UGH.... My testyourvoip results from today, no wonder why I can't use the phone.....
So where is the specific problem here?
I can think of a number of reasons.
- Antenna out of alignment, causing your signal to reach the receiver through a reflection.
- Saturation at the receiver to which your premises uplinks.
- Problem with the transmitter or receiver.
- Problem with the ISP's router/switch to which the receiver uplinks.
- Saturation on the circuit between the receiver and the ISP's core.
- Saturation within the ISP's core.
- Saturation or other (packet, framing, etc.) issue on the ISP's backhaul to their upstream.
- Problems within their upstream. Some ISPs, usually the smaller ones, purchase transit from other ISPs, rather than purchasing transit directly from an NSP such as Sprint, AT&T, UUnet, SAVVIS, Level(3), et al. Maybe that's the reason they're switching upstreams in the near future.
Nonetheless, I'm reasonably confident the primary issues are latency and jitter. 300, 400, 500+ ms (and I saw one at 1947 ms)... these are the kiss of death for time-sensitive traffic such as voice. Then throw in jitter (the delta between minimum and maximum latency, which in laymans terms represents instability in the timeliness of traffic delivery) and you have yourself the equivalent of throwing your packets into a blender.
Do a traceroute to some remote host, and see if that turns up any particular hop where latency climbs above, say, 100 ms. That can give you a quick and dirty answer if the problem is within your ISP or the first hop or two into their carrier.
I can't traceroute out past my ISP, their upstream has ICMP blocked. However, over at broadbandreports.com, they have a test utility and the traceroute from there works. It looks like my traffic takes 3 hops through Mcleod usa in Chicago, and those hops are always above 200ms each, sometimes much worse.
My ISP is http://www.tswireless.net. 802.11b wireless broadband. There is no modem, per se, just an antenna on my roof pointing at their POP less than 1/4 mile away.
My next step is to try the service on a friend's DSL system. If it improves dramatically, then I know it is my ISP for sure. Still, I shouldbe able to make this work as is....
I could be wrong, but I think it has been mentioned on this forum that Vonage and wireless connection don't work all that great together.
I also think it's really a shame that Vonage does have the resources to spend millions of dollars on advertising, and on the other side almost completely ignore the fact that their lacking customer support. It really gives an impression that all they care about is profit.
How did we leap from "Vonage doesn't work well with wireless connections" to "all they care about is profit"?
Someone, on another forum I'm on, posted a link to one of these "WISPs", which seem to be all over Illinois for some reason. They proclaimed "10Mbps!" for their premium service...but if you looked far enough down, you found out that the high speed was only possible if basically no one else was on the WISP...and furthermore, they noted that it wasn't meant for "downloading large files". Huh???
This is likely your problem. I'm guessing if you take the Vonage box to your friend's DSL setup, you won't get the symptoms you describe here.
Something is wrong in Chicago with McLeod USA. Massive packet drops all the way down the line from there. Hopefully when my ISP switches upstreams at the end of the month, I can avoid them all together.
As far as not being able to download large files, I have no problem with that. I do notice that the downloads come in short, maybe 1/3 second spurts, and perhaps that is a problem with Vonage.
rebus Vonage Forum Evangelist
Joined: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 448
Location: Tampa Bay
I do notice that the downloads come in short, maybe 1/3 second spurts, and perhaps that is a problem with Vonage.
That typically indicates circuit saturation and/or packet loss. When a router receives more inbound traffic than its outbound circuit(s) can pass, the router's packet buffers ("waiting rooms" for packets as they await their turn to hit the wire) begin to fill up. Sometimes saturation is temporary, which is why buffers exist. Sometimes it is not. If the condition is sustained, the buffers become full and any newly arriving packets are dropped.
Like I said, that's the kiss of death for time-sensitive traffic like voice.
I see your ISP blocked access to their download speed test at some point since yesterday afternoon. Hmmmm. Speeds were terrible yesterday, so it wouldn't surprise me if they wanted to keep that a secret.
No, their speed test is running like crap, or not at all, for me too. I'm getting uploads right now of 10 - 30 kbps. The problem extends all the way up the pipe to McLeod USA in Chicago. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some new virus out there that hasn't been discovered yet. I hear talk of people losing cell phone service too.....
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