Please help, call quality is poor

[h4332]

I have a Linksys PAP2T ATA with a Linksys WRT54G router with Tomato firmware and I am using Acanac internet. My DSL modem is a TP-Link TD-8816 set in bridge mode. All 3 have the latest firmware.

I recently signed up with FreePhoneLine and I am having some problems. Call quality is very poor. I enabled the G711u codec and it helped a little but not enough.

Is the problem on my end or FreePhoneLine.ca's end? Can someone from FPL send me a PM if they read this and I will provide you with my registration details.

I did some port forwarding and set a static IP and put the ATA in the DMZ but I am not sure if I did it correctly. (192.168.1.115 is the IP for the ATA)

I checked the ports with utorrent port checker and none of them seem to be open, strange?

NAT Mapping Enable and NAT Keep Alive Enable are both set to Yes in the ATA.

Here are some screenshots:





I also tried port triggering:

[h4332]

Bump

[laurent]

What do you mean by "call quality poor"?

[h4332]

other side hard to hear me, delay, echo, crackling

And I can't seem to get my ports open, I check with uTorrent port checker and they are still closed even after I did all the above and opened them up in windows firewall

[laurent]

1. Don't use "Triggered port forwarding" in your Tomato router. Use "Basic" port fowarding. You will notice that Basic forwarding asks you for one more information, the IP address to forward it to. You need to put the internal IP address of the device on which your phone runs. In your screenshots we see that you've assigned 192.168.1.115 to your Linksys adapter, so put that in.

Also, disable DMZ. Port forwarding is in contradiction with DMZ. You either a) use DMZ to forward all unforwarded ports to a specific device, or b) you forward the desired ports to a specific device. You can't have both. I recommend disabling DMZ, and using Basic port forwarding to setup all 6 ports in UDP (5060, 5061, 6060, 6061, 13000, 13001).

2. If the sound going OUT has issues, then it has nothing to do with port forwarding and firewall (unless you have outbound port blocking, but then you would have NO SOUND whatsoever, so this isn't your issue.) If you have outbound sound problem, then it is most likely to be a problem with congested traffic either in your network, or with your internet provider. It most likely is in your LAN. Are you running programs on other computers that could be using all your upstream bandwidth? A few torrents maybe? Try to shut them all off to see if it helps.

If this fixes your problem, then the solution is to instruct your Tomato router to give a higher priority to VoIP traffic than it does for other traffic, like torrents. This is often referred to as "QoS" or Quality of Service.

[h4332]

1. OK, I disabled triggered port forwarding and DMZ and used basic port forwarding.

2. To clarify, the other side has trouble hearing me. I have no problems hearing them. So does your advice here still apply? How do I set up QoS? There is a whole page of settings and I am unfamiliar with it, thanks.

[laurent]

Yes, that's precisely what could be wrong. You see, most internet connections have very large downloading capacity and a much smaller upload capacity. For example, my typical DSL gives me more than 5 mbps in download, but only 0.8 in upload. Since uploading can become congested rapidly, the first place where it will become obvious is realtime applications such as voice over IP. The packets with your voice have a hard time getting out of your modem in time possibly because other packets of data are trying to get out at the same time (ex: torrent), and there's not much place for them all.

That's a theory of course, I have no idea what is your actual situation, but in many cases, this is the problem.

QoS is not trivial to setup and requires some skills. I'm sorry I can't help you much with that, but if you search on Google with your router's firmware name with "VOIP" and "QOS", chances are you will find other threads on the discussion.

[h4332]

Good god I enabled QoS and now the outbound and inbound calls are terrible. Not to mention it is just not working at all, based on looking at the graphics, seems everything will get the highest priority which totally defeats the purpose of QoS... It has just been an extremely frustrating trial.

(Maximize your window to see the full image)

[laurent]

Yes well, QoS is a complicated system and the Tomato firmware doesn't do much to simplify things. Rather, it's built to be powerful and flexible, which makes the configuration of it even more complicated.

First, it's capital that you set real limits for upstream and downstream bandwidth. Go run tests on speedtest.net with nothing running to get your maximum speeds. Then put these values in QoS, tomato uses them to calculate percentages of use.

Then in Classifications, you need to create entires there so that the router and detect what's VOIP and give it high priority over the rest. I used UDP ports as a detection mechanism, since those are constant. Then also make sure that everything else has only a high priority, and voip alone has "highest".

I'll grab a few screenshots later.

[h4332]

bump

[laurent]

You're bumping just in time, I posted my QOS for Tomato yesterday in the Tips and tricks forum!

Here's the link:
http://forum.freephoneline.ca/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1856