inconsistent quality phone calls

[shanek]

Okay so iv been using the obi100 for a couple weeks and am still getting aquainted with it.  I have google voice and a Voip company called VOIP VOIP currently set up with the obi100.  I have been making and receiving phone calls and sometimes the quality of the phone calls are great and other times the person complains about the quality.  Just today my mom said " it sounds like your a million miles away" and that my voice sounded robotic... so shes hearing weird sounds which sounds to me like my internet has something to do with it.  I originally spoke with her over the google voice account and i said okay well lets test my voipvoip account and i called her from that one and she still said it wasnt good.  So that pretty much tells me that it isnt just the service provider i am with, but more likely a internet problem. 

Okay so now on to my internet connection, I have a modem with high speed cable internet, and currently share my internet with 2 roomates.  They are both using computers and cell phones through the WIFI. i did a speed test and got 27mb/s and upload of .5 mb/s. on my home computer  So i have a good connection so i dont understand why this would be happening.   

I called my internet company and he said that maybe my router is the problem but I dont know all these technical settings and how to improve them.  I have a belkin N150 router and i dont have QOS (quality of services).  I called the obi help line and the person told me to change my QOS on my router ... yea well i just got a cheap router and it doesnt have the option, besides with my high speed connection you would think that we got plenty of high speed internet here!

[Stewart]

Although 0.5 megabits per second is easily sufficient for three voice calls, it is easily saturated by other kinds of uploads, e.g. filesharing, emailing attachments, uploading to a backup service, etc.  It's also possible that unwanted traffic is the culprit, e.g. malware , neighbors leeching off unsecured Wi-Fi, etc.

Try to determine whether your quality issue is related to other upstream traffic.  For example, when on a bad call, turn off Wi-Fi on your router and unplug the Ethernet cable for any computers.  If the call clears up, you will know that's the cause.  If not, there could be an intermittent problem with your cable modem or drop.

If the problem is caused by other traffic, you will need to get QoS.  Check whether your router can run Tomato (preferred) or DD-WRT.  Or, try to find an inexpensive replacement with the feature.