Line Quality on receiving side - Cox

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 10, 2005 Posts: 9

I have had line quality issue for a very long time and want to troubleshoot them. Many calls to Vonage Support have made varrious tweaks and upgrades and most recently changed motorola voice router to a Linksys. Here is configuration:

COX HSI ----> Cable Modem ---->Voice Router--->Wireless 802.11g
........................................................!
........................................................!
.............................................900 Mhz cordless

Speeds on Vonage Line Test

Download 1,851,576 bps
Upload 452,936 bps
QOS 56%
RTT 90 ms
MaxPause 131 ms

My Results (late night)
Download 1,743,976 bps
Upload 459,856 bps
QOS 70%
RTT 90 ms
MaxPause 140 ms

Cable Modem = SMC8002CM
Voice Router = Linksys RT31P2
Wireless Router = Motorola
900 mhz Cordless phone = VTech VT2910C

95% of my calls are made while in front of my laptop with wireless notebook card installed.

I really do not have any complaints with my COX HSI connection, always fast downloads. I really have problems with the phone quality during peak inet traffic (mornings and late afternoons/early evening) That said, that is just when it is worse. I have problems almost every call and I am on the phone a lot, as I work from home.

I have recently done some pingplots and do not show much packet loss, except during the peak times. Here is my ping plot
. I did not run long enough to catch the morning, but I am sure it would be like the late afternoon. Not sure if I ran it right. Just had it ping the pingplotter website. I tried to ping the Vonage site and had similar results, but the last ping at Vonage was 100% packet loss at all times.

How about my phone, could any interference be going on? I dont have a hardwire to check it out.

I have to solve this problem, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cbird01 (craig)

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 10, 2005 Posts: 9

Little help here?

I forgot the model for my wireless router Motorola WR850G

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 5:53 pm Post subject:

what line quaility issues? which receiving side? interference unlikely since wireless is 2.4ghz and your phone is 900mhz. packet loss is packet loss, it will obviously adversely affect your voip calls. vonage.com rejects pings like a lot of sites. it's normal.
so my thoughts are, explain your issue(s) better, and post the detailed results from testyour voip.com boston server.

Posts: 14 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Aug 23, 2004 Posts: 14

I am not familiar with the cable modem you listed, but I was initially having problems with Cox cable service with the Cox-supplied Terayon modem (dropping internet connection on large downloads, Vonage call quality problems). At the suggestion of a friend, I bought a Motorola Surfboard SB5100 and swapped it (had to call Cox customer service and let them know to reset on their end), and have zero issues since that time (about 10 months ago).

I also work from home, hosting an exchange server, and running 2 voice and 1 fax lines on vonage.

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 10, 2005 Posts: 9

Reebok, the line quality issues I am having involve people on the other end of the phone telling me that I am breakin up (like bad cell phone signal) Less frequently, I hear their voice skipping and being choppy in waves - they will be fine for a while, then a 10 second burst of skipping/choppy.

I will have to run the voip test and repost, it looks like I have to reload my Java to get it to work, so I have to close all browsers. I will repost results in a few.

Craig

Posts: 134 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Mar 23, 2005 Posts: 134

Did you set up ping plotter to use UDP packets? Also, try pinging this IP, 216.115.23.23. This is a Vonage IP that will only respond to UDP packets.

Also, what is the voice QOS in your RT set to?

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 10, 2005 Posts: 9

Here are my results from Testmyvoip:

Me to Boston:

Media Quality MOS 3.6 / 5.0
(Best with G.711 is 4.4)

Degradation Sources
Codec 0.57 41.6%
Latency 0.07 5.1%
Packet Discards 0.50 36.3%
Packet Loss 0.23 16.9%

Codec G.711 (PCM at 64kbps,
20ms RTP payload,
80kbps IP BW)
Round-Trip
Latency 269 ms
Packet Discards 2.0%
Packet Loss 0.9%
Loss Periods Min: 20 ms
Avg: 20 ms
Max: 60 ms
Random Loss

Jitter Min: 0 ms
Avg: 4 ms
Max: 100 ms

Signaling Quality Post-Dial Delay 110 ms
Call Setup Time 140 ms
Media Delay 291 ms

Boston to me:

MOS 3.8 / 5.0
(Best with G.711 is 4.4)

Degradation Sources
Codec 0.58 46.1%
Latency 0.07 5.4%
Packet Discards 0.44 35.5%
Packet Loss 0.16 12.9%

Codec G.711 (PCM at 64kbps,
20ms RTP payload,
80kbps IP BW)
Round-Trip
Latency 269 ms
Packet Discards 1.5%
Packet Loss 0.5%
Loss Periods Min: 20 ms
Avg: 20 ms
Max: 80 ms
Burst Loss

Jitter Min: 0 ms
Avg: 7 ms
Max: 40 ms

Signaling Quality Post-Pickup Delay 153 ms
Call Setup Time 152 ms
Media Delay 187 ms

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 10, 2005 Posts: 9

NHTracker - My initial Pingplotter results were set to defaults. I just switched it to the IP suggested and to UDP packets. I do not know how to check the settings you mentioned on the router. I am getting 100% packet loss at destination again. This is interesting. Here is the new ping plot. Keep in mind it is 1AM when I did this, so I can only imagine at peak loads.

http://home.earthlink.net/~cbird01/ping/id2.html

I see a lot of peaks on this, is this normal? It seems like the peaks are for 1) Cox and 2) WCG servers. WCG is Vonages data provider, here is a nice exceprt of the pleasantries between the big wigs:

“We’re excited to be partnering with WilTel -- one of the leading national telecommunications players,” said Michael Tribolet, executive vice president of Operations for Vonage Holdings Corp. “WilTel’s ability to provide us with highly reliable, ample connectivity and outstanding reach was a perfect fit for us. It is offering us superior network quality with dedicated account support and we are looking forward to a winning partnership.”

Blaine Gilles, senior vice president of voice services and strategic markets for WilTel, said this deal is indicative of what WilTel brings to the table in terms of bundling high-performance, cost-efficient customer solutions. “In this case, Vonage is utilizing our robust voice network – which delivers more than 4 billion domestic and international voice minutes per month, as well as our extensive MPLS-based IP network to consolidate their long-haul voice and data traffic in a highly effective and efficient manner.”

Seems like with all this nicey nicey, pat the back talk, there should be some hearty data traffic being provided.

Am I reading in to this too much or do these readings show some bad network signs for Vonage and Cox. I am not sure what a normal reading is, so I may be way off base.

What do you guys think?

I also had a suggestion to ditch the 900 mhz phone...

Craig

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 10:54 am Post subject:

you have bad packet loss which is probably the root of all your problems. I have no idea why someone recommended changing the phone, but it's unlikely it's a problem.

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 10, 2005 Posts: 9

reebok wrote:

you have bad packet loss which is probably the root of all your problems. I have no idea why someone recommended changing the phone, but it's unlikely it's a problem.

OK, so what are my options? Do I need a new service provider? It seems to be more than just Cox, with all the vonage servers losing packets too. Wouldn't that be the case for anyone going through those servers? Can I use the pingplotter data to take to Cox for troubleshooting? Thanks