asterisk users - Feb 2005 - Terrible inbound call quality vs. outbound

Hi. I'm having a terrible time with call quality coming into my * box.

I'm using VoicePulse over a 1.5/1.5 mbit line. Outbound calls are 
crystal clear on both the RX/TX sides of the conversation. Inbound 
calls, though, are HORRIBLY garbled on the RX side. I can barely hear 
the caller, but they report my quality is fine. Getting loads of 
garbled sounds and weird echoes. (Could just be jumbled up voice 
packets?)

Details:
2.4 GHz P4
Fresh Fedora Core 3 install
Fresh Asterisk install

VoicePulse connect service
Cisco 7960 phones
Gigabit routing and NICs internally

Any ideas?

I am experiencing the same problem, except I do not use Voicepulse outbound.
I have 100 Mbps connection, so it should not be a bandwidth issue.   Last
Thursday they had a 4 hour outage on inbound calls.  The call quality has
deteriorated since.  I am in the process of looking for another provider.

Keep in mind Voicepulse can not load balance incoming calls.  They have one
server handling all calls.  On the out bound they have two servers, and I
chose to use server 2 than 1.  I assume others have as well.  So each of
these servers have 1/2 the call volume compared to the inbound route.  

Gene

-----Original Message-----

Message: 11
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 15:21:52 -0800
From: Robert Goodyear <me@jrob.net>
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Terrible inbound call quality vs. outbound
To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
Message-ID: <0E2263AB-74A8-11D9-8E4B-000393DC505E@jrob.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

Hi. I'm having a terrible time with call quality coming into my * box.

I'm using VoicePulse over a 1.5/1.5 mbit line. Outbound calls are 
crystal clear on both the RX/TX sides of the conversation. Inbound 
calls, though, are HORRIBLY garbled on the RX side. I can barely hear 
the caller, but they report my quality is fine. Getting loads of 
garbled sounds and weird echoes. (Could just be jumbled up voice 
packets?)

Details:
2.4 GHz P4
Fresh Fedora Core 3 install
Fresh Asterisk install

VoicePulse connect service
Cisco 7960 phones
Gigabit routing and NICs internally

Any ideas?

I've had similar problems but with dial-up modems.

ISP's mantain large queues in the inbound side of your connection to
maximize download
speed, but that same hurts latency on your side. You may be saturating the BW
and thus
the queue makes it's job.
Use the bw conditioner that is described in the advanced linux routing howto, in
the
cookbook, that is named a thing like "the ultimate bw conditioner, fast
downloads and
uploads and blablabla". Modify it by putting the ports that the RTP or IAX
stream pases,
assigning them with a filter to the interactive class.
Also don't forget to put the correct uplink and downlink values, or you will
be putting a
bw restrictor.

The thing that is very weird is that only inbound calls are affected, I would
think that
both inbound and outbound calls were affected.

--- asterisk-users-request@lists.digium.com wrote:

Hi. I'm having a terrible time with call quality coming into my * box.

I'm using VoicePulse over a 1.5/1.5 mbit line. Outbound calls are 
crystal clear on both the RX/TX sides of the conversation. Inbound 
calls, though, are HORRIBLY garbled on the RX side. I can barely hear 
the caller, but they report my quality is fine. Getting loads of 
garbled sounds and weird echoes. (Could just be jumbled up voice 
packets?)


Miguel Ruiz Velasco


		
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Do you Yahoo!? 
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I've had similar problems but with dial-up modems.

ISP's mantain large queues in the inbound side of your connection to
maximize download
speed, but that same hurts latency on your side. You may be saturating the BW
and thus
the queue makes it's job.
Use the bw conditioner that is described in the advanced linux routing howto, in
the
cookbook, that is named a thing like "the ultimate bw conditioner, fast
downloads and
uploads and blablabla". Modify it by putting the ports that the RTP or IAX
stream pases,
assigning them with a filter to the interactive class.
Also don't forget to put the correct uplink and downlink values, or you will
be putting a
bw restrictor.

The thing that is very weird is that only inbound calls are affected, I would
think that
both inbound and outbound calls were affected.
> 
> --- asterisk-users-request@lists.digium.com wrote:
> 
> Hi. I'm having a terrible time with call quality coming into my * box.
> 
> I'm using VoicePulse over a 1.5/1.5 mbit line. Outbound calls are 
> crystal clear on both the RX/TX sides of the conversation. Inbound 
> calls, though, are HORRIBLY garbled on the RX side. I can barely hear 
> the caller, but they report my quality is fine. Getting loads of 
> garbled sounds and weird echoes. (Could just be jumbled up voice 
> packets?)
> 
Miguel Ruiz Velasco


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. 
http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo

Unfortunately no matter how much Qos tagging you do it will not help the
inbound side of your call.  Qos is a two way street.  Everyone in the path
has to support it.  If even one router in the path does not support it you
can get very poor results.  

Wouldn't it be funny if Voicepulse was not doing Qos tagging with QOs on
their routers?  The drops in the incoming calls could be they are not
prioritizing voice traffic.  The outbound leg is fine because you are.

Also, as mentioned before, the quality issues I am experiencing only occur
on some DIDs.  Specifically 703 numbers are the worst.  Last week during the
4 hour outage, 703 (reston Virginia) numbers would not work but 240
(Bethesda Md, across the river) did.  Go figure.

Try www.txlink.net.  They may have a DID in your area.  They have a fairly
large calling area.  They have a different pricing model then Voicepulse,
but that may work in your favor.  

Gene


Original Message:
-------------------------------

Yeah, I've been beating my head against the wall thinking it was 
something with my config, but alas, it seems to be a case of me needing 
to RTFF (Read The Effing Forum) and ask the community about their 
experiences.

Sadly, VP seems to have a fairly high comparative "rating" against 
other VOIP service while they seem to maintain horrible customer 
support and crappy line quality. Sigh.

I wonder why the TX side of the conversation is clear though? Seems 
like the packets would be treated identically since it's a full-duplex 
conversation.

/rg

On Feb 1, 2005, at 4:29 PM, Brian Dingman wrote:
> I have also had issues with VP Connect ONLY on incoming calls also. It
> doesn't happen all the time and has cleared up in recent weeks. But
> when it happens, it would sound like I was listening to the caller
> through a blown speaker.
>
> Have you reported this problem to them?
>
> Some things to try would be to turn off the jitterbuffer and disable 
> trunking.
>
>
> On Tue, 1 Feb 2005 16:12:45 -0800, Robert Goodyear <me@jrob.net>
wrote:
>> Oh I've tried all manner of packet shaping and QoS tagging...
it's
>> certainly not an issue with the ISP.
>>
>> I think Gene Willingham may have the right answer, that VoicePulse
>> cannot handle the load.
>>
>> Anyone else have any thoughts? Maybe I need to find another IAX 
>> service
>> provider to test a different DID in my area.
>>
>> /rg
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com 
> [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of 
> Gene Willingham
> Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 6:49 PM
> To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] RE:Terrible inbound call quality 
> vs. outbound 
> 
> 
> 
> I am experiencing the same problem, except I do not use 
> Voicepulse outbound.
> I have 100 Mbps connection, so it should not be a bandwidth 
> issue.   Last
> Thursday they had a 4 hour outage on inbound calls.  The call 
> quality has deteriorated since.  I am in the process of 
> looking for another provider.
[...]

Not to just "me too", but....me too.  I've contacted their support
on
numerous occasions, and have been given busywork to do (run ping plotter
for 24 hours, send us the results, etc) and never receive a response
that acknowledges a problem of any sort.

Daryl