Poor sound on other end - port forward issues ??

[JimmyNeutron]

I am using PAP2T ATA. CISCO E3000 router. DSL from Bell

I did set up the QoS for the MAC address of PAP2T with high priority. I did not forward any ports cause I do not know how to. I tested the connection for few months before I port the number to Fongo. Everything was perfect.
My landline has now ported to Fongo for about 3 weeks. Dry loop should be in placed.

Recently I have experienced some quality issues: Usually when someone called me, I had hard time to listen to them. But they could listen to me well. However, it did not happen all the time.

Question is: Would port forwarding to the ATA improves sound quality. If it does, what port numbers should I need to forward. If not, can someone tell me how to improve the quality.

Thanks a million.....

[dibsmft]

I think you may need to keep a record of the calls that had bad sound. Where the people that you called also using voip? Check the sound codec that you are using as codec problems can sometimes lead to bad sound. Your router has SIP ALG and, as far as I can tell, you are lucky to have a router where it works correctly and you should not need to forward ports. Can you think of any changes that have been made to your network or the way that you call since you did your testing?

[JimmyNeutron]

Yes my router has SIP ALG. But it is disabled. Should I enable it? What does it do anyway?
Also what does port forwarding do? What situations do we need to port forward for VOIP? What ports do we forward? What are the difference?

dibsmft, can you please educate me for the above? I think a lot of newbie like me would like to know too. Thanks for your time and expertise.

I have not recorded any call yet. But I recall that after the porting, I add voipbuster for the second line for international call. Would that be the cause?
Here are the configurations.

[dibsmft]

Welcome to thw world of voip!

Your thoughts on adding Voipbuster are corrrect. When you added Voipbuster you added it with the same SIP port 5060 for both lines and this can cause confusion and mess up your phone calls if they work at all.
However, before you change that you could try turning on SIP ALG and see if it can handle that little problem. I think it should but my little experience with SIP ALG routers has always resulted in deactivating it as in each case the routers were ones where it did not function correctly. Any way, try that first.

I have sent you a pm

[zakhanz]

Change the port from 5060 to 5061 for voipbuster line. This should resolve the voice issue you are experiencing.

[Bloodsong]

While you should have the accounts using separate SIP ports, there are many other likely causes for voice degradation.

The voice stream actually uses RTP in the 10000-20000 range and is handled by a different portion of the ATA settings. For voice quality issues ensure that the correct codecs are setup, and turn on "Preferred codec only" to ensure you do not get dropped to a lower quality codec.

Do a Speed test and a Ping test to ensure your network latency isn't choppy and that you have sufficient bandwidth available for the codec in used (minimum 128Kbps Up/Down)

You may want to turn up your power settings to ensure that your phones are receiving enough juice along with the voices. ( I usually set mine to 9 on Linksys equipment, this is 49.5V and completely safe/acceptable for both phone and alarm system use.)