Sound Cuts Out for Half a Second Randomly

[FONGO_steve]

after configuring QOS on my dir-655 I don't have sound cuts out anymore. The only time it happen now is when I'm put on hold listening to automation.

Thanks for letting us know about that. Does anyone else here have a router that they can experiment with QoS on?

We have some heavy monitoring in place right now and are continuing to do some heavier testing in some specific areas to try and narrow down what is causing this.

Does anybody on our freephoneline DSL currently have this issue? If so, can you please PM me?

[brentw]

Tried Jake's suggestion and tested the softphone.
Looks like it still happens.
I only tested for 2 1/2 minutes but it did happen a couple of times.

I have had QoS running the entire time.
Also tested with ATA connected directly to modem.
The problem still happens.

Ninja if it happens when you are on hold listening to automation then it still happens.
QoS did not solve the problem.

Also keep in mind the frequency that it happens changes throughout the day.
I will try to keep track from now on how bad it is at different times of the day.
From memory it seems to be worse during the day and evening, and during off peak times like 1am it's not nearly as bad.

[brentw]

Just did some more testing with the softphone.
Plugged my computer directly into my cable modem.
Was on into my voicemail at 4:01pm.
Within a minute there were more than 5 times that it cutout for half a second.

Changed my prompt level to extended, she talks a lot longer now before having to hit a button to keep her talking.
Just did another test at 4:05pm, happened 4 times in 60 seconds.

[cp24isgoodnews]

I can say that I have enabled QoS from day one without change and went as far as to put the ATA in a DMZ to no success, and i tried the other idea of just trying to isolate it being the ATA with just using the softphone but sadly there are still packet losses basically the same as the ATA. But one thing that a lot of user have posted is directly connected there ATA's to there modems (standalone modem that is meaning it not a wireless/router combo usually has only one Ethernet port) Anyways the point to all this is just by connecting it directly to the modem this isolates the issue to being either the server or the ATA because your not having to deal with any routing or port forwarding if that makes sense. Another thing worth noting is that no matter if I use bell DSL from a neighbor about 2 blocks away from me or using my own rogers connection or a connection about 15 blocks from it, the problem still exists. One more thing to note is all tests where done with having the ATA on the router and then directly connected to the modem (both Rogers and Bell) and no changes still drops packets. These tests where done calling 2 different places one being pizza pizza because i can make the prompts repeat themselves by pressing (*) and calling 310-Bell and again making the prompts repeat themselves. Steve is there any other tests you would like us to try before it gets to cold or worse snowed in

[cp24isgoodnews]

maybe somone or steve has the answer to this question, I don't personally know anyone who has freephonline DSL but would like to know if it shares the same settings when using the same DSL line, so lets say i had bell and FPL DSL and they both go through the same line would the routes not be the same if your leasing the lines or am i wrong ? meaning when traffic is directed wouldn't it go through the same nodes? hopefully that made sense if it didn't steve i can explain if you have a chance give me a call

[ninja]

Tried Jake's suggestion and tested the softphone.
Ninja if it happens when you are on hold listening to automation then it still happens.
QoS did not solve the problem.

I know it still happening, but only during the automation in voice mail or on hold. At lease now I could talk and don't have to repeat myself anymore

[laurent]

I must admit that, even though a large number of people have experienced this issue in normal phones calls, I have only seen it happen to me in voicemail fiddling. I have not had any cuts during phone calls, but I'm a very light user so my statistical significance is on the low end.

I have, however, QoS not only 'setup', but proven to work.

I've ran many calls with my cellphone in front of a radio and me listening to the music from the FPL phone, and then vice-versa. It's always fine and dandy.

This issue has got to be one of the most evasive we've seen.

If I were a programmer at FPL, I would quickly whip out an SIP client application that establishes a connection to my server, fires a few thousand packets back and forth and record data and report back. Something of an afternoon project

But seriously, you need data better than people reporting or Ping Plotter charts. UDP traffic certainly doesn't behave like ICMP pings make it look like. You can only find problems with actual data streams that are monitored. There's a million VoIP testing tools out there. Perhaps you could write up a quick guide on using tool X, run a certain test, and give back the results?

Oh yes I said I would record with wireshark. Let's do this now.

[laurent]

Well, I'm sorry Steve but apparently, all the equipment I have at home are switches, no hub. Consequently, I could not build a setup where I could record all data to the ATA with Wireshark. I'll have to repeat the test later with my hub I have at work.

However, as I was already in the mood for it and had quite a lot of laundry to attend to, I did the following test.

I called my FPL line from my cellphone. I placed the cellphone near the computer's speakers and put on some music. I then hooked a headset to my home cordless phone, and went on to do some laundry listening to music streaming through pc -> cellphone -> FPL -> DSL -> ATA -> cordless. Crazy setup and the sound is not that great!

I listened to 7 minutes of continuous music. Absolutely impeccable. No glitches, no cuts, no delays. Other than the horrible sound quality (voice codecs have hilarious artifacts when dealing with electronic music), it was wonderful.

Then, I swapped the setup around. From my cordless phone (ATA/FPL), I called my cell. I placed the cordless near the speaker, put some headphones on my cell, and went back to do 15 more minutes of laundry while listening to the music. Again, impeccable. Not a single cut or glitch or delay. Again, horrible sound quality, much worse than with the iphone's mic. I assume the panasonic whatever cordless phone is already breaking up sound nicely even before it reaches ATA.

In any case, I'm very sorry (to other forum members) to inform you that in my case, there's no issue, at least not tonight.

Oh and I forgot Ping Plotter running since last Friday, so I now have about 280 000 pings to graph. In any case, here's the graph from the duration of my calls, about 25 minutes in total.

Interesting points to note about this graphic:
1) there's a few packet loss here and there on various hops. Didn't seem relevant to the voice data.
2) I set my Ping Plotter to use UDP pings, not ICMP. This way, I am apparently a bit closer to reality for VoIP in the test.

I'll try to bring a hub home so that I can repeat this test with wireshark running, but since it didn't do the issue to me, the log would only prove that I can't reproduce the issue others have.

One more thing: the audio source was a huge (34 minutes) youtube video, so I had quite some data going on during the entire test, which explains why all ping times go from near-zero to fifty-ish.

[cp24isgoodnews]

strange packet loss after 3 minutes into a call it seemed the worst tonight calling pizza pizza as a test, was good for the first two minutes and then bam right at almost three minutes packets where dropping like crazy once again and of course we all know what this resulted in (lost words on call)

[Jake]

maybe somone or steve has the answer to this question, I don't personally know anyone who has freephonline DSL but would like to know if it shares the same settings when using the same DSL line, so lets say i had bell and FPL DSL and they both go through the same line would the routes not be the same if your leasing the lines or am i wrong ? meaning when traffic is directed wouldn't it go through the same nodes? hopefully that made sense if it didn't steve i can explain if you have a chance give me a call

I have FPL DSL, and I used to have Bell DSL so maybe I can answer you.

Both DSLs obviously go down the same copper pair to the exchange, so that bit is the same.
Bell DSL would then go through their servers, and FPL DSL connects straight to theirs, so they do take different routes. If I tracert to voip.freephoneline.ca I get there within a couple of hops with FPL. See my chart in my post previous. With Bell it went through a lot more servers.

[mitwtim]

Ninja, I too have had QoS running since the beginning and it has not helped at all.

Laurent I have read many of your posts and wish I could have the same quality voice calls you seemed to have during your laundry test. For us the performance is still terrible.

I am at my wits end ith this setup. I am sure the people reporting here can't be the only ones expereincing the issues. Well, if they are, perhaps a good starting point would be to blow away our problem accounts and create them again. The fact that my voicemail to email was all screwed up and wouldn't work until someone went and did sometbing to my account sure makes me think it wasn't setup properly in the first place.

The fact that there are several people like me who are having problems with a variety of different providers from across Ontario (at least) sure points to an issue with the FPL servers, or internal network, to me.

Steve, Is there any other sort of monitoring of our lines that can be done?

[FONGO_steve]

Steve, Is there any other sort of monitoring of our lines that can be done?

edit: I'm no longer looking for any new testers for the below

Yep - I was just in a meeting about this actually. I'll gladly take a handful of volunteers who meet the following criteria:

1) Are experiencing this problem on a regular basis and can easily duplicate it
2) Have either a static IP, an IP that doesn't change often, or leave their internet connected for several days (as to keep the same IP)
3) Are remotely pingable (I can test this)
4) Can run PingPlotter for the duration of several 5+ minute test calls

Anyone who meets the above criteria please message me the following:
IP address
ISP name/line speed
Description of your network setup from modem to ATA and everything between.

We'll get some monitoring setup for a handful of the volunteers right away and will follow-up with the next steps. Once we've reached a suitable number, I'll edit this thread saying so.

We also still have monitoring underway on most of our core network switches as well.

[cp24isgoodnews]

hey just add the note if I was noticed as not being pingable, I now am and have made the change to be pinged,

Steve i sent you a message under the message tag RE:CP24isgoodnews INFO

[brentw]

Steve, pm sent to you.

[cp24isgoodnews]

steve i have corrected the PM issue, just confirm when you have a chance that you got the pm

[FONGO_steve]

Monitoring should be setup on CP24 and Brentw by the AM.

[andyha]

I just signed up and got my config file this morning. So far, not so good. I am getting the exact same drop-offs too. When people talk every minute or so there will be a half a second blank space. Very frustrating! If all went well I was going to port my number over here, but now I'm not sure as this is a BIG quality issue for me. Guess I will wait for a little while to see if this gets resolved. I am using a PAP2T ATA. I get the same dropoffs using G729a and G711u. All other settings are as per config file. Have Linksys wrt54gl running ddWRT firmware. Have my ATA's mac address added to QOS and set to premium. Still get the dropouts. Put my ATA into DMZ, still get the dropouts....It's not my internet connection because I have accounts with other voip providers and don't have this problem.

[mitwtim]

It's not my internet connection because I have accounts with other voip providers and don't have this problem.

Hi Andyha. What ISP are you using? That is good to know that you have other VoIP providers to be able compare the service to. That would help to indicate it is a problem with only the FPL service and hopefully they can correct it.

[andyha]

It's not my internet connection because I have accounts with other voip providers and don't have this problem.

Hi Andyha. What ISP are you using? That is good to know that you have other VoIP providers to be able compare the service to. That would help to indicate it is a problem with only the FPL service and hopefully they can correct it.

Hey there, I am with Shaw cable....it's funny you know I was just remembering that I had a problem almost identical to this about a year ago. I was getting dropoffs around every 30 seconds or so almost identical to what is happening here. I contacted my voip provider and he led me through all the standard config type stuff. Well nothing made any difference. Then I found out about this site:
http://myspeed.visualware.com/servers/n ... ywest.com/

I did a test and found that my jitter was way up high indicating a problem with my ISP. I called shaw and they did their test and found the same thing. They sent a guy out and within about 5 minutes he discovered that the splitter inside the cable box was bad. He replaced it and my voip calls were back to perfect!
Now I have no idea how FPL works but the problem the bad splitter was giving me was EXACTLY the same as what is happening here. Hey just a thought....

[FONGO_steve]

Guess I will wait for a little while to see if this gets resolved.

I can assure you it's not a case of if it will - I won't sleep until it does, and of course we won't leave everyone hanging. Despite being a free service, we still aim to be just as good, if not better, than the competition!

I did a test and found that my jitter was way up high indicating a problem with my ISP. I called shaw and they did their test and found the same thing. They sent a guy out and within about 5 minutes he discovered that the splitter inside the cable box was bad. He replaced it and my voip calls were back to perfect!
Now I have no idea how FPL works but the problem the bad splitter was giving me was EXACTLY the same as what is happening here. Hey just a thought....

We of course aren't ruling out that this problem could have come up with some traffic changes outside our network with other Canadian ISPs. Even if this is the case, and if we can link the problem to not being us 100%, then we still have a fair variety of options that we can use to try and adapt our server communication to better work.

I can assure you all that we are still working incredibly hard on this problem. Anyone following this thread will know that there's not only a lot of different variables here, but that the problem is also somewhat unpredictable in nature as to who it affects. We won't stop until the problem is identified and fixed for those who are affected!

[cp24isgoodnews]

I won't sleep until it does, and of course we won't leave everyone hanging. Despite being a free service, we still aim to be just as good, if not better, than the competition!

I totally agree with Steve on this matter I will not sleep until the issue is solved (got my self in a hot boat because I recommeded the service to others and now there asking me why is this happening) hence I am trying to determine the cause of this issue and will stop at no cost lol

[brentw]

I'm in the exact same position.
Have 3 or 4 friends that I setup using fpl and they are doing a good job of reminding me how annoying it is...

[mitwtim]

Hi Steve. I am glad to see that there is a real push to try and get this solved. If I can lend any more weight to dedicating as many resources to it as possible I personally would really appreciate a resolution in the next day or two. As I've said before I pushed my wife to change over to this service, something she didn't want to do because she was concerned with the quality of this type of technology. It was a challenge to change from traditional copper lines with Bell over to Rogers Home Phone in the past, as well. But, eventually I had her convinced and cited a number of people we know how are FPL customers and say it is really good.

I had heard such great things about FPL, and took the recommendation to change. Unfortunately I didn't even have a chance to experience the high level of service that people have reported in the past before the "server upgrades", and manged to join just when these type of problems cropped up. For people like me I can't even say to my wife and others that it used to be really solid, because I didn't ever experience that.

But, from her perspective "it has been nothing but problems". I hear a lot of "you get what you pay for", and really I don't know how else to defend FPL's service. Bottom line is our phone has been unusable since November 3rd when I first contributed to this forum. Prior to theat it was MWI issues, which were never resolved since a refresh interval of 10 minutes is still ridiculous.

The fact that the sound cut outs are affecting new users who are "testing" out the service before porting their numbers over means that it could cost you many new customers, not to mention all of the word of mouth customers who if they listen to frustrated people like my wife will be very scared off permanently.

Please, I am really asking because I want to stick with FPL, if there is anyway to pour more people on this and get it solved right away, I would love to remain a FPL customer. Please throw every resource you can at this, it has been going on for more than a month now. Thanks!

[cp24isgoodnews]

Hi Steve. I am glad to see that there is a real push to try and get this solved. If I can lend any more weight to dedicating as many resources to it as possible I personally would really appreciate a resolution in the next day or two. As I've said before I pushed my wife to change over to this service, something she didn't want to do because she was concerned with the quality of this type of technology. It was a challenge to change from traditional copper lines with Bell over to Rogers Home Phone in the past, as well. But, eventually I had her convinced and cited a number of people we know how are FPL customers and say it is really good.

I had heard such great things about FPL, and took the recommendation to change. Unfortunately I didn't even have a chance to experience the high level of service that people have reported in the past before the "server upgrades", and manged to join just when these type of problems cropped up. For people like me I can't even say to my wife and others that it used to be really solid, because I didn't ever experience that.

But, from her perspective "it has been nothing but problems". I hear a lot of "you get what you pay for", and really I don't know how else to defend FPL's service. Bottom line is our phone has been unusable since November 3rd when I first contributed to this forum. Prior to theat it was MWI issues, which were never resolved since a refresh interval of 10 minutes is still ridiculous.

The fact that the sound cut outs are affecting new users who are "testing" out the service before porting their numbers over means that it could cost you many new customers, not to mention all of the word of mouth customers who if they listen to frustrated people like my wife will be very scared off permanently.

Please, I am really asking because I want to stick with FPL, if there is anyway to pour more people on this and get it solved right away, I would love to remain a FPL customer. Please throw every resource you can at this, it has been going on for more than a month now. Thanks!

Sadly it isn't that simple this kind of problem being random as it is is difficult to resolve as again there are many factors here (ie different hardware, different settings, and different variables here) its going to take some time to figure it out, Steve is doing his best to try and help and resolve the issue but don't expect it to be solved in a second or two with a push of a button. The bottom line is sooner or later it will be solved but for now my suggestion for the time being might be to get either rogers home phone or bell for the time being or just use your cellphones, i know it isn't practical for the time being but in time this will be solved!!

[tbrummell]

Do the ATA's support jitter buffers? I have an Asterisk server, and I use hard phones (Polycom & Mitel) with jitter buffer enabled on the server. While using the hard phones I never, ever experience the drop outs. Yet my wife, who uses the cordless on a PAP2NA gets them quite often. She now uses the hard phone for a lot of her calls and the WAF has gone through the roof. But the times when she quickly answers the phone with the cordless, I get some pretty mean glares as I hear her repeating herself or asking the other end to repeat. Is it funny that everyone who is reporting the problem is on an ATA? At least I don't recall seeing someone with a hard phone complain. Just sayin....