atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Toshiba Telephones & Systems Remote IP phone users sound "under water"

Hello, not sure exactly what to post, but I am at my wits end and may need more advice than fixes, but a fix would be great.

About 8 months ago we went live on a new Stratagy CTX 1000. This was an upgrade from an older system and some cards were brought over from the old system so it is not 100% new. We have the IP card and have 5 remote phone users all with brand new Toshiba IP phones.

Without airing all the dirty laundry the project was terribly managed by the dealer and while they knocked out the problems over time this one has never been solved. I do not beleive the IP part of this is set up correctly as they were zero help in configuring the remote phones.

First it was that I didn't have enough bandwidth, but I have plenty according to the one knowledgeable tech who actually made an improvement (full t1). Second it was that the card had to be bad, supposedly the replacement card was ordered but I have not been able to get anyone to come out and actually put in a replacement. Part of this test included hooking up an IP phone at their office and they tested it and duplicated the problem. Now they are telling me there is no longer a problem and there is nothing that can be done since they cant find anything wrong.

Except for the fact that I get daily complaints from my customers about people they speak to being described as being under water, gargling, and just plain choppy and breaking up. Keeping in mind this is ALL remote people, not isolated, I am at a loss.

It might be as simple as getting another Toshiba dealer to look at it, but we have had terrible luck with the Toshiba dealers in our area and I have no confidence. I also dont want to spend a ton of money to fix a problem my current dealer should have found and fixed under warranty.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

My first question would be....Is the T-1 a full 24 channels dedicated to the phones, or is it shared with their data network? If its shared, is the router set for QOS?

Is the T-1 a data T? What are you using for phone lines?

Each phone takes about 80-110 kbps, so for the purposes of easy math, all 5 phones would use about 500kbps, or about a third of your T1.

I don't know what kind of data you are passing, if you are steaming the presidential debates or stuff on youtube.

The problem could be that your phone calls have to fight with everyone else for bandwith. It could help a lot if you had a router that supported QOS. Once you hit the Internet there is no QOS, but you need to prioritize the voice traffic out to the WAN.

Are all 5 users at different locations? Sometimes it can be the internet provider. I usually start troubleshooting by using a continuous PING from end point to end poing. Delays should be under 200ms, or else you've have problems with quality.

You can ask your vendow if they have the latest firmware on all the equipment.

I've PM'd you, fixter.

Thanks so much for the reply.

It is a shared T-1 that scales voice with data over 12 channels and 12 are reserved for data only. All main office phones are NOT IP.

We are only 12 people in the main office and the major source of internet traffic is RDP (terminal services) from remote users and from using gotoassist remote control software on and off by 2-3 users at the main office throughout the day.
Based on testing of bandwidth usage I dont believe that we are even coming close to using it all.

We are not using QOS, however they bypassed the router when the set up the IP card. All VOIP traffic is off my internal network. So I had considered QOS when I was researching myself, but since we bypassed the router there was no benefit.

The users all have different ISPs. They also all have different routers at home. We asked before we went live with this if it mattered and we were told "any router will do." The only reason that I didn't question this was because all 5 of these people had been using vonage for 2 years on the same equipment without incident. This is the biggest reason I think the problem is here.

I really appreciate you guys taking the time. I have been a long time lurker here and always find the answers I am looking for.

Since you seem knowledgeable about bandwidth/networking, take a phone to your house, turn off all unnecessary services and make test calls to your office during and after business hours.

Have done that and replicated the problem. What I dont know is if ther are settings in the routers at the remote locations that need tweaking? Also hooking up the IP phone internal to our network is crystal clear on all calls.

Well, not any router. Try using a new Linksys WRT54G router and the phones won't even connect.

All 5 users had vonage? Does vonage use a router specifically for their service? Just wondering if that was interfering.

You are right that QOS is usless before the router. I have setup systems like that many times typically without a problem.

what kind of service do they have at home. i dont install ip phones with dsl. DSL is to up and down. Make sure that it is cable and above!

Have them replace the cards ASAP. If they replicated the problem and admitted it, they need to replace part or all of your hardware. The least they can do is to send a tech to troubleshoot. Setting up IP phones on a public connection is simple enough. I don't believe they would have been able to mess up that part. Also, did you have them change the codec? or packet transmission interval via voice packet table?