Dropped calls/audio

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 08, 2009 Posts: 4

I'm in the process of switching back to a land line but thought I'd check on here first before I do.

When I'm talking to someone they often tell me my voice disappears for a few seconds. Other times the call is simply dropped. One of the two happens every single time. I've tested my internet speed and have adjusted my Vonage settings to no avail. A friend who has Vonage said they have the same problem and just don't use that phone because of this.

Anyone have any ideas?

If not I'm just going to switch back to my old Verizon landline. It's a couple bucks more expensive but, at least, reliable.

Posts: 656 · Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 12:26 pm Post subject:

Your experiencing periods of packet loss. It goes with the territory. The internet is far from a perfected technology and Voip runs on top of it. What most people do not understand is that running Voip and bandwidth tests do not come close to providing any concrete data. What you run this minute may be different 2 minutes later. And these tests only run between you and some random server. They are not running from you and to the actual end point, a Vonage Media Relay which means the paths across the internet are not the same as what you are testing.

It's like driving on the highway doing 65 mile an hour with clear sailing until you hit a bottleneck due to an accident ahead. That is pretty much how the internet is. You could be sending and receiving all your packets in real time with out issues but then there might be a bottleneck which cause the packets to be lost.

Since Voip is a streaming real time service, lost packets are not recent like with data protocols such as HTTP(web browsing). Imagine talking to someone and packets got lost but then they were resent. You would have bits and pieces of words just poppiing up all over your conversation.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 08, 2009 Posts: 4

Great info and it certainly makes sense. But how do I fix it?

I'll be talking and the other person will suddenly say, "Hello? Where'd you go?" And then I'll come back a few seconds later. I've tested it and my voice usually doesn't go away for more than 10 seconds... but that's 10 agonizing seconds and certainly not worth the $8/month I save with Vonage.

Thoughts?

Thanks so much for the feedback!

Posts: 168 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Apr 09, 2007 Posts: 168

Go ahead and post according to the sticky about "what to post when having technical trouble with Vonage". Things like network setup and the line tests should add some value to any assistance.

Posts: 352 · Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 7:46 am Post subject:

dan5150 wrote:

Great info and it certainly makes sense. But how do I fix it?

I'll be talking and the other person will suddenly say, "Hello? Where'd you go?" And then I'll come back a few seconds later. I've tested it and my voice usually doesn't go away for more than 10 seconds... but that's 10 agonizing seconds and certainly not worth the $8/month I save with Vonage.

Thoughts?

Thanks so much for the feedback!

When I had that problem, it was my internet service that was the problem. There was a bad node in the area that caused momentary drops. If you can log into your cable modem, check the log for errors. If they are frequent, call your ISP.