How to troubleshoot call quality?

[gastric]

Picked up an Obi110 this week in hopes of leaving Vonage for some other VoIP as I'm a low minute user and can likely save $20/mo or more. The exercise has been fairly interesting, though a little frustrating and time consuming as well as the Obi doesn't really have a whole lot of concise technical information if you need to do anything that the really basic setup.

Anyway, onto my problem.

* Obi110 is setup with a static IP, and configured into the router QoS with the highest priority and placed one rung higher than the Vonage adapter that's been working without issue for years.
* Initial setup was with Google Voice on SIP1. Has worked awesome for the little time I've been testing it.
* I then setup a Callcentric account for e911. That process was extremely simple, I tested it and 911 reported the correct address. So far so good.
* I then started researching exactly how I would port my existing number, and if I really wanted to go through the effort and expense of giving it to Google Voice with the knowledge that in a few months who-knows-what-will-happen.
* So I decided to get a full inbound/outbound payg account with Callcentric to test with as I'd be happy paying $5/mo for more robust and long term service without having to wonder what will happen at the end of the year.
* Currently Callcentric is on SIP1 and Google Voice on SIP2, using GV purely for testing comparison at this point.

My issues is that on my end, and on the other persons end, the call quality through Callcentric is worse than with Google Voice. The physical call quality is lower with a generally less-clear and mildly distorted sound, there's some occasional breakup and a seemingly higher noise floor. It's not unusable, it's just not as clear. Dial using the same phone, same everything, but through Google Voice and it's instantly and noticeably better sounding.

I've adjusted the codecs so that ONLY 711U and 711A are enabled, in that order for Callcentric. Google Voice on SIP2 has the default Obi110 codec profile which has that same two codecs prioritized, but with others below that still enabled.

I ran a couple test calls, finally noticed the current call status where I can see quality measurements and which codecs are being used, and that you can actually record the codec used. During my test calls both Callcentric and GV used the same 711U codec. See attached for the two call quality reports. Not comfortable sharing the conversations my wife and I had to test the calls, but maybe there's some test tones I can play with an iPod held up to the phone that I can record and share? There must be some tone that's difficult to compress and transmit well via VoIP to stress test it.

What I haven't tried is a wired phone into the Obi110 instead of my AT&T DECT 6.0 in case that has some bearing. I also haven't tried swapping Google Voice into SIP1 again and putting Callcentric onto SIP2, though I doubt that will have any bearing as that's the way it was originally and GV sounded great on SIP1.

Any thoughts on this issue? All I've read is how great Callcentric's quality is.

Likely unrelated I had my Obi110 automatically power cycle itself for no apparent reason while on an active call. I was talking, I heard an audible background noise, the noise quickly ramped up in volume, then I heard the Obi110 power cycle. The call was not logged to history. I believe I was using Callcentric. I called the person back on Google Voice without issue.

[gastric]

Couple other quick comments. I did email Obi for support for the power cycle and they said.

Sometimes if there is a problem with the internet connection, it might reboot on itself (this is rare though).  Under that condition, the call history won't get recorded.

I happen to have a Time Warner Business Class account which is generally reliable though I was talking on the phone and not also using the internet actively at the time it power cycled so I cannot say if the internet crapped out for the 6 seconds it took for the call to die and the Obi to reset. I've been running a router Tomato which has good QoS, and as I said I've been running Vonage for years without a single hiccup. I have a fair amount of technical knowledge, just no specific experience delving deep into VoIP configuration of devices like the Obi. Though a lot more today than 3 days ago.

[Stewart]

Testing to 1-800-437-7950, do you hear a quality difference?  I don't here; a couple of clips are attached.  (CC seems to be having a problem passing caller ID to TF, but that's unrelated to quality.)

If you have poor quality with CC on this number, check whether you hear the difference using Gmail (for GV) and X-Lite (for CC).  If not, we can test at the RTP stream entering the OBi and/or with a line-powered corded phone.  If CC via X-Lite sounds bad, use Wireshark to analyze the RTP; perhaps for some reason packets from CC to you are getting lost or badly jittered.

If you hear no difference when calling the test number on your OBi, try various destinations and see if there is a pattern, e.g. trouble occurs only when calling Verizon mobiles.  Using a "bad" destination, see whether you have trouble from the softphones.

Sorry, I have no idea about the reboots, but if it happens repeatedly, see whether the OBi logs anything to syslog when it occurs, and see whether a ping running to ping.callcentric.com shows lots of lost packets at the time.

[gastric]

First, I appreciate the help you've offered.

Testing to 1-800-437-7950, do you hear a quality difference?  

I hear no immediate difference when listening to recorded automation.

However, I was having great difficulty getting my insurance provider's robot attendant to understand my voice and key presses in responses to commands. Tried 3 times to enter my phone #, failed with "invalid phone number" each time. Hung up, and immediately tried again via SIP2 GoogleVoice and it worked on the first try.

If you have poor quality with CC on this number, check whether you hear the difference using Gmail (for GV) and X-Lite (for CC).

Callcentric suggested I used Zoiper, which I tried. My wife said it sounded the worst of the 3. I don't think it's an applicable test as I have to use my computer's crappy mic and my speakers for the test, so it will instantly sound worse.

...use Wireshark to analyze the RTP; perhaps for some reason packets from CC to you are getting lost or badly jittered.

No idea what Wireshark is.

If you hear no difference when calling the test number on your OBi, try various destinations and see if there is a pattern, e.g. trouble occurs only when calling Verizon mobiles.  

The "pattern" is me using Callcentric.  Seriously. They're setup with the same 711U protocal, same everything other than SIP1 / SIP2. Logically it makes no sense. Ping is low 40ms or lower, jitter is low, nothing obvious is wrong. Honestly, I've spent more time trying to work out the Callcentric call quality issue than I normally spend actually talking on the phone in 2 months time.

Here's a general test using http://myvoipspeed.visualware.com/ also requested by Callcentric:

Upstream jitter     2.2 ms
Downstream jitter     1.2 ms
Upstream packet loss     0.0 %
Downstream packet loss     0.0 %
Upstream packet order     100.0 %
Downstream packet order     100.0 %
Packet discards     0.0 %
MOS     4.0
REGISTER ms     526 ms
INVITE ms     535 ms
BYE ms     3 ms
Test    Voice-over-IP

Vonage worked excellent, plug-n-play with either the PAP2 I originally had or whatever the adapter is I currently have which replaced the PAP2 after it died. All I had to do was give it a static IP and add that IP to my QoS in the router. 15 seconds worth of work, no issues in 5 years. And GoogleVoice is still working great. Stellar.

[Stewart]

Though I never attempted to track down the cause, I've had severe quality problems with Zoiper.  IMO it would be interesting if you compared CC on X-Lite with GV on Gmail.  Impairments caused by the computer speakers, sound card, etc. should apply to both and not affect the comparison much.  Ideally, you would hear a big difference on something answered by an IVR, which I could then try to replicate here.

Alternatively, let's look at the outbound DTMF issue.  For ITSP A (or B, whichever you are using for CC), General, see whether setting DTMFMethod to InBand, or setting it to RFC2833 allows you to reliably enter numbers into your insurance provider's system.  Also, do the same when calling 1-800-444-4444.  Enter 2 to specify another number, then enter e.g. 2345678901; the system will read back the digits it heard (if it hears 10).  If it's not a privacy issue for you, please post or PM the insurance system number.

Outbound voice to the speech recognition system would be extremely difficult to debug.  However, if you have trouble with outbound voice in general, it should be possible to leave yourself long voicemails via both paths, retrieve them via Web or email, and compare the results.

[gastric]

I had to phone FedEx to update my account tonight. It worked well on the single number responses but kept failing when entering my creditcard details. I finally succeeded by entering the numbers very slowly. Didn't have time to pull call details from the Obi.

Calling 1-800-444-4444 worked great no matter how fast I was banging in my phone number using either CC or GV. Call was seemingly equally clear on both services.

I'll do some more testing in a bit and update this post.

Ouch. Tried to use Obitalk to modify the DTMF configuration which was set to "auto" and am getting an HTML error. Occurs on both ITSP General pages.

Code Select Expand


XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
Location: http://www.obitalk.com/obinet/pg/obhdev/advcfg_VS_1_VP_1_?devid=277816&stid=0
Line Number 68, Column 63:   <value hash="d419f97c" type="input"  default="(1xxxxxxxxxx|<1>[2-9]xxxxxxxxx|011xx.|xx.|(Mipd)|[^*]@@.)" obt_current="(1xxxxxxxxxx|&lt;1919&gt;[2-9]xxxxxx|&lt;1&gt;[2-9]xxxxxxxxx|011xx.|xx.|(Mipd)|[^*]@@.)" obt="yes"/>
--------------------------------------------------------------^

This one occurs on the Setup Wizard.

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
Location: http://www.obitalk.com/obinet/pg/obhdev/advcfg_setupwizard?devid=277816&stid=0
Line Number 117, Column 63:   <value hash="d419f97c" type="input"  default="(1xxxxxxxxxx|<1>[2-9]xxxxxxxxx|011xx.|xx.|(Mipd)|[^*]@@.)" obt_current="(1xxxxxxxxxx|&lt;1919&gt;[2-9]xxxxxx|&lt;1&gt;[2-9]xxxxxxxxx|011xx.|xx.|(Mipd)|[^*]@@.)" obt="yes"/>
--------------------------------------------------------------^

No issues accessing via local web server and editing there.

And I'm done for tonight.

[Stewart]

No issues accessing via local web server and editing there.

Be sure that in System Management, Auto provisioning, you have set the Method for both ITSP Provisioning and OBiTalk Provisioning to Disabled.  Othewise, OBiTalk will overwrite your changes.