atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX VoIP & Cloud Phones, Hosted PBX, General IP Phones Problems With Vonage When Moved from Cable Modem to DSL

I just had a friend move his Vonage adapter from his cable internet connection at home to his office, where they have ADSL at 768/328 connection speeds. If his cable speeds were anything like mine, he had about 3MBPS/328. Even after adjusting his Vonage bandwidth usage to Bandwidth Saver, he is still experiencing choppiness and such during his calls. In the office where he's at, he brought in his own router. This puts his Vonage adapter behind 3 routers before the actual internet connection. I'm thinking that these extra hops are adding to the latency issues (his router, the office VPN router, the office DSL modem/router...Netopia Cayman). I'm looking for ideas on what I can try. I can't imagine that the bandwidth is the problem, since I'm sure others who use Vonage have same or slower bandwidth speeds. I'm thinking about putting his Vonage adapter either behind the VPN router using a switch at his data jack (putting his router and Vonage adapter side by side, instead of having the Vonage behind his router), or putting the Vonage adapter just behind the Netopia, using one of the spare static public IP addresses specifically for the Vonage adapter. If I do the latter, I'm not exactly sure how to tell the Vonage adapter to use a static address instead of DHCP. This is really my first experience with Vonage. I'm hoping others who use Vonage can offer suggestions. Thanks!

The extra router hops "shouldn't" be an issue, but of course that doesn't mean they aren't!

I'd have him run a few broadband tests just to see what speed he's actually seeing at the office, but I agree. The Vonage off the Netopia with a static IP sounds like a decent plan. No experience with that particular adapter, but surely there's a web interface for setup.

Here's a link to a list of speed testing sites:

https://www.dslreports.com/stest?more=1

Has he tried it when absolutely no-one else is using the internet? My first guess would be lots of bandwidth usage in the office causing poor latency, next guess would be blame the dsl provider. I saw this exact thing happen to a friend who switched from cable to dsl and in the end he switched back because SBC could care less that his vonage didn't work.

Nobody else in the office when he was trying it, however, the VPN router is constantly maintaining tunnels to two other routers outside of the office. That could be cutting down on the bandwidth to some extent. I had run a speed test last night and found it at about 1.xmbps/3xxkbps, so it seems like everything bandwidth-wise is ok. I'm still thinking latency caused by excessive hops. I wonder where I could try a traceroute to, to see latency and number of hops. Does anyone know an address that Vonage uses for their VOIP?

You'll need the IP address of the specific Vonage SIP proxy server set up for that account. It should be part of the account paperwork, or I guess you could get it from Vonage tech support (no idea how painful that might be).

Is it a Cisco ATA 186 adapter? If so, you can view the status and change configuration via web browser. The trick is finding the IP address of the adapter on the internal network. Shoudn't be too hard, but if all else fails, pick up the phone and then press the "Function" button on the Cisco. You'll hear "Configuration", then key in "80#" and the adapter will read off its IP address.

Armed with that, you can explore adapter's the web interface and discover the SIP server's IP for further testing.