Choppy Voice with ATA PAPT2

[imran909]

Hi,
I have been using FPL for almost a year and there are two common proboems that I faced:

1. When using G 711U and even with G 729a the whenever the conversation is long, the voice starts to become choppy and cut off. This is especially the case when the person who is speaking over the ATA phone is loud.
2. More recently, frequently, whenever I dial from my ATA, I do not hear either the ring tone or the other person's voice but he/she can hear me. It appears it has some thing to do with G711u and when I switch to G711a or G729a the problem is fixed.

I have tried to do research over the internet and used many configuration setting but no avail, especially on the voice chipping and cutt off issue. I am using ACANAC internet with a decent upload and download speed so the internet bandwidth is not an issue. I have another VOIP named VOIP.MS service and have been using its recommended setting on the same ATA but it is working flawless. I thought the two service at the same time is causing problem so I also tried disabling the other service but no avail. So there is something wrong wither either the FPL end or my configuration setting. I am using the recommended configuration setting provided by FPL.

If any one knows how to fix this then I will greatly appreciate.

Thanks in advance.

IMI

[laurent]

Can you describe us your current system setup?

A phone line with DSL, or cable? Then you have your modem. Do you have a router after that? What type is it? Your ATA plugs in where? etc.

I ask these questions because, in my opinion, your problem is one with internet traffic, so we need to look at your internet setup.

[imran909]

My config is as follows:

DSL modem connected to wireless Linksys WRT54GL running Tomato firmware. QoS setup highest for the VOIP. Using Linksys PAP2T connected to the WRT54GL.

[laurent]

QoS can be very tricky to setup right. Took mr some time to get it done on my Tomato firmware router. If the choppiness is frequent and regular, you could try to disable QoS for a bit and test it. Incorrect settings can be worse than no QoS at all.

You mention using it for a year. Have you had this problem for a year?

The sound choppiness, is it for the outbound voice, inbound, or both?

[imran909]

Indeed, the voice problem has always been an issue. It is actually skipping of dialogue for fraction of a second every now and then. This can be heard at both ends of the phone. Otherwise the voice quality and clarity is fantastic. I tried disabling the QoS but again no avail. Would it be possible if some one can post a screen shots (or pdf) of their PAP2T configuration for all the tabs ? Will greatly appreciate it.

IMI

[jgionet76]

Indeed, the voice problem has always been an issue. It is actually skipping of dialogue for fraction of a second every now and then. This can be heard at both ends of the phone. Otherwise the voice quality and clarity is fantastic. I tried disabling the QoS but again no avail. Would it be possible if some one can post a screen shots (or pdf) of their PAP2T configuration for all the tabs ? Will greatly appreciate it.

IMI

I've noticed this same issue with my current setup for the past month. Still no idea what's going on

[laurent]

I'm no expert here, but skipping in the dialog looks to me like it's packet loss. Someone in the chain between the ATA and FPL's server is dropping some packets from time to time for whatever reason.

You could try to switch codec, perhaps. Does it happen with the softphone too? Maybe give FPL a call an mention explicitly this problem (skipping in the conversation). Maybe they have a few tools/ideas to help out.

[FONGO_steve]

maybe try a tracert from your computer to voip.freephoneline.ca and see if there's any packet loss on the route along the way. Although we likely can't change that route, your ISP would have to, we could at least see if there's any common denominators.

[jgionet76]

maybe try a tracert from your computer to voip.freephoneline.ca and see if there's any packet loss on the route along the way. Although we likely can't change that route, your ISP would have to, we could at least see if there's any common denominators.

Code: Select all

root@GATEKEEPER:~# traceroute voip.freephoneline.ca
traceroute to voip.freephoneline.ca (208.65.240.142), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
 1  10.114.112.1 (10.114.112.1)  15.657 ms  21.723 ms  13.439 ms
 2  10.248.42.26 (10.248.42.26)  30.126 ms  8.159 ms  7.496 ms
 3  209.91.168.9 (209.91.168.9)  9.156 ms  8.822 ms  8.033 ms
 4  tor-gw1-tun100.vianet.ca (209.91.137.234)  15.588 ms  14.917 ms  16.067 ms
 5  gw-295ca.torontointernetxchange.net (198.32.245.78)  37.410 ms  21.793 ms  20.497 ms
 6  host-208-65-240-142.static.295.ca (208.65.240.142)  35.076 ms  19.852 ms  17.455 ms

well I'm pretty damn close to the servers it seems! haha
That's from Sudbury, Ontario to Toronto.

[laurent]

What kind of setup do you have? Those first two IPs are quite interesting.

[laurent]

well I'm pretty damn close to the servers it seems! haha
That's from Sudbury, Ontario to Toronto.

Oh and everybody is close to FPL when your ISP peers at TORIX! As an example, from TekSavvy:

Code: Select all

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms     1 ms  192.168.0.100
  2    19 ms    18 ms    17 ms  lo-100.lns02.tor.packetflow.ca [206.248.154.122]
  3    17 ms    17 ms    16 ms  2120.ae0.bdr01.tor.packetflow.ca [69.196.136.66]
  4    17 ms    17 ms    17 ms  gw-295ca.torontointernetxchange.net [198.32.245.78]
  5    18 ms    17 ms    16 ms  host-208-65-240-142.static.295.ca [208.65.240.142]

[jgionet76]

What kind of setup do you have? Those first two IPs are quite interesting.

GATEKEEPER is my linksys WRT310Nv2 router (flashed with DD-WRT v24-sp2) - So the trace originates straight from my router.
The IPs afterwards must be my service providers network which is a shared infrastructure with EastLink.ca

[laurent]

The interesting part about the first two IP addresses is that they're non public routable.

Basically, what it means is that at the edge of your Linksys router, it's not the public internet. You travel through two more internal routers before finally reaching the internet. As such, since you are assigned an internal IP (10.*.*.*), I assume that your provider has no choice but to run a network-wide NAT. Your linksys is also a NAT for your home network.

Therefore, you appear to be running from under two levels of address translation, which makes me wonder how you can receive calls in the first place. What's your public IP address? (ipchicken.com)

I'm sorry if I'm not really helping your case right now, I just find this very interesting.

[jgionet76]

The interesting part about the first two IP addresses is that they're non public routable.

Basically, what it means is that at the edge of your Linksys router, it's not the public internet. You travel through two more internal routers before finally reaching the internet. As such, since you are assigned an internal IP (10.*.*.*), I assume that your provider has no choice but to run a network-wide NAT. Your linksys is also a NAT for your home network.

Therefore, you appear to be running from under two levels of address translation, which makes me wonder how you can receive calls in the first place. What's your public IP address? (ipchicken.com)

I'm sorry if I'm not really helping your case right now, I just find this very interesting.

my current ip is 69-dot-60-dot-232-dot-231
I see what you mean.. and I really hope they aren't the reason why my ATA keeps on losing it's registration status!!

[laurent]

Hrm I think I didn't get the proper dosage for my morning coffee. This is all perfectly normal

I don't know what I was thinking of exactly, oh well.

[jgionet76]

Hrm I think I didn't get the proper dosage for my morning coffee. This is all perfectly normal

I don't know what I was thinking of exactly, oh well.

lol it's all good!

[zombie999]

Therefore, you appear to be running from under two levels of address translation, which makes me wonder how you can receive calls in the first place. What's your public IP address? (ipchicken.com)

I have had ATA behind double NAT at my home and everything works fine including incoming. Real routers used my ISP are much smarter and that's not the issue.

imran909 you should ask FPL to run smoke ping test on your IP, to eliminate line quality issues.

[zombie999]

Indeed, the voice problem has always been an issue. It is actually skipping of dialogue for fraction of a second every now and then. This can be heard at both ends of the phone. Otherwise the voice quality and clarity is fantastic. I tried disabling the QoS but again no avail. Would it be possible if some one can post a screen shots (or pdf) of their PAP2T configuration for all the tabs ? Will greatly appreciate it.

IMI

Does you ATA show packet loss when it happens?

[zik]

i have the same voice issue from last month and don't know what to do and it is only the out going that has the issue

[imran909]

Hi,
I did the WinMTR on both freephoneline as well as the voip.ms servers and here are the results:

Freephone line results:
The packet loss is between 0% to 3%

Voip.mx results:
The packet loss is between 0% to as much as 10% depending upon the server location.

I also did the voip connection test using the http://myspeed.visualware.com/indexvoip.php and the results are pretty stable and good. Therefore, I strongly think that there is some thing to do with my setting at ATA device that is causing the problem. The same setting for voip.ms has no issues.

[zombie999]

What is your RTP packet size set to?