WRTP54G and One Way Audio

Posts: 16 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 25, 2005 Posts: 16

I signed up with Vonage about two weeks ago. Since then, about 90% of my calls are all one-way-audio calls, where the other party can hear me, but I can't hear a thing. This can occur either when I'm calling out or the other party calls my temporary virtual number (until my landline is ported over, which I am VERY afraid of if Vonage continues to perform like this, which is to say, not performing at all most all the time..).

I've tried sending Vonage help emails through the interface from the website several times and never received a response. I tried calling in a few times, but so far, the tech has only been telling me to run bandwidth tests and saying that it should be working, but that he'll monitor it for a day to see what happens. That really doesn't do anything for me whatsoever..

I've ran the voip bandwidth tester as linked to from this forum, and it passed with flying colors, saying that I could run 9 voips simultaneously and have good quality.

Specs:
RCN cable 10mbit down, 0.8mbit up
Linksys WRTP54G

I should note that the wrtp54g is running the .29 firmware that everyone seems to love

Cable modem is Toshiba PCX2500

My friend with the same cable internet provider and same cable modem has been using Vonage without issues for the past year already.

Edit: After my last call to Vonage, my device is now showing "Not Provisioned" as opposed to before when it read "Provisioning failed"
I'm incurring the same problems though. I do have dial-tone.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 8:10 am Post subject:

due to the myriad of issues with the wrtp54g (even though newer firmware seems to make it better) I wouldn't put that out of the problem picture yet. for another diagnostic tool, go to testyourvoip.com and post your detailed results to the boston server.

Posts: 16 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 25, 2005 Posts: 16

I'm not sure what's going on. I've tried that test many many times in the past and all times the results were 4.3 or 4.4, with the degradation being almost solely in codec. However, trying today seems to have fluctuations anywhere between 1.0 and 4.4. I can ping say google.com and have a steady 19ms right now.

Even when I get consistent 4.3, 4.4, I still have one-way-audio. I will continue to test with this for a while. It's really surprising; this is the first time it's given me results less than 4.3, ever. What could this mean.

Also, right now I'm uploading at 50K/s from my server (behind the linksys, with QoS enabled). My maximum upload is 95K/s so I think it's sufficiently throttled.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 9:21 am Post subject:

qos shouldn't throttle anything unless the prioritized service is in use. sounds like your qos may not be set up correctly. at any rate, does 1.0, 2.9, 4.3 mean anything? what's important are the detailed results. such a huge fluctuation could be indicative of an isp issue though, and I would run pingplotter to get a good picture of it.

Posts: 16 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 25, 2005 Posts: 16

reebok wrote:

qos shouldn't throttle anything unless the prioritized service is in use. sounds like your qos may not be set up correctly. at any rate, does 1.0, 2.9, 4.3 mean anything? what's important are the detailed results. such a huge fluctuation could be indicative of an isp issue though, and I would run pingplotter to get a good picture of it.

Thanks for the response. I want to note that currently, my simple pings to google.com are netting averages of around 400ms. This is out of the ordinary, and hasn't happened recently. I'm fairly certain that this is not the cause of my one-way-audio normally. I will retest when the connection restabalizes.

Thank you!

Posts: 16 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 25, 2005 Posts: 16

So it's been an entire day and the high pings were still there. So I decided to reboot the wrtp54g and everything is now back to normal. I ran a testmyvoip.com and got the following:

MOS Analysis from You TO Boston

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

Degradation Sources
Codec 0.58 100.0%
Latency 0.00 0.0%
Packet Discards 0.00 0.0%
Packet Loss 0.00 0.0%

Codec G.711 (PCM at 64kbps,
20ms RTP payload,
80kbps IP BW)
Round-Trip
Latency 106 ms
Packet Discards 0.0%
Packet Loss 0.0%
Loss Periods Min: 0 ms
Avg: 0 ms
Max: 0 ms
No Loss

Jitter Min: 0 ms
Avg: 7 ms
Max: 24 ms

Signaling Quality Post-Dial Delay 32 ms
Call Setup Time 32 ms
Media Delay 110 ms
MOS Analysis FROM Boston To You

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

Degradation Sources
Codec 0.57 96.8%
Latency 0.00 0.0%
Packet Discards 0.02 3.2%
Packet Loss 0.00 0.0%

Codec G.711 (PCM at 64kbps,
20ms RTP payload,
80kbps IP BW)
Round-Trip
Latency 106 ms
Packet Discards 0.1%
Packet Loss 0.0%
Loss Periods Min: 20 ms
Avg: 20 ms
Max: 20 ms
Random Loss

Jitter Min: 4 ms
Avg: 6 ms
Max: 27 ms

Signaling Quality Post-Pickup Delay 53 ms
Call Setup Time 46 ms
Media Delay 84 ms

Pretty much completely good connection, from what I can read from it... And as it is right now (freshly rebooted wrtp54g yet again), I still can't hear anything from my end, once the call goes through. It rings and everything, but once the other party picks up, I can't hear a thing. I can type numbers on my end and hear it on my end echo but that's about it.

Posts: 14 · Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2005 6:06 am Post subject:

The "one-way" calls issue was the last straw for me and the WRTP54G. Unfortunately, the best fix I can recommend is to return this piece of equipment (with or w/o the box) until Vonage and Linksys work out all the bugs in the firmware. I tried to hold out and see if I could resolve these issues myself, but it was futile. I returned it to BB in a plastic bag and exhanged it for a WRT54G and PAP2. Now...all problems really solved. Lol

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 30, 2005 Posts: 7

One way audio, which is usually an upload bandwidth issue (in most cases) comes down to packet loss on sending outbound audio.

Having enough bandwidth you might have a line quality issue which can affect audio regardless of the actual numbers you have for actualy bandwidth.

You can check your line quality by finding out your IP address. If youre behind a router then you'll need to log into your router, you wont have a ping-able IP. find out what the Internet/WAN/Public IP address is (the internet address from your cable modem essentially - which is your public ip address)

and then check it at www.dslreports.com. Create a free acct there and run "line quality test" to your IP address which is under the test and tools button.

this test is a rather complete test which shows the "path" you take from your IP address (your location on the actual internet) Everyone has a certain set of hops you take through the various servers set up from your ISP.

The line quality test can show you if/where you are having any packetloss at any of the network locations you take to get on the internet.

Another possibility barring any packetloss/bandwidth problems, is a Cablemodem with an outdated DOCSIS version. This firmware in the modem actually prioritizes date/voice packet transmissions. i.e. an outdated DOCSIS has no idea theres a difference between voice and data packets and will not transmit the voice with any kind of priority. DOCSIS 1.0 has had known issues. 2.0 and better and your definitely clear on this. This particular problem is probably not your issue but definitely worth looking into if your having consistent audio problems with your VoIP.

Posts: 16 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 25, 2005 Posts: 16

Thank you for your in depth reply. I thought about the cable modem but a friend of mine has vonage in the same town with the exact same cable modem (pcx2500) and it's been working without issue at all for him. I ran the line quality test and here's the url: http://www.dslreports.com/quality/nil/1782934

I see that I have high latency once it hits my ip, which I attribute to the linksys wrtp54g. I did a test with my old routing device and got the latency to my ip to be 41.77ms average from the east coast. Resetting the wrtp54g doesn't really help with this issue. In fact, this high latency wasn't even an issue until I called into vonage the other day and the tech did something to my router. I guess I need to call back a few more times? (Before I called the tech, I was having one way audio but perfect internet connection, no latency or anything)