Better VoIP test before purchase

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pman2012
Posts:5
Joined:Fri Oct 05, 2012 3:22 pm
Better VoIP test before purchase

Post by pman2012 » Sun Jan 13, 2013 1:44 pm

I used a couple of web sites to test my internet connection before purchasing OOMA. Afterward I found that the tests I conducted were not representative. After trying to use OOMA over a longer period it has become clear that it does not give me even marginal quality and I have switched back to my AT&T landline (I couldn't take my wife's complaints over my "we're saving money" arguments). And yes, I checked this forum and tried many things (in front of router, behind router, this tweak and that tweak, read and tried the QoS brief). One place I was pointed to was the OOMA line quality tool which I started to run multiple times and found that 20% of the time it gives me a green light. Since this is a suggestion area, it would have been nice to have this tool and have the ability to run it 24 hours or longer (a week would be nice) and it report the percentage of times that my connection would be adequate. Had such a tool been made available I would have had a better picture of the probability of success with OOMA and would most likely not have made the costly switch.
Last edited by pman2012 on Fri Jan 18, 2013 7:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

thunderbird
Posts:6388
Joined:Mon Nov 08, 2010 4:41 pm

Re: Better VoIP test before purchase

Post by thunderbird » Sun Jan 13, 2013 2:37 pm

pman2012 wrote:I used a couple of web sites to test my internet connection before purchasing OOMA. Afterward I found that the tests I conducted were not representative. After trying to use OOMA over a longer period it has become clear that it does not give me even marginal quality and I have switched back to my AT&T landline (I couldn't take my wife's complaints over my "where saving money" arguments). And yes, I checked this forum and tried many things (in front of router, behind router, this tweak and that tweak, read and tried the QoS brief). One place I was pointed to was the OOMA line quality tool which I started to run multiple times and found that 20% of the time it gives me a green light. Since this is a suggestion area, it would have been nice to have this tool and have the ability to run it 24 hours or longer (a week would be nice) and it report the percentage of times that my connection would be adequate. Had such a tool been made available I would have had a better picture of the probability of success with OOMA and would most likely not have made the costly switch.
If you have a marginal Modem or Internet provider signal to the Modem, in many cases the Ooma will not work properly.

The test that I like to use is Phonepower Speedtest, http://speedtest.phonepower.com/ , because it is a little more comprehensive.

Once the Modem or Internet provider signal to the Modem is corrected, the Ooma Telo in most cases will function very well.

I had problems also, mostly corrected by improvements of the Internet provider signal, and the Internet provider increased the Upload and Download speeds without any increase of charges.

Now I connect the Ooma Telo to one of the Router LAN ports, use Ooma Telo Factory defaults, except I use Built In MAC address in the Ooma Telo Ooma Setup Advanced page, and everything seems to function very well.

pman2012
Posts:5
Joined:Fri Oct 05, 2012 3:22 pm

Re: Better VoIP test before purchase

Post by pman2012 » Fri Jan 18, 2013 7:20 pm

Thanks Thunderbird. My internet provider is my weakest link. They are upgrading their equipment and should be done in a couple of months and I will try again. It is a microwave line of sight connection and from the dish to my router it is Ethernet so no modem. My router is a new Linksys router and I put the OOMA Telco behind the router. When I had the OOMA Telco in front (the preferred way) it was using bandwidth even when the phone was not in use. I believe there was something wrong with the FW on the OOMA Telco which was using bandwidth since when I disconnected it, my speed came back. I contacted OOMA support and all I got was a pointer to their whitepaper on configuring. Someone on this forum suggested a FW issue and recommended I put it behind my router which I did and configured the MAC address to have priority on my router. My internet provider/connection is not very consistent. I can run the OOMA VoIP test and get a green light and 10 minutes later a red light. I was looking for a tool that would run the test at an interval (maybe every 30 minutes) and show me a percentage of times that the connection was good (green light) to bad (red light).

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