My service gets worse and worse, then a reset fixes it

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 12, 2010 Posts: 3

My service gets worse and worse, then a reset fixes it. Everyday, I come into my office and reset the Vonage adapters. Otherwise my call clarity and sometimes outright usage fails. I have the router port forwarded correctly, I have more bandwidth than I can shake a stick at, every test I do of the connection comes up aces, it seems that after resetting, the connection is strong but over time the connection is getting rerouted further and further away with more jumps and bumps so that my clarity suffers and I get choppy service. Sometimes the fax will stop working all together. I have every setting perfect, I have wasted days and days of time talking to Vonage Tech and Advanced Tech support. How can I fix this? This ****, and my boss is really pissed off and taking it out on me. Sad

Posts: 86 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 03, 2009 Posts: 86

1. Your location
2. Your ISP name and type (cable, DSL, wireless etc)
3. Upload and download speeds
4. Modem make and model
5. Type of Vonage adapter used ie RT31P2 or PAP2
6. Setup of Network ie Modem---->Vonage Adapter-->PC
7. Issue you are experiencing ie dropped calls, choppy audio etc
8. Run this vonage-forum.com/voip-speed-test.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" class="postlink">VoIP Test: After the test has fully completed, in the Advanced Tab, click on "View Text" in the lower right hand corner. Copy-N-Paste that data into your post.

This will help you get the answers/resolution faster if you can post that first....

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 12, 2010 Posts: 3

In response to KMann's reply.
1. Union county, NJ
2. Verizon Fios
3. 4.60 Mb/s Upload, 19.77 Mb/s Download, 10ms ping
4. We use an Actiontec MI424-WR Rev.D Router
5. We have 4 total lines (2 voice, 2 fax - 1 fax# not presently used) using (2) Vonage Model VDV21-VD adapters. One adapter is "daisy-chained" to the other as per Vonage Advanced Tech. Services recommendation because only one device can have the "Vonage" proxy settings for port forwarding on the actiontech.
6. Our Vonage adapters are connected - Router to adapters to phone/fax
7. The issues we often have are: choppy connections (usually more on the other parties' side), sometimes, not too much lately, the other party tells me that I sound like I'm coming from underwater (though I believe that has been fixed), and we often lose faxes either coming or going (often with a poor line quality or not enough memory error message on our side).
7.1 What I believe is going to be the symptom that solves this dilemma is that the phones/faxes usually work great right after we unplug the adapters. The service gets gradually worse until we are forced to reset the adapters and now I usually just reset them everyday when I come into the office in the morning. My friend suggests that the IP address (or something like that) is strongly connected directly after resetting the adapters and that over time we are getting relegated to more and more "jumps" or pushed into longer less priority routes on the Internet, so my calls have problems because they are getting sent all over the planet.
8. I went to your Voip speed test and it says your license has expired. Funny. I used visualware's Voip test anyway since I remembered that it was Vonage normally uses after I've been on the phone with them, and the score from my laptop (over the network using wireless): Voip test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 0.3 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 1.7 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Estimated MOS score: 4.1

Posts: 86 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 03, 2009 Posts: 86

Well lets examine the Actiontec MI424-WR Rev.D Router.
I am not sure what configuration edits have been made with the guidance of Tech Support. I'd like to point out that This is quite a capable router with a very secure "out of the box" Firewall. The features of this firewall include, Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) as-well-as Denial of Service (DoS) protection. These features need to be disabled.
Furthermore the Actiontec MI424-WR Rev.D offers QoS Support using the IEEE Ethernet 802.1P standard which includes voice (VoIP.) That needs to be turned off as well. You may find this in the user interfac as Application Layer Gateway (ALG) - Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

A link to the Documentation for various firmware versions for the Actiontec MI424-WR is below.

What MI424-WR Rev D ?

Posts: 86 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 03, 2009 Posts: 86

By the way I provide network and user support services for small business and I am not far from you. If your business does not already subscribe to a local consultant, and would be interested, I am available.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 12, 2010 Posts: 3

Advanced technical support had me set up port forwarding rules that are already in the router specifically for Vonage Voip. The security settings are at their minimum allowed. I have also had the firmware updated. The one issue I have come across that I do not understand within the actiontec is while looking at IP addresses for the devices within the routers' "My networks" screen, there is an option to "test connectivity". I run the test and it fails; even when the connection is great. The test passes with the other devices, so huh?

Posts: 72 · Full Forum Member Joined: Oct 19, 2013 Posts: 72

If a reset fixes the issue, it's 99% sure that this is a hardware failure. Have you tried to ask for an ATA replacement?