If you have Comcast, read this

Posts: 62 · Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 6:54 pm Post subject: Re: If You Have Comcast Read This

mbhn5204 wrote:

It seems to me that those of you who acknowledge having trouble with Comcast then blame Vonage for your difficulties. Seek out a solution with Comcast out there in varying parts of the country. It seems to me that Reebok made some excellent suggestions. Has anyone tried them?

As I stated in my post, my issues were resolved each time via a simple power cycle of the cable modem. This makes it a no-brainer: issue is with Comcast NOT Vonage. I phoned Comcast and they told me they were aware of this and the cause was due to the ice storm (Atlanta, GA) which knocked many lines down, etc. As they are continuing to work with the power & phone company there will be periodic "short outages" / "malfunctions" due to "momentary disruption of service". The power cycle of the modem is what they recommended.

So...for those here in the Hotlanta area that's what they told me. Other than this issue, the quality of the calls has been perfect.

Gotta love those ice storms! Rolling Eyes

(P.S.- This is my first "winter" in the South. Kinda laughable...)

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 31, 2005 Posts: 8

bbtrumpetguy, thanks for the suggestion - I believe Comcast did upgrade the Dallas area. However, my problems began about a week earlier. I've rebooted my modem, router and adapter multiple times (and again after reading your suggestion.) No difference. If anything, the problem keeps getting worse.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 03, 2005 Posts: 1

I thought readers of this topic might find the following interesting...
I just got off the phone with Vonage tech support. I found out that the Linksys router has a 20-second keep alive cycle. If after ~6 tries (2 minutes) its unable to ping Vonage, it will timeout and shut down. This requires a power cycle of the unit.

Since I have hooked up Linksys RT31P2 router two weeks ago I usually have no phone service at some point during the day. Its unacceptable that I have to keep checking my phone and cycle my modem and router.

I love the Vonage service but can I really believe Comcast doesn't have a 2 minute glitch in a 24-hour period?

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 20, 2004 Posts: 2

Same thing with me! Except at least before Vonage started messing with things i could at least get calls with no audio... Now everything goes to VM and not able to make calls...... Vonage says I "might" have to get another adapter... No thanks!

In the words of the [ADMIN EDIT] Ryan Seacrest... "Ed Out!!!!!"

Posts: 59 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 16, 2004 Posts: 59

[quote="bbtrumpetguy"]

texdub wrote:

Here in the Boston area (including New Hampshire) we were upgraded on the 26th. Try rebooting your cable modem (necessary for the upgrades to take effect) and see if that doesn't help. If not, it very well may be the Toshiba modem. Generally people either went with a newer Toshiba or the new SB modems. Please let us know what you find.

I have 2 friends in NH, both using comcast with the Toshiba 1100. Both complained of intermittent audio drops of 5 secs or so during Voip calls. Both upgraded to the SB 5100 and report no problems in the 3-4 weeks since.

I have another friend using a Toshiba 2200. Does anyone have experience with that ? Is it similar (as bad) as the 1100 ?

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 07, 2005 Posts: 1

texdub wrote:

bbtrumpetguy, thanks for the suggestion - I believe Comcast did upgrade the Dallas area. However, my problems began about a week earlier. I've rebooted my modem, router and adapter multiple times (and again after reading your suggestion.) No difference. If anything, the problem keeps getting worse.

I'm having the same problem in Garland (DFW area) roughly coincident with the Comcast speed upgrades.

I haven't tried calling Comcast or Vonage yet, because I hate waiting on hold interminably.

I am almost certain it is Comcast so I do not plan to call Vonage, except perhaps to get a firmware upgrade.

I do NOT expect to get a reasonably quick resolution from Comcast.

BTW, I have a SB5100 cable modem and here are my recent test results from golden phone test at www.testyourvoip.com

MOS 1.8 / 5.0
(Best with G.711 is 4.4)

Degradation Sources
Codec 0.60 18.8%
Latency 0.00 0.0%
Packet Discards 0.00 0.0%
Packet Loss 2.60 81.2%

Codec G.711 (PCM at 64kbps,
20ms RTP payload,
80kbps IP BW)
Round-Trip
Latency 163 ms
Packet Discards 0.0%
Packet Loss 9.5%
Loss Periods Min: 20 ms
Avg: 20 ms
Max: 40 ms
Random Loss

Jitter Min: 0 ms
Avg: 0 ms
Max: 1 ms

Posts: 112 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 17, 2005 Posts: 112

I replaced my Toshiba 1100 with the MOTO SB5100...wha La
I have been making calls all morning..CA, AZ, NH, MA....I also called about the 4mb update..it seems I already have it..I ran pingplotter while on a call...it was pretty steady across the board.
Get away from the Toshiba.....you wont be sorry....even my wife is happy now

Posts: 4 · Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 12:42 pm Post subject:

SF Bay Area. Comcast came out and found node at 80, according to tech, is bad. It affects all surrounding users. Supposedly, fix is in the works.
Obviously, resetting does not work. It only took 18 days for Comcast to find this out. Of course, they initially blamed all the users for the problem.

PingPlotter shows across the board packet losses. 20-66% losses on all 13 hops.

Posts: 86 · Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 12:56 pm Post subject:

I will do my best to help but it is VERY frustrating when someones service is not working and they immediately blame Vonage.

There are many factors involved:

one, ISP's who don't know how to configure their network and

two, devices that we do not make (like linksys) who have know they have bad circuitry (causing hiss and background sound) which we get blamed for.

three, an imperfect internet and Voip still in its infancy.

We have been inundated with many customer everyday. I see fellow employees who are working their butts off all day manning the phones and they want to do the best they can.

Management is also hiring and hiring but you cant just train a person a week, then throw them on a phone and be able to troubleshoot a device they never worked with before.

Posts: 1

Just wanted to chime in with the other Comcast Dallas users noticing a Vonage quality problem. I too am experiencing the same problem and looking at your posts my problems seemed to start about the same time.

The problems I've noticed include:

1. Intermitent pulsing of the line when talking on the phone - either I hear the other party's words breaking up, or they hear mine that way (depending on who's talking when it happens).

2. Frequent incidence of the Vonage adapter going offline requiring a re-boot of the Comcast cable modem, router, and Vonage adapter. Sometimes this happens as frequently as 1-2 times/day.

3. Possible drops in Comcast broadband service (ran a utility for a few weeks that checks the line once a minute and problems seemed to occur in the early morning hours - especially between about 4 and 5AM).

I suspect the issue is on the Comcast side but with all the various equipment components (cable modem, router, phone adapter) and having two service providers (Comcast and Vonage), and being a novice user, it's hard to isolate the problem, much less convice someone it's their problem and have them fix it.

My Comcast speed is good (4K+) but as the cable line checker reports, perhaps their service is intermitent. I don't want to start a rumor here, but given Comcast's new Voip offering, perhaps they want Vonage and the others not to work so we'll move towards their service.

Don't know where to go from here. I hold my breath everyday that I've got phone service - not a wonderful thing.