Who is your ISP?

[dlangley]

I had 3mb dsl from a local ISP for about a year and voipo was flawless. The minute I switched to comcast I started having problems. I havent complained to voipo because I've done my own trouble shooting and usually when a call gets dropped, messengers sign out, and some times the tv even goes out for 2-3 seconds. There are never any dropped packets but I have seen some 3000 ms ping times which I know isnt healthy for a voip phone call.
But its like I tell people, a few dropped calls are worth the $500 a month in savings.
On my dsl, voipo was as reliable as any landline service.

[jlachowin]

dlangley, at that point I would call comcast and have them come out and check your signals. Any splitters before the modem?

[scott2020]

I had AT&T DSL 6/768 for many years, and it was nearly flawless. I never got near that speed, but latency was good. Then they raised prices another $5 a month, combined with Charter giving free speed upgrades compelled me to make the change. Now I am on Charter 8/1 with 2 year price guarantee.

In my Asterisk logs I see at least once or twice a day where my SIP trunks are seeing high latency every now and then, which I didn't see on AT&T. It doesn't seem to hurt calls though.

[holmes4]

I have what started out as Verizon FiOS 15/2 service. Verizon abandoned northern New England and sold their customers to Fairpoint, which renamed the service FAST. They maintain it but are not expanding it.

It works well for me with VOIPo - I was having a lot of trouble with Vonage, which Vonage blamed on my ISP, but I have no issues with VOIPo.

I suppose an advantage of an ISP which is struggling to stay out of bankruptcy is that they don't feel the need to interfere with their customers' use of the service through "traffic shaping" (cough - Comcast - cough).

[ctaranto]

The Time Warner tech installed a SB5100 cable modem. You might want to upgrade your modem energyx...

If you're going to upgrade the cable modem, go with an SB6120 which is DOCSIS 3.0 capable. Even if your ISP doesn't currently support it, it may in the future. I upgraded my 5120 (DOCSIS 2.0) to a 6120 and saw my download rates jump for 12Mbps to 17Mbps (Comcast in my area is DOCSIS 3.0 enabled). Though I'm still waiting for FiOS due to Comcast's traffic shaping schemes.

[energyx]

I really don't want to buy my own modem since Time Warner gives me one with service (no extra rental charge). They are supposed to be going DOCSIS 3 in my market to compete more with U-Verse, so I may get a new one soon if I upgrade my speed tier. I don't think they'll give me a new modem unless I can prove something is wrong with the current one. Since my internet connection is stable I really have no recourse.

I did put the ATA behind an Airlink 101 AR430W running DD-WRT and have had no problems with it so far. I'll update if that changes.

[stevech]

Motorola SB5100 cable modem. Works fine.
Address 192.168.100.1 yields displays from modem. One is signal conditions. Watching this over time will tell you if things go marginal due to a flakey coax or system problems on their side. Also compare to neighbors'.

My good norms are
downstream signal strength -8 dBm plus or minus 6. More negative is bad.
upstream signal 40dBm plus or minus 5. More positive is bad. This is the one to watch closely. If it gets into the 50s, you've got a flakey coax somewhere, or they do. Their cable system head-end controls the upstream signal strength - it asks for a stronger signal if their end is a weak signal. The downstream is uncontrolled- just affected by your coax/splitters and their offered signal.

The upstream is low frequency. The downstream is high. So a break or poor connection in the center conductor of the coax somewhere will affect the upstream more than the downstream.

There should be one 2-way splitter between your cable modem and the main coax entering the house. And that should be ahead of any whole-house amps you have.

A well trained (few are) tech from the cable co. should know all this and check it all. Even if they have to be pushed and prodded to crawl in the attic or under the house. Replace coax while there, just in case.

[chpalmer]

Motorola SB5100 cable modem. Works fine.

My good norms are
downstream signal strength -8 dBm plus or minus 6. More negative is bad.
upstream signal 40dBm plus or minus 5. More positive is bad.

OdBmV is a better goal for downstream technically but your downstream SNR is also a pretty important number...

I always tell my clients to do three ping tests for me when troubleshooting...

ping the modem c:>ping -n 100 192.168.100.1 wiggle all your ethernet connections. Should be 1-2ms

Ping the modems gateway. c:>ping -n 50 <ISP Gateway> wiggle your rf connections and watch the screen... See if the wiggling affects anything...10-20ms avg. depending on system load. Anymore your area may be oversold...

Ping something far out there... use -n 50 there also and post em all.
20-80ms avg. in the nation.

If your signal levels are causing you issues, you will have packet loss between your modem and the gateway. But it doesn't matter if your not getting the packet loss. Your ISP is supposed to keep you within DOCSIS specs.

Look here for recommended signal levels. http://www.dslreports.com/faq/5862 Notice the difference between DOCSIS standards and the recommended levels. My ISP was tighter until they needed to cut costs...

Look for issues throughout temperature swings that might affect your levels.

Keep in mind that the RF is generated from the nodes on the poles or shelters in you neighborhood. Brought there via fiber. Unless you live next to the cable co offices...

[Rstaib]

Lake Wales Wireless. Excellent service

[energyx]

Motorola SB5100 cable modem. Works fine.
Address 192.168.100.1 yields displays from modem. One is signal conditions. Watching this over time will tell you if things go marginal due to a flakey coax or system problems on their side. Also compare to neighbors'.

My signals are always -6 dBmV down, 39 dBmV up and 37-39 SNR. I doubt my signal is the problem. So far since I moved the ATA behind DD-WRT, there have been no problems. It makes no sense to me, but I'll update if we see any more anomalies.

Edit: To add, my pings to modem are 3.5ms solid, 8.5ms to the modem gateway and 25ms to Google's DNS servers.