Poor Call Quality - What to do?
Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 2:53 pm
Hello,
The first couple of days that we had our Ooma Core unit up and running with the hub and scout I thought the call quality sounded pretty good. The only thing I noticed is that if we were online on the computer doing something then the call quality would really drop off and you could barely hear what the other person was saying at times. It seemed to slur their speech and drop parts of the words. I figured it was probably due to us having just the basic dsl speeds of 768/384. We have gotten pretty consistant results from speedtest.net for over a year now indicating that our speeds are usually always around 650/330. I tried adjusting the QOS settings to see if I could improve things, setting downstream anywhere from 500-650 and setting the upstream to 250-330, but this didn't seem to fix the problems. So I just figured that we would either have to stay off the computer while on the phone or upgrade our dsl speeds. For the past couple of weeks I've made sure that if we were going to make a call or someone called us that we were off the computer. Unfortunetly we still have noticed problems at times with words being dropped and with speech coming from the other end being muffled at times.
I've run the VOIP speed test many times at whichvoip.com and everything looks really good. The only thing that wasn't great on the test I noticed was the Max Tcp Delay. Which was in the 200-300ms range. I ran PingPlotter many times to see what the results would be to Ooma's servers located at myxprov.ooma.com and the average latency is in the low-mid 70's. The server on hop #12 that is located just before Ooma's server at 74.217.77.122 (ooma-3.border1.sje005.pnap.net) I noticed was showing around a 5% packet loss however. Which maybe was causing these problems, I don't know.
Now, just two days ago I upgraded our dsl to the highest speed service 6000/768 and today it went into effect. So I was very interested in calling some people to see if the quality of the calls were any better now with the higher speeds. I've called two people today and each time after about 30 sec. their speech just drops right off and you can't hear anything anymore. The call isn't disconnected or anything like that and the ooma device still has its blue light on. So I don't understand whats going on now?
My settings for Ooma are QOS upstream 384, downstream 0, reserved bandwidth 130. Modem Port MAC address is set to: Use Built In. We have our dsl modem connected to the Ooma hub which is connected to our computer.
I ran the VOIP speed test again just now and it looks good (see results below). The Max Tcp Delay is way down now with the faster speeds. I ran PingPlotter again and am seeing problems again with dropped packets. On hop #12 there is a different server this time that has around a 6% packet loss. Server is located at: 66.151.144.13 (border1.pc1-bbnet1.sje005.pnap.net)
I don't know what to do at this point, if anyone has any suggestions or if someone from Ooma could look into this I would really appreciate it. I am getting fed up with all the call quality problems and having to apologize constantly to people because of it. If this isn't resolved by next week I will have to return Ooma before my 30 day return window closes and look at going with a different VOIP provider.
Below is the latest results from the VOIP speed test.
VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 0.1 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 3.5 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Estimated MOS score: 4.0
Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 2106984 bps
Upload speed: 659072 bps
Download quality of service: 96 %
Upload quality of service: 99 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum TCP delay: 42 ms
Average download pause: 5 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 72 ms
Average round trip time to server: 72 ms
Estimated download bandwidth: 4560000bps
Route concurrency: 2.164231
Download TCP forced idle: 0 %
Maximum route speed: 7281664bps
The first couple of days that we had our Ooma Core unit up and running with the hub and scout I thought the call quality sounded pretty good. The only thing I noticed is that if we were online on the computer doing something then the call quality would really drop off and you could barely hear what the other person was saying at times. It seemed to slur their speech and drop parts of the words. I figured it was probably due to us having just the basic dsl speeds of 768/384. We have gotten pretty consistant results from speedtest.net for over a year now indicating that our speeds are usually always around 650/330. I tried adjusting the QOS settings to see if I could improve things, setting downstream anywhere from 500-650 and setting the upstream to 250-330, but this didn't seem to fix the problems. So I just figured that we would either have to stay off the computer while on the phone or upgrade our dsl speeds. For the past couple of weeks I've made sure that if we were going to make a call or someone called us that we were off the computer. Unfortunetly we still have noticed problems at times with words being dropped and with speech coming from the other end being muffled at times.
I've run the VOIP speed test many times at whichvoip.com and everything looks really good. The only thing that wasn't great on the test I noticed was the Max Tcp Delay. Which was in the 200-300ms range. I ran PingPlotter many times to see what the results would be to Ooma's servers located at myxprov.ooma.com and the average latency is in the low-mid 70's. The server on hop #12 that is located just before Ooma's server at 74.217.77.122 (ooma-3.border1.sje005.pnap.net) I noticed was showing around a 5% packet loss however. Which maybe was causing these problems, I don't know.
Now, just two days ago I upgraded our dsl to the highest speed service 6000/768 and today it went into effect. So I was very interested in calling some people to see if the quality of the calls were any better now with the higher speeds. I've called two people today and each time after about 30 sec. their speech just drops right off and you can't hear anything anymore. The call isn't disconnected or anything like that and the ooma device still has its blue light on. So I don't understand whats going on now?
My settings for Ooma are QOS upstream 384, downstream 0, reserved bandwidth 130. Modem Port MAC address is set to: Use Built In. We have our dsl modem connected to the Ooma hub which is connected to our computer.
I ran the VOIP speed test again just now and it looks good (see results below). The Max Tcp Delay is way down now with the faster speeds. I ran PingPlotter again and am seeing problems again with dropped packets. On hop #12 there is a different server this time that has around a 6% packet loss. Server is located at: 66.151.144.13 (border1.pc1-bbnet1.sje005.pnap.net)
I don't know what to do at this point, if anyone has any suggestions or if someone from Ooma could look into this I would really appreciate it. I am getting fed up with all the call quality problems and having to apologize constantly to people because of it. If this isn't resolved by next week I will have to return Ooma before my 30 day return window closes and look at going with a different VOIP provider.
Below is the latest results from the VOIP speed test.
VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 0.1 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 3.5 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Estimated MOS score: 4.0
Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 2106984 bps
Upload speed: 659072 bps
Download quality of service: 96 %
Upload quality of service: 99 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum TCP delay: 42 ms
Average download pause: 5 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 72 ms
Average round trip time to server: 72 ms
Estimated download bandwidth: 4560000bps
Route concurrency: 2.164231
Download TCP forced idle: 0 %
Maximum route speed: 7281664bps