It's Not always what it Looks Like

[murphy]

For the last two months I have had a problem with broken and garbled upstream audio. No one could understand what I was saying. That is, unless it was an Ooma to Ooma call. Those had perfect audio in both directions.

I started with Tom B, then went to Ooma support, then to Comcast support. I believed the interface from Ooma to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) was where the problem was happening because the Ooma to Ooma calls were fine. A Comcast support person convinced me to investigate my personally owned modem. The modem was a Netgear CM600 modem. She wanted me to contact Netgear about the modem. I found that Netgear free phone support lasts 90 days. Mine was 18 months old. After that they want $50 to talk to you. Rather than that I bought a new Arris SB6190 modem and got it configured. Like magic all of my problems went away. I now have zero packet loss in both directions.

If you are having choppy audio problems in the upstream direction you need to run a VOIP test. Upstream means the person that you are talking to can't understand what you are saying. It does not matter who placed the call.

Go to this website and test your system.

http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/speed_test/ppspeed.html

If you have packet loss in either direction, it will seriously affect the quality of your audio. I was getting upstream packet loss of between 6% and 17% with the old modem. With the new modem the packet loss is ZERO.

I wasted a lot of peoples time chasing a problem that was two feet away from me on my desk.

The summary from the above website test has a series of colored icons. All of them are now green for my system.