Does Vonage have alternative servers/paths?

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 8

The one complaint I have with Vonage so far is the excessive lag on voice calls - at least half a second, which is enough to interfere with conversations. Can Vonage do anything to improve this if I ask, e.g., specifying an alternate server or path for my number?

There's nothing wrong with the performance of my ADSL internet link, but I know from testing that the the ping latency to various sites around North America varies from 50 to 250 msec, and it doesn't necessarily depend on distance. Some nearby sites are consistently high latency, while some very distant sites are consistently low latency. I know that some other VoIP providers like voip.ms let you select different servers to find the one that works best for you.

Posts: 627 · Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2009 10:09 pm Post subject:

Vonage has 3 Outbound locations between East coast and West coast which house the Gateways that interconnect to the PSTN network and the Media Relay servers that stream the audio to you. Depending upon the number you are dialing will determine which location, Gateway, and carrier the call will route through. It is not based upon your physical location. You may be is Seattle but the number your dialing routes out of a Gateway in NYC.

There are also inbound locations that get used but depending upon the market your phone number comes from will determine which location gets your inbound phone calls. This cannot be changed since only this location would service your market.

Where do you notice the delay, at the start of the call or throughout the entire call?

Does it occur on outbound calls to specific numbers or all outbound calls?

Does it occur on Inbound calls?

Is your Vonage device getting your Public IP on it's WAN port or is in behind the NAT of a router or a modem/ router?

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 8

The 0.5 sec + delay is present throughout all calls. I've tried the Vonage box connected directly to my ADSL modem in front of the router and also behind the router - makes no difference. It's also present with Vonage Talk running on my PC. My ping latency to Seattle is 48 msec, to NYC 115 msec on speedtest.net.

Posts: 627 · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:51 am Post subject:

When you ping random sites, you are not actually gauging true latency for the issue your experiencing because it does not follow the same path as a packet from you to the end point which is the Vonage Media Relay. This is because each IP address on the internet will route differently based upon the originating ISP and how the IP is being broadcast with BGP.

This means that when you ping a random site where the server is listed in NYC does not mean it will take the same path to a Vonage server is NYC. This is because both IP's addresses have different ISP's and have different routes to get to them.

Try running some pings and traceroutes to 69.59.248.70 (NYC), 69.59.235.35 (VA), and 69.59.243.35 (LA).

One other thing to note is that the Vonage border routers treat ICMP with very low priority since all priority is given to UDP. This means you may see high latency or packet loss at the final hops. This means nothing but your ICMP packets are being dropped. This is another reason why ping and traceroute tests are far from accurate. Many internet routers wont even respond to ICMP at all and some may also treat it with the lowest possible priority.

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 8

To 69.59.243.35 (LA) my ping is 57 msec, with the biggest holdup being a relay called te-11-1-0.rar3.sanjose-ca.us.xo.net

To 69.59.248.70 (NYC) it's 110 msec, with the biggest holdup at te-4-0-0.rar3.denver-co.us.xo.net

Posts: 627 · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 9:17 am Post subject:

Those aren't the Relays and they are not even on the Vonage network. the relays hostnames start with media-relay and are on the vonagenetworks.net domain.

In addition, 110ms being the highest round trip time would not cause you to have a constant 500ms delay.

Since you state this happens on every single call whether inbound or outbound and your outbound calls will use different media relays and GW's in different locations, points to hardware related. Any problem dealing with audio streams, (delay, choppy, 1 way) that happen on all calls all the time is ALWAYS isolated to the customer premise equipment.

So the next question is what is the make and model of your DSL modem and is it acting as a router or is it in Bridged mode?

I know you said you removed your router and connected the Vonage adapter directly to the modem. However if your modem is configured with your PPPoE credentials and obtains the IP from your DSL provider, the Vonage adapter is still NAT'd behind a router built into your modem and this most likely is the cause of the problem. It may be queuing packets instead of sending them in real time.

So if you don't know if your modem is Bridged or acting as a router, it is simple to figure out. Do you configure PPPoE or a static IP on your router or the Vonage adapter when you connect it to your modem?

If you connect your router or the Vonage adpater to the modem and then log into which ever device you connect to the modem, does the Internet / WAN port status show a public or private IP address?

If your modem turns out to be acting as a router, you would need to contact your DSL provider, obtain your PPPoE or static IP information, and have them assist you in Bridging your modem. You would then connect the Vonage adapter's WAN port to the modem. Connect a PC to the Vonage adapter LAN port. Log into the Vonage adapter and configure PPPoE or the static IP depending upon what your ISP uses. Then connect your router's WAN port to the LAN port of the Vonage adapter and you should be good to go. Just make sure your router's WAN port is configured for DHCP.

I don't know the make and model of your modem yet but I can tell you if it is a Netopia, they are notorious for causing these kinds of issues.

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 8

I don't think it's anything to do with the ADSL modem. It's a 3Com operating in bridged mode (no PPoE). I've tried the Vonage adapter on another ADSL link (different ISP who is using PPoE) at home, and the lag is pretty similar. I don't want to imply that the lag is always identical - it probably varies a bit higher and lower, but it's always high, and it's not easy to judge the differences. But calling a landline I have in the other hand, I can easily say "Test" or "Hello", finish the word, and have a distinct gap before I hear the word start to come out of the other end.

Unfortunately this is a killer for us on Vonage service for business use. During our test calls some of the other parties have noticed the lag without knowing that we were testing Vonage.

Posts: 627 · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 8:23 pm Post subject:

I understand that this is affecting calls with other people but the one thing you cannot do is be in the same room with another phone and expect not to notice a delay between the 2 phones. Use a land line and a cell phone and you will notice a slight delay and same with 2 cell phones if you are in the same room. The voice path cannot travel at light speed so there is always a delay. It is just more noticeable over an IP connection then it is over a copper / fiber channel line.

There are 2.7 million active lines and they all do not experience this delay problem. There are also many long time Vonage users on this forum that do not experience delay or any other audio issues at all. This is how I can assure you that the problem is not caused on the Vonage network. If it was, then the near hundred Vonage calls I am each day would have this problem and they don't.

It could also be that your more susceptible to this delay and expect something that cannot be provided with a VoIP connection.

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 8

Personally I have used VoIP for many years. I'm accustomed to a little lag and it doesn't bother me. But at present I'm evaluating Vonage for business use, and my test is strictly:
1. Do customers calling in notice a problem?
2. Do my office staff report any problems?

So far unfortunately the answer is Yes to #1 (the lag issue) and Yes to #2 (variable line echo, long delays on call transfers).

I'm sure Vonage has many happy users (including some in my own family), but undoubtedly many of them either don't know or don't care much about minor call quality issues, and probably many are located where they have a much lower latency to the Vonage servers than we do.

I would guess that most VoIP services are going to have the same problem. Certainly if I make a call to a landline on Skype (which I just did), it has the same sort of lag as Vonage. Technically this is not unexpected. The ping time to any random internet server around the continent probably averages 150 msec. If you add that delay in both directions, plus a 150 msec buffer to reduce the chance of choppy audio, you're already at half a second lag. The only way I can see that a VoIP service could change that inherent internet lag is to have a server closer to us, so I'll be checking local VoIP service providers to see if they can do better. I was just hoping that Vonage, as the biggest VoIP service, might have some low-latency servers strategically placed to reduce the lag problem.