Uploading kills my Vonage

Posts: 11 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Oct 26, 2003 Posts: 11

Hi,

I've read some older comments, but am looking for fresh ideas. I have comcast cable, 1500mbps down, 256kbps up.

When I upload (say using rsync) I cannot speak at all - everyone says I break up.

So I bought a Linksys BEFSr81, which I plugged into port 1 my ATA 186, and into port 8 my Netgear switch, and port 7 my NetGear WGR614.

It does not matter if I turn on QoS and set port 1 to highest, all the rest to lowest, the interruption in upstream voice is choppy.

Is there any affordable solution? Should the linksys work? It is a v3 with 9/2003 firmware.

Thanks!

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2003 1:22 pm Post subject:

Not to sway from the topic, but where did you purchase your V3 BEFSR81? I'm going to be purchasing one, and I'd like to make sure I get a V3 instead of the V2 or V1.

Also, what version is the firmware, specifically? The last posted one at Linksys was 2.44.2 dated 11/2002. You said yours was dated 9/2003?

Posts: 11 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Oct 26, 2003 Posts: 11

I bought it at The Mac Store in portland, they ordered it for me.

I have 2.45.5 firmware

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2003 10:15 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the info - I was hoping you bought it from a .com though, so I could order one. Guess I'm just going to have to go with buy.com and hope they have new inventory. Can you tell me, on the V3, is the WAN port a 10/100 or just 10 like the specifications sheet says?

Anyway, as to your problem, I'll give it a stab. I don't have Vonage yet, and I only have a BEFSX41 for my home router, not an SR81. But I've been reading a lot about both because I'm about to jump on the Voip wagon.

According to the manual, it sounds like you have setup the QOS properly. The manual says that port settings are for the LAN. Is it possible that you might have to setup an application QOS for Vonage for high priority?

Secondly, did you check the logging panel of the SR81? If logging is enabled, but you are not logging to a PC, I've read that the IP number should be x.y.z.255 (which means off). The manual for a V2 seems to indicate this is the default, but you never know what the V3 shipped with.

Next, what have you set your call quality to at vonage.com? Maybe you should try something "Normal" or less? If Voip is using 90K of your 128K, that doesn't leave much left over. Especially if an rsync is going on simultaneously. Remember that the cable company lists that as the maximum, not the for-sure bandwidth. Have you tried running rsync with the --bwlimit option with something pretty low as a test?

Guest

This is a problem with Comcast and the way they are capping the upload stream. I too have tried using the BEFSR81 to no avail. The problem you are having has to do with latency more than bandwidth and it has nothing to do with Vonage or Voip. Basically what's happening is that whenever you saturate the upload stream on your cable modem, your latency skyrockets and a significant number of packets begin to be dropped. You can run ping-plotter to verify this. Even without the Vonage line running, if you upload a file and then try to telnet to an outside box, you should notice a ton of dropped packets. While a file transfer does just fine in handling high latency and dropped packets, Vonage does not. Numerous talks with Comcast tech support have done nothing to solve this problem. I have yet to find a working solution to the problem and am considering switching to dsl (and paying $13/month just for the basic verizon line to do so) as a result of these problems.

Guest

The problem with QoS in a 10/100 Router like a BEFSR81 is that it has no "knowledge" of the upstream 256Kbps bottleneck. It simply prioritizes traffic between 10/100 ports, which are relatively speaking very under-utilized. So the Vonage traffic and the low priority traffic just get jammed down this very fast 10/100 High priority port without truly throttling the low priority traffic.

The ideal would be to have a router that you can cap the WAN 10/100 port to the exact upstream bandwidth that you are limited to, i.e 256Kbps. That way the router will be "aware" of the real competition for the bandwidth and prioritize within those constraints. Aside from Cisco routers, I have not seen other consumer grade routers that are capable of such a throttling.

Any thoughts?

Posts: 14 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Oct 29, 2003 Posts: 14

It would be a deal-clincher if Vonage could start pointing people in the direction of a router which would allow prioritization of voice traffic. That would bring full quality uptime from about 90% in my experience to the 98% range -- a big deal when you are competing with 99.999% full quality uptime of local phone service.

Guest

Yes, I'm a Comcrast user out of southeastern Massachusetts and I have recently noticed that I have been getting some weirdness recently. For about 6 months, I had been running an FTP server with friends. The FTP server software allowed me to cap the upload speed from the file server. Since I have 1.5Mbps down/~300kbps upload capabilities (supposedly), I sent the file server to 10KBps max which should have left me with around 20KBps extra for my Vonage ATA.

This worked just fine, with no glitches in either the file server nor the telephone service until just up to 2 1/2 months ago. Now, I cannot run the server at all!. It seems that whenever there is a load on the network when trying to up, whether it be PC alone or ATA and PC together, the network chokes and takes about 6 seconds to recover. By that time, the PC has halted it's upload (and dropped users) and the ATA stops transmitting voice.

I know, I'm trying to do too much on the cable line.. but it worked before just fine! Is it related to new cable modem Comcrap gave me a few months back? I was given this Webstar modem.

Any ideas?

Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2003 2:00 pm Post subject:

Same Comcast issues in Atlanta as well...

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 7:03 am Post subject:

Take a look at these post On DSL reports.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7297595~root=voip~mode=flat
We found that RCA modems will cause drop outs and lost one way audio upstream ONLY, in other words, you will hear the other party fine but they cannot hear you sometimes, I went to best buy and bought a Motorola cable modem and solved the problem, another person in the post I listed got his cable company to switch his rca out for another brand, Toshiba I think and his problem went away also. If this is the problem you are having you can get by with going to the dashboard and setting your BW saver to 30K

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7297595~root=voip~mode=flat