QOS survey and experiences from others

Posts: 115 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 115

In my 4 1/2 months with Vonage, I have went from 90Kbps to 50 now to 30. The first two settings with the Motorola unit, the last option now with the Linksys RT3P2 since yesterday when I got the new Linksys unit. The first two did not seem to offer clean calls. Random choppiness (up and down stream) and sporadic dropped calls made the first two settings not an option. On two days with 30, not too bad so far. What are other people's settings and experience?

Is 30 really "normal" - in other words, is 30 supposed to represent POTS quality?

I am using Seren Innovation's Astound cable service here in california. 1.5M down/264k up.

Posts: 18

I just checked and the default number my RT3P2 uses is 256kbp/s. Assuming from your poll about 30, 60 or 90 - isn't that WAY too much?

winger wrote:

In my 4 1/2 months with Vonage, I have went from 90Kbps to 50 now to 30. The first two settings with the Motorola unit, the last option now with the Linksys RT3P2 since yesterday when I got the new Linksys unit. The first two did not seem to offer clean calls. Random choppiness (up and down stream) and sporadic dropped calls made the first two settings not an option. On two days with 30, not too bad so far. What are other people's settings and experience?

Is 30 really "normal" - in other words, is 30 supposed to represent POTS quality?

I am using Seren Innovation's Astound cable service here in california. 1.5M down/264k up.

Posts: 18 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 14, 2005 Posts: 18

My wife has commented about dropped calls lately... We're on TWC Road Runner - 5Mb / 512Kb.

My voice quality has been on medium - will try taking it down to low...

Other than the dropped calls, the service is great!

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 8:46 am Post subject:

maikn: I've never seen a definitive explanation of the QoS in the RT31P2. in other words, what does the number represent? is it your total upload bandwidth you put there? or is it the bandwidth you want reserved for each call? or is it something else? obviously if it's supposed to be your total upload bandwidth, 256 isn't too much, and is probably too low for most people.
winger: you have plenty of bandwidth for the highest quality calls. there's apparently a problem with packet loss/discards along your route. what are you getting from http://www.vonage-forum.com/voip-speed-test and http://www.testyourvoip.com (detailed results)?

Posts: 89 · Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 12:05 pm Post subject:

I have mine set on medium (50). I have TW RR in NY. My speeds are around 4.5 down/ 350 up. The problem I am having is a slight delay on some calls. Will raising or lowering the bandwith saver make this better or worse? Or will it make no difference?

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 12:08 pm Post subject:

no effect.
the amount of bandwidth a call is using (assuming you have enough bandwidth in the first place) has no effect on how fast your packets are sent or received (and possibly lost...a lost packet problem), or in what order they're received (dropped packets when some packets are received too late)

Posts: 115 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 115

reebok wrote:

maikn: I've never seen a definitive explanation of the QoS in the RT31P2. in other words, what does the number represent? is it your total upload bandwidth you put there? or is it the bandwidth you want reserved for each call? or is it something else? obviously if it's supposed to be your total upload bandwidth, 256 isn't too much, and is probably too low for most people.
winger: you have plenty of bandwidth for the highest quality calls. there's apparently a problem with packet loss/discards along your route. what are you getting from http://www.vonage-forum.com/voip-speed-test and http://www.testyourvoip.com (detailed results)?

2,226,432 bps
Upload 248,112 bps
QOS 73%
RTT 66 ms
MaxPause 191 ms

is about what I am seeing tonight.

I cannot open page: http://www.testyourvoip.com
will try again later.

Posts: 142 · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 3:26 am Post subject:

Mine is:

down: 451 kBps
up: 134 kBps
QoS: 74%
RTT: 108 ms
MaxPause: 344 ms
1 Voip per connection on a DSL

I do have a TTY machine, and would probably set the voice quality to 30k (or maybe higher but I don't know). In this case, I'm gonna have to stick with traditional TTY phone line.

By the way, TestYourVoIP.com: Not found.

Posts: 244 · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 9:01 am Post subject:

80K Up is the sweet spot for me.

Posts: 448 · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 10:54 am Post subject:

reebok wrote:

I've never seen a definitive explanation of the QoS in the RT31P2. in other words, what does the number represent? is it your total upload bandwidth you put there? or is it the bandwidth you want reserved for each call? or is it something else?

I spent time testing that feature and came to the fairly definite conclusion you should set it to your actual upstream data rate. It tells the router how much total upstream bandwidth is available on your circuit, so the router knows how much to throttle other traffic to keep enough capacity available for phone traffic. In other words the router thinks, "QoS settings tell me there is 300k available on the circuit, and I know I need 120k for a reliable phone call, so I must prevent non-phone traffic from consuming more than 180k of bandwidth during a phone call."

In reality, you're not going to get 100% of rated upstream capacity 100% of the time, so it's best to be conservative. My upstream is 384k, so I tell the router it's 320k. (I use the 50k bandwidth saver option.)

If I start an FTP upload and open my bandwidth monitor, I see a strong 375-380 kbps upload. As soon as I place a call, FTP uploads drop to around 180k until I hang up.

If I set voice QoS to 256k and run the same test, my FTP upload drops to around 110 kbps.

If I set voice QoS to 128k and repeat the test, my FTP upload crawls to almost a stop.

So, with my bandwidth saver option set at 50k, the phone adapter eats about 125k per call. The only thing I haven't determined is whether (a) the phone adapter really consumes more than 2x the bandwidth set in the bandwidth saver option, or (b) if it reserves double that bandwidth "just in case" it needs it.