA to work around this?

3. does changing the "bandwidth saver" options at Vonage change the codecs used and can this help with this problem.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:19 pm Post subject:

1. no
2. no
3. yes and possibly

posting your detailed results from testyourvoip.com would help too.

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 13

Thanks for the quick answer.

On testyourvoip (one test) I got an overall score of 3.5 (pretty crummy). Detail says that I was 4.0 to Boston and 3.5 back. quality to me (according to them) was 39% degraded by codec, 5% degraded by latency, and and 56% degraded by packet discards. There was no packet loss.

3.5% of packets were discarded, I assume because they arrived late.

Doesn't this roughly correlate to the low QoS (inconsistency in packet times)?

What would you suggest re bandwith saver settings?

Does another adapetr have better jitter management?

Thank you very much.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:43 pm Post subject:

if you aren't going to paste the results as shown, I'll go off of the limited info you reported.
that's a pretty horrible discard amount as I'm sure you realize. testyourvoip displays two results. if you would have pasted the results, this would be much easier, but I'm guessing your loss is mainly on the "from boston to you" side. not much you can do about it. interesting that there isn't any loss associated with it.
bandwidth saver probably needs to be at lowest, though obviously testing it for yourself is the best bet. I don't think that will help very much anyway. it's more of a "from you to them" setting which is fine for you. it's surprising that your upstream is so much better than your downstream. usually it's opposite.
QoS on that test isn't what you think it is, but in this case it may be relevant.
http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic3360-20.html
I don't think there's any such thing as jitter management. even if there were, the even more delay introduced in your calls would make it virtually impossible to talk without talkover, and would make for a very limited conversation (more of a walkie talkie style)

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 13

John:

I appreciate your help. The loss I quoted was to me. It is less from me. That is completely consistent with my observation that people hear me well but I don't hear them well. This is a problem my ISP will eventually have to address, probably has to do with bgp settings but I'm not sure.

Anyway, there is jitter management. I expect that it is adaptive and being fooled by bursty delay in my case and there may well not be any UI to get to it - at least in this adapter. I couldn't find anything on Motorola's site. I am hoping there is either a better adaptive algorithm or and actual control on some other mta.

Given that the variation in packet arrival times is less than 40ms most of the time (I know, I didn't post this), goosing up the size of the jitter buffer to handle it would not cause signiciant delay - if there were only some way to get to this parameter.

Would appreciate hearing from anyone who knows whether jitter mgmt is different or settable in any of the other vonage-compatible MTAs.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 16, 2005 Posts: 1

SBC DSL 6M/608kbps package

Posts: 12 · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 1:59 am Post subject:

I had a QoS=20%..checked my network settings and 'QoS packet scheduler' was not installed...suspect I need that to increase my QoS Smile

Right? I'm a networking rookie so have no idea what I am doing (but my Vonage sounds great) Smile

I haven't setup a static IP for my PAP2 yet, either...or changed any settings in my new WRT54G (I checked the firware and already had the new firmware with QoS settings). You guys have a guide that walks rookies through some optimization of this type of configuration?

Here are my results (after I installed QoS packet stuff):

Download 3,237,112 bps
Upload 494,176 bps
QOS 51%
RTT 48 ms
MaxPause 469 ms

Given your current Internet speeds, we estimate that your Internet connection can support a maximum of 6 simultaneous high quality Vonage® Voip connections