VOIP is Making Me Crazy

rebellis · January 2009

ok....more crazy!

So, I spend a ton of time on the phone for work.

My setup is:

cable modem
Vonage router
wireless router
2-line corded/cordless phone

Starting a few weeks ago, people were telling me that my calls were choppy - I was cutting in and out

I had Vonage fix some settings on their sides, then I replaced the Vonage router. Now I've replaced the phone itself. On Friday I am having TW replace the cable modem.

Next, I think I need to move!

Vonage has been totally fine for me for YEARS.

I've also upgraded to TW "turbo" cable internet, and I ran a bunch of speed tests and am getting pretty good time up and down.

Any other suggestions?????

carmen · January 2009

Man thats weird- have you noticed anything having to do with the weather? it could be that the lines are older in your building...I know my skype calls are shit when its snowing or raining but seem fine when its dry (I dont know if it makes sense but its a pattern for sure... at least in my mind)

vidro3 · January 2009

ive had vonage for 2 years and it has blown goats for the whole time.

kgal · January 2009

vidro3 wrote: ive had vonage for 2 years and it has blown goats for the whole time.

and you keep it because...............................??????

saintmarks · January 2009

Carmen wrote: Man thats weird- have you noticed anything having to do with the weather? it could be that the lines are older in your building...I know my skype calls are shit when its snowing or raining but seem fine when its dry (I dont know if it makes sense but its a pattern for sure... at least in my mind)

my house is 100 years old, but have had no electrical problems and very few internet outages.

to top it off, I bought a brand new 2 line phone today. It is corded and cordless. within 2 hours, the cordless handset lost connection with the base. WTF????

vidro3 · January 2009

Flexichick wrote: [quote=vidro3]ive had vonage for 2 years and it has blown goats for the whole time.

and you keep it because...............................??????

i like to mess with the telemarketers

jeffrey · January 2009

Your ISP may be using traffic shapers to degrade 3rd Party VOIP services from other providers like Vonage etc., hoping you'll dump them and sign up for your ISP's competing offering.

There have been all sorts of reports of this in recent years, and some ISPs have been busted for it already.

One thing that is within your control is to get a router that has QoS capabilities, allowing you to prioritize the Quality of Service for VOIP packets on your own home network at the expense of other web, email, ssl etc. traffic on your network.

For more info on that sort of approach make clicky here.

That will at least make sure that things are optimized *within* your home network.

But outside of that, out on your ISP's network and the wider area network that is the internets, well, you're kind of at the mercy of whatever mule your ISP and the various anti-neutrality backbone providers hitch your packets to.

my2cats · January 2009

People call me at work using VOIP phones and I tell them right away to hang up and call me from a normal phone. I don't know how people can do business with that thing. It is awful. I get echos, choppy, slow speech. I really think VOIP is a step back, not foward. A good old phone is much more reliable and of good quality.

sweetcarmel · January 2009

my2cats wrote: People call me at work using VOIP phones and I tell them right away to hang up and call me from a normal phone. I don't know how people can do business with that thing. It is awful. I get echos, choppy, slow speech. I really think VOIP is a step back, not foward. A good old phone is much more reliable and of good quality.

It has been perfect for many, many years.

doctorj · January 2009

It depends very much on your ISP and the VOIP provider. Optimum Voice is VOIP and I'm very happy about the quality. Only problem is that it's possible to hack into VOIP and send spam calls, which we get regularly from spoofed numbers; credit offer scammers. Doesn't happen on an analog line. That covers North America. For the rest of the world, I use Skype (inc. video) which works remarkably well. Also Skype/Yugma for conference calls.

biker123 · January 2009

Vonage/ Time Warner is my combo.

modsquad · January 2009

I bow to others expertise, and maybe this is a stupid question but did you go on line and slide that thingy that dedicates more juice to the quality? I had a similar problem when I first got Vonage and when I got a new box a couple of months ago I had to slide that thingy again.

ewe · January 2009

modsquad wrote: I bow to others expertise, and maybe this is a stupid question but did you go on line and slide that thingy that dedicates more juice to the quality? I had a similar problem when I first got Vonage and when I got a new box a couple of months ago I had to slide that thingy again.

Yes, I did....thanks

mantic · January 2009

jeffrey wrote: Your ISP may be using traffic shapers to degrade 3rd Party VOIP services from other providers like Vonage etc., hoping you'll dump them and sign up for your ISP's competing offering.

You hit the nail on the head. The isp is probably screwing with your voip packets purposefully to degrade quality. As Jeffery stated, this is a (un)known issue and it seems to have stepped up of late.
Another issue may be your bandwidth has dropped or is not what is should be.
To my knowledge, cable is not the best transport for VoIP, based on them jacking the connections to suit thier own service.
As for VoIP being unreliable, choppy yada yada, I will say 90% is from misconfigured equipment, wrong codecs, bad installations, etc. Most international and long distance and about all toll free is carried over VoIP.

I love voip and have been using it for 5+ years. My bill for phone service is about $100 a year for 4 numbers via voip, opposed to about $400 for a single verizon line with no options (callerid, call waiting etc).

ps - check the proximity and condition of your microwave (for leaks) oven (for leaks) if you have one. They are notorious for wreaking havoc on wireless signals.

Also contact Vonage to check your account settings.

kahneman · January 2009

thanks for all of the advice...

my oven and microwave are pretty new....I wouldn't even know how to check them for leaks.

Vonage already tweaked my settings.

Somebody also suggested changing the channels on my wireless router, but I don't remember how to do that (a Linksys wireless G....I can get the model number if I need to go down that road).

If this is Time Warner fucking with (aka "shaping") my bandwidth I will lose it. I already hate them with more passion than they deserve.

Time Warner is also coming out tomorrow to replace my cable router.

My speed test are usually pretty fast - around 7mb down and 725kbps up

hitokiri · January 2009

jeffrey wrote: Your ISP may be using traffic shapers to degrade 3rd Party VOIP services from other providers like Vonage etc., hoping you'll dump them and sign up for your ISP's competing offering.

considering the wireless router hasnt been tested yet, OR having TWC coming to your house to check the outside lines (could be degrading signals from a now poor connection), it is more of a leap to say that the ISP is throttling the bandwidth.

Especially when they know they can and will get caught.

edit:

Also, what you want to do is download pingplotter and do a test overnight.
You might be experiencing packetloss

livetotravel · January 2009

I was an early adapter of Vonage and an early quitter - it sucked - and this was 3 years ago - it was worse then old cell phone technology.

Land lines really work well and you get real 911 too.

snootyusher · January 2009

Ugh....I have a new problem this morning.

My wireless network is not broadcasting as my named (Flexi), secure network (this is my default connection). It's just coming through as Linksys and unsecured. Wha' happened?

HALP

hitokiri · January 2009

Flexichick wrote: Ugh....I have a new problem this morning.

My wireless network is not broadcasting as my named (Flexi), secure network (this is my default connection). It's just coming through as Linksys and unsecured. Wha' happened?

HALP

It sounds exactly like what I commented on earlier.

You never tested your router. You tested everything else BUT the router. Looks like it might be on it's way out.

To remedy the problem right now, just unplug it for 10 seconds (from the power) and plug it back it. It SHOULD work.

I would get a new one though.

movapesonline · January 2009

Crap. It's fairly new. I unplugged it, and hit the reset button but it still came back as Linksys. I'm going to call their support line soon. Maybe if it is on the way out I can get a replacement.

Will pingplotter tell me exactly where the breakdown is?

jeffrey · January 2009

You may already know this, but hitting the reset button wipes out any custom settings you may have ("Flexi" as SSID, security/encryption settings etc) and neuters it back to factory defaults of an open network with a "Linksys" SSID (with no security).

Odds are that it also reset your password from "snailkilla" (hah) to "admin" as well, which means that any meddling fool nearby can probably log in and reset the password to lock you out until you hit reset again.

So you'd probably better check everything, and re-config whatever custom settings you had that may have been reset.

Hee. Happy mornin'.

bkresident · January 2009

shit. I bet you are right and I did it. I have to go re-enable security....but first i have to remember how :-)

grrr

jeffrey · January 2009

Good news on the pingplotter front, too...it seems that Google is releasing tools allowing consumers to test for ISP meddlings:

quoth teh googul wrote: Introducing Measurement Lab
1/28/2009 12:00:00 PM
When an Internet application doesn't work as expected or your connection seems flaky, how can you tell whether there is a problem caused by your broadband ISP, the application, your PC, or something else? It can be difficult for experts, let alone average Internet users, to address this sort of question today.

Researchers are already developing tools that allow users to, among other things, measure the speed of their connection, run diagnostics, and attempt to discern if their ISP is blocking or throttling particular applications. These tools generate and send some data back-and-forth between the user's computer and a server elsewhere on the Internet. Unfortunately, researchers lack widely-distributed servers with ample connectivity. This poses a barrier to the accuracy and scalability of these tools. Researchers also have trouble sharing data with one another.

M-Lab aims to address these problems. Over the course of early 2009, Google will provide researchers with 36 servers in 12 locations in the U.S. and Europe. All data collected via M-Lab will be made publicly available for other researchers to build on. M-Lab is intended to be a truly community-based effort, and we welcome the support of other companies, institutions, researchers, and users that want to provide servers, tools, or other resources that can help the platform flourish.

Today, M-Lab is at the beginning of its development. To start, three tools running on servers near Google's headquarters are available to help users attempt to diagnose common problems that might impair their broadband speed, as well as determine whether BitTorrent is being blocked or throttled by their ISPs. These tools were created by the individual researchers who helped found M-Lab. By running these tools, users will get information about their connection and provide researchers with valuable aggregate data. Like M-Lab itself these tools are still in development, and they will only support a limited number of simultaneous users at this initial stage.
...

Google has made the first 3 tools available to test basic network issues:
http://www.measurementlab.net/measurement-lab-tools

Their upcoming DiffProbe and NANO tools are the ones you'll need to detect any ISP meddlings, however.

Have fun stormin' the iptables!

hitokiri · January 2009

jeffrey wrote: Good news on the pingplotter front, too...it seems that Google is releasing tools allowing consumers to test for ISP meddlings:

sweet, im tired of using my dated, cracked version of PP lol

Google will take over the world!

Flexi- When did you hit the reset button? After I told you to disconnect it from the power or before? I'm trying to figure out the timeline of when your wireless stopped working in relation to your voip issues

monkeyking · January 2009

Hitokiri - I can't remember the sequence. I just kind of unplugged and reset everything out of frustrations.

I'm going to run that NPAD test but there are 60 people queued ahead of me

davensonya · January 2009

if i have to buy a new wireless router, any suggestions for inexpensive but decent one. I support 3 laptops and Vonage on it. I have a G router, but was advised to downgrade settings to N, and that was much better for me in terms of signal strength and stability

jeffrey · January 2009

Heh, just tried the NPAD test applet and it b0rked.

Eh, perhaps initial wave of wahoos testing it has caused or revealed some problems.

ptpbbsite · January 2009

hmmm....my test says outbound C2S = 691 kb/s, inbound 1.3mb, server unable to determine bottleneck link type

jeffrey · January 2009

Just for giggles, try testing your upload/download speeds here:

http://nyc.speakeasy.net (select New York test server)

mary415 · January 2009

jeffrey wrote: Just for giggles, try testing your upload/download speeds here:

http://nyc.speakeasy.net (select New York test server)

12075 kbs down, 697 up.....that should be plenty fast enough, no?

hitokiri · January 2009

flex - "downgrade to N"

N is an upgrade and more expensive and also NOT OFFICIAL yet. I dont think you will need it. Stay with G.

Linksys should be fine. The only times I have had problems with linksys is when i use other companies hardware (sometimes).

Also, you still need to do a pingplotter test
http://pingplotter.com/download.html

Have it run overnight on your main PC. If you do it, i will walk you through the setup.

You have fast speeds, but that can mean nothing if you have packet loss. Dropping voice can be the direct result of dropped packets.

edit:

here is a great tutorial for testing your VOIP issues with pingplotter
http://www.pingplotter.com/manual/standard/voiptroubleshooting.html

in fact, in the section called "Examples and Analysis", it seems it is describing exactly what you are experiencing.

Try to copy and paste your results on here for me to see. Just in case you do not know how to, press the print screen button and paste it into MS Paint and save it

VOIP is Making Me Crazy

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