RE: bad Vonage connection, was Vonage complains about VoIP-blocki ng

["Hannigan, Martin" <hannigan () verisign com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John R Levine [mailto:johnl () iecc com]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 1:55 AM
> To: Hannigan, Martin
> Cc: nanog () nanog org
> Subject: RE: bad Vonage connection, was Vonage complains about
> VoIP-blocking
>
>
> > Odd regarding the Vonage connection. Their sitting on UU 
> from where I
> > can see and I have excellent transit to them from Comcast.
>
> I'm on Sprint, and the service was fine for a year and a 
> half.  In recent
> months it deteriorated to the point where more often than not 
> I couldn't
> understand the other party at all, even though they always 
> said they could
> hear me fine.  Since my connection is symmetrical (t1, not 
> dsl or cable)
> and my stats always say I have spare inbound capacity, I'm 
> sure it's not
> at my end.
>
> > I've tested Vonage, only because I had it, with the Semena 
> NE2000 Network
> > Test Device and introduced multiple error, path, and 
> latency issues and it
> > stood up very well. At one point, I jacked up the latency 
> to 4000ms and I
> > was still able to place, communicate, and drop calls 
> effectively. I was
> > very surprised at how it handled that large introduced latency.
>
> It wasn't latency, it was jitter and mostly dropouts.  I 
> think they have
> vast amounts of buffering so latency is tolerable if you can stand the
> talking to the moon effect.

I have not tested jitter, but I will now. 

I had some dropouts when one of my machines was "being bad", 
and while it didn't usually disco, it did drop call content. I was 
surprised it hung on to the call for as long as it did.
Longest I can attest to is about 25 seconds. I haven't gotten 
around to figuring out why it held the session at all.

> > I don't know about Vonage support. Never tried it.
>
> That's the problem.  It no longer exists.  E-mail is auto-acked and
> ignored, phone calls go through the usual voice jail tree 
> until you get to
> the point when it would queue me for a person, where I always 
> got a busy
> signal.
>
> Calling the number to cancel was no problem getting through, 
> but by then
> it was too late, I'd already ported the number to Lingo who 
> is slightly
> cheaper and has a much larger local calling area, roughly Honolulu to
> Helsinki.

Have you experienced any blocking on Vonage? 

-M<