voip.ms discussion

[notsure]

^^^^ We've been using it for our long distance only since late spring/early summer. We still have about $10 on the original $25 I put into our account. And that's with us gone for almost all of August and the house sitter making a ton of long distance calls!

No call quality issues at all since using dd-wrt with QoS enabled.

The only reason we haven't gone voip.ms for all our calls is the alarm is still using POTS.

[WalterP]

I made the switch to voip.ms several months ago, and I haven't seen (or heard!) any problems from my alarm system using the ATA. I also don't have any problems sending or receiving faxes, if I stay away from the value setting. I may be lucky with my particular setup, but based on my experience I don't see the need for a POTS line for your alarm. Also, prior to switching I was using Videotron's VOIP services for three years without any alarm monitoring problems. For security reasons I have the cable modem and ATA connected to a robust UPS unit that will outlast the battery in the alarm system. If you're using an ATA you may want to test it on a voip.ms line to see if you really do need the POTS line.

[MarcP]

Speaking of alarms, I've been with Counterforce and ADT using Vonage, Primus VoIP, and now voip.ms. Never had a single problem with alarm codes going out. And faxing works too as I used mine extensively when selling our house.

[Biggworm]

Been using voip.ms for a while and have found it to be great.

Today I had several callers let me know that a curious thing happened when calling my DID. I was able to hear the issue myself so there goes the "You're crazy" response.

Scenario was, someone calls, there is no answer so the call goes to voice mail (as configured) but initially the caller hears a male voice saying in French "Your call will be answered in sequence", then my VM greeting starts and ends abruptly and what sounds like on hold music starts with no opportunity to leave a VM (music on hold is not turned on for my DID).

Router and ATA are configured correctly, registration with voip.ms was OK and if the call was picked up before reaching VM, all was well. Rebooting the router and ATA did not resolve the issue but changing the registration server did (from Toronto to Montreal). This makes me think it was some funky issue on the Toronto voip.ms server (there are no Issue Trackers on voip.ms for today).

I am more curious than anything if this is an issue any fellow DHC'er has experienced? As the resolution was easy and the impact minimal I chalking it up to one of the wonders of technology that literally makes you wonder .

[JugglingReferee]

Someone's gotta be the first to report an issue, right? lol

[Biggworm]

^^^ Valid point and I will open up a trouble ticket with voip.ms as the problem has persisted and now continues even during the call.

[lawman]

I've always had the occasional odd issues with the Toronto servers over a period of years. The issues have reduced substantially (from 4 issues to 1 issue) after I've switched to the Montreal servers. So, that's like a 75% reduction in issues. I've found that even though the ping times is faster for Toronto server, the Montreal server is more reliable (at least for me in Ottawa). YMMV. Most issues are eventually fixed within a day to a few days.

[Biggworm]

Voip.ms support were quick to respond to my inquiry about the "IVR voiceover" problem I was having. As the issue seemed to come out of nowhere and disapear there wasn't much to be done.

I've bounced from the Montreal and Toronto servers just to cycle the system sort of speak. Be staying in Montreal for the time being.

[Chaseme]

I'm having a hell of a time with my setup lately. Any advice you guys could give would be great. I'll try to break it down...
- Was running a WRT54G w/ Tomato for a while, have some QoS setup but wasn't really effective. VOIP was decent with it though.
- Picked up a Asus RT-N16 and put TomatoUSB on it.
- All attempts at QoS on the Asus basically shutdown my internet connection, clearly I'm configuring it wrong so 99% of the time there is no QoS on this setup.

When the Asus was in the mix things went downhill. I assumed it was the Montreal2 server at first. I'd have every 2 days or so dead air on the line, and all calls when straight to VM. PAP2T was showing it couldn't register. If I jumped over to montreal it was alright. If I stick around on montreal however I get A LOT of jitter, basically 1/3 calls is hang up try again.

I saw the other day that montreal2 issues were resolved, so I was happy etc. Jumped back over to montreal2, and it's been staying 'up' for me, but new issues came up. I'll say 1/5 calls one party can't hear the other at all. If I have ANY traffic on my connection the jitter makes the call useless.

So the WRT replaced my Asus 2 days ago. Calls yesterday were fine, last night 3 out of 3 calls failed without any traffic on my connection. The 3rd call had another person's voice mixed in, but it was jibberish. Like broken french but not actual words etc. Getting REALLY old...

So I switched to Chicago last night, but really I know this isn't all server side stuff or I wouldn't be the only one looking for help.

Oh and I have Videotron business I can hit 8mps / .6mbps without issue usually. Both montreal and montreal2 are 11-12ms avg on a ping.

So any suggestions?!

[lawman]

Chaseme,

Before worrying about QoS, check out Mango's website -> http://www.toao.net/25-linksys-ata-configuration

And make sure your settings are as close/identical to his recommendation as you can get. Then see if everything is still working the same or better. After that, you can correct your QoS on your Tomato router.

[lawman]

For QoS setup on your Tomato router (router needs to have a QoS engine), many of them are very lengthy articles, but most of them basically do the job. Check out this one for an easier graphical help that you can basically copy for your system, and it should work as is -> http://mrmatt57.org/qos-for-soho-voi...mato-firmware/

[ScaryBob]

The WRT54G/WRT54GL is not a good router for higher speed connections with heavy traffic. It just does not have the horsepower. However, any router can get bogged down if too much is asked of it (like high numbers of simultaneous connections that can be demanded by some types of software.)

I'm using DD-WRT on a Linksys WRT610N. No problems there. DD-WRT is similar to Tomato but is a easier to configure, less resource hungry and a little more efficient at handling heavy traffic (by some accounts) and more stable (in my experience.) QOS is much easier to set up in DD-WRT.

[Chaseme]

Thanks guys. I should have mentioned, I follow along with Mango's input on here and his guides like they are the bible of VOIP. From day 1 I had it setup from his blog, with the Unreplied UDP Timeout to 10 etc on both routers.

As well I grabbed the Asus for it's reputation of handling load to upgrade the WRT. It's been very dissapointing that it's done a worse job overall!

Thanks for the VOIP guide, I've been looking for something like that for a while now. I may give DD-WRT another shot, ran it years ago and just went with Tomato based on what seems is the general preference of the internets.

In any case I have a report from the wife yesterday that all calls were flawless in/out since I swtiched us to Chicago. It's the first flawless day in about 2 months so that's kinda nice.

[lawman]

Personally, I prefer Tomato over DDWRT. Easier to use as well.

[kocoman]

I want to call some iNum test number, ie: 011883510000000093, but it end up with busy signal.

when I try to register iNum number, I get

We apologize but we can only assign iNums to accounts that have a positive balance. Your account balance is $0.000000