Packet loss with google voice

[vdantoni]

Hello guys,

I have started experiencing, about a week ago, a significant increase in packet loss when I use my obi100. Anveo, which I use as sp2 does not have the same problem. My internet service is with TWC, and I hope they are not playing tricks on the GV users to push their VOIP service

Whenever I call, or recieve a call, through google voice, about 2 percent of the packets are lost. I live in west Texas and the IP that google voice uses is 74.125.137.127, I don't know if that makes any difference. If I ping that IP, it tells me once in a while that the request has timed out, which seems consistent with packet loss. The ping time is about 60-70 ms.

On the other hand, if I ping www.google.com (74.125.227.212) I do not experience such packet loss and it only takes about 30 ms.

I tried changing my DNS to google's (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) but that made no difference. Voice quality is still acceptable but seems to have degraded some, I get the occasional DTMF tone when others speak and it didn't use to.

I know there's not very much that you guys can do to help me to resolve this issue, as it probably doesn't have anything to do with the obi, but if you have any idea to try, or have experienced the same issue please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

[Jackson]

I assume you have power cycled your Obi?

[vdantoni]

Yes, I did, but I should have specified that I get the same packet losses when I ping that server on my computers in the same network as my obi. Clearly, the obi100 is not causing the packet loss. I guess my question is, how do I find out where the packet loss occurs, and how do I report it to my isp? This issue may affect other obi users...

I am not an expert by any means, and the best I could do is to "tracert" google voice's ip, but it does not show any issues.

[SteveInWA]

First, it's not your ISP trying to punish you into using their VoIP service; that's illegal.

Second, from time to time, some GV users have experienced degraded call quality, that can persist for weeks.  It happened to me last year, and then it went away ... knock on wood.  It's likely a problem with one of the VoIP trunks or links into the PSTN managed by Google's telco partner.  There is no point in reporting it to your ISP, given that you say Anveo works fine.  The best thing you can do from a GV standpoint is to go to your call history on your GV web page and click the call quality button next to the call, to report it.

You can confirm that your ISP connection supports VoIP robustly enough by using the VoIP test here:

http://myspeed.visualware.com/servers/namerica/iad.php?testtype=-1

This site uses a Java applet to simulate an actual VoIP "conversation" between your computer and a server in a location you select.  Be sure to select the G.711 CODEC, which is the only one used by GV.  The result is expressed as a telco industry standard called the "Mean Opinion Score", or MOS, because actual humans used to judge the quality of phone calls.  It takes into account jitter, dropouts and latency, not just raw speed.  If you score less than a 4.0, call your ISP.  All other "speedtest" sites are useless for accurately testing VoIP capability.

[oobi99]

That looks really helpful, but the Java Applet has errors on FireFox and IE for me.  Is it working for others right now?

[vdantoni]

Steve, thanks for the reply. I think you hit the nail on the head, I have done a few traceroutes to that ip, and it seems that the packet loss occurs outside of the provider's network, actually the last "good" hop is in Mountain View, California. I guess we found the culprit. I will wait and see if they fix it, I guess.

oobi99, that applet doesn't work for me under firefox either, but you can google "voip test" and you will find a lot of different services to try. Try different servers, not just the one nearest to you.

[vdantoni]

It appears that the packet loss issue has resolved itself. I have reported the calls where I have experienced packet loss or random beeps to google using my call history, as suggested by SteveInWA.

Thanks for the suggestions.