Voipo on Uverse with new Firmware

**mdntblu** · 04-26-2010 10:27 PM

I have Uverse and have had it for around 7 months. I have the 12mb down / 1.5mb up package. I have Uverse TV and also Uverse Voice. The Uverse Voice has been perfect and never had any issues. The only problem is the price is just under $40/month. So I signed up for 1 year service with Voipo last week and received my Linksys PAP2T device (which I have never liked Linksys because of too many DOA devices and devices that fail.
I hooked up the Linksys device on Saturday when I received it in the mail. I was able to get a dial tone and made several test calls. Setup my AT&T Uverse voice to forward calls to my temporary Voipo number until it gets ported.
Sunday night my wife said she heard touch tones randomly when she was talking to her sister for 18 min.
Then today I called my wife from my cell phone and it sounded fine the entire call.
But tonight she tried to call her Grandma and the ringing sounded horrible and robotic. Then her grandma answered and she couldn't hear anything she was saying. She tried 3 times and it was horrible everytime. So then she used her cell phone to call and started complaining about why she hates internet telephone. After she got on her cell phone I started making a bunch of calls to my automated banking system and all of the calls I made were horrible. I unplugged and replugged in the ATA. No change. I reset my Uverse residential gateway (2wire) and still not any better. Tried restarting the ATA again and it still did it. Tried recording some calls using *28 and every one of those sounded horrible. The recordings all came to my email but were all 260k and none of them would play in Windows Media Player. Voicemails play fine in Windows Media Player.
So after 1/2 hour of playing around I made another call to my bank and it worked fine. So I took the phone to my wife and said can you hang up with your cell and try calling her again. After she hung up she said it was fine.
I just don't want this to be an ongoing thing after I have my number ported over and miss my 30day guarantee.
My internet speeds are fine and my skype app on my iPhone works fine over my Uverse wifi always. Never have any problems. I was thinking about buying a Skype wifi phone and getting a powerful wifi antenna to cover the whole house but decided to get Voipo.
Any help with settings on my Uverse gateway would be great. Do you think my Linksys ATA is defective?

Thanks
Brad

**Russell** · 04-27-2010 05:36 AM

A little more info about your setup (is there any other router involved besides the RG which can acts as a router by default) would be helpful. Off, the top of my head: put the ATA in DMZ Plus (assuming there's no other router involved) and see if that makes a difference. Is there other Internet activity going on (e.gl, torrents etc) during the time of bad audio? If it's any consolation one of the leading support guys at VOIPo has UVerse.

I've got UVerse 3/1 - you can search for other postings by me over the past few weeks.

**mdntblu** · 04-27-2010 08:18 AM

Originally Posted by Russell

A little more info about your setup (is there any other router involved besides the RG which can acts as a router by default) would be helpful. Off, the top of my head: put the ATA in DMZ Plus (assuming there's no other router involved) and see if that makes a difference. Is there other Internet activity going on (e.gl, torrents etc) during the time of bad audio? If it's any consolation one of the leading support guys at VOIPo has UVerse.

I've got UVerse 3/1 - you can search for other postings by me over the past few weeks.

No, there is no other router. My RG is the router.
The only activity was my daughter was watching a show on Netflix. And if that's going to cause my phone to sound like crap when movies/tv shows are being watched then I can't have this cause we use our Netflix a lot. The time when the audio did sound fine Netflix was still being watched. And I would think having 12mb down wouldn't affect it if other internet activity is going on.
Brad

VOIPoLucas · 04-27-2010 04:44 PM

Different shows/movies on Netflix streaming can have a different impact on your connection - such as an HD versus non-HD media.

Does the U-verse hardware you're using have any option for managing bandwidth? QoS settings can be hit or miss, but it's usually worth a try.

Also, for the sake of isolating what *could* be the cause of the issue, I would definitely recommend placing a few calls without Netflix streaming, then a few with it streaming similar content to what was being played the other night.

Let us know how this works out.

**mdntblu** · 05-01-2010 10:22 PM

No my Uverse Gateway doesn't allow me to do bandwidth management.

Also we have had the issue whether or not Netflix is being played or not. It's happened 2 or 3 times in the last week.

Also my wife says that all the people she is on the phone with (whether they called us or she called them) they hear beeps and tones and things on the other end but on our end we don't hear anything.

What is this now? I'm really worried this service is not up to par with what we want and I've just ported my number over and thinking I might have to cancel my year subscription and port my number somewhere else. All these issues and I had Packet 8 for like 3 years a few years back with none of these weird issues. And back then I was on a 1.5mb DSL connection, now I have a 12mb fiber connection.

**mdntblu** · 05-01-2010 10:23 PM

How do I get into this Linksys PAP2T device and administrate it via a web browser? Aren't there settings in it I can change?

**mdntblu** · 05-01-2010 11:12 PM

I am actually very dissatisfied with this service. There hasn't been a day go by where it actually worked correctly.
We just received a call from my sister-in-law and we answered it and there was just silence. And she ended up calling her back on her cell phone.
Why have the service if it doesn't work. How many days until we can cancel? Do we get 30 days? What about my number porting?

**VOIPoTim** · 05-01-2010 11:21 PM

Originally Posted by mdntblu

I am actually very dissatisfied with this service. There hasn't been a day go by where it actually worked correctly.
We just received a call from my sister-in-law and we answered it and there was just silence. And she ended up calling her back on her cell phone.
Why have the service if it doesn't work. How many days until we can cancel? Do we get 30 days? What about my number porting?

I recommend contacting our support department and working with them to check all the settings in your router.

The internet connection and bandwidth used to be the biggest factor for VoIP service quality. Today though, it's the router, that's the most important and available bandwidth is almost irrelevant because most connections have way more than enough bandwidth.

Most newer routers or modems with a built in router have things in them that try to handle all the VoIP traffic and do so incorrectly, so they require tweaking.

Today routers are at least 10x more likely than the internet connection to cause a customer's service to work or not work well. Since all VoIP networks are designed differently, the router settings can be optimized for the way our network is designed.

The issues you are describing are typical of a router blocking our connections. So what happens is the call comes through, but then the router blocks the audio stream when the audio starts. This is almost going to be solved by setting up port forwarding on the router for ports 5004-65000 (UDP) and applying any other tweaks for the router model. Support can help do this.

So your best bet is to work with support to double check all the router settings to make sure things are optimized for our network. If you PM your info, I can have a Tier II tech contact you Monday to go through it.

**Russell** · 05-02-2010 06:23 AM

Originally Posted by mdntblu

I am actually very dissatisfied with this service. There hasn't been a day go by where it actually worked correctly.
We just received a call from my sister-in-law and we answered it and there was just silence. And she ended up calling her back on her cell phone.
Why have the service if it doesn't work. How many days until we can cancel? Do we get 30 days? What about my number porting?

Have you tried putting the device in the DMZ Plus of the RG (as previously suggested by me)?

**jlachowin** · 05-03-2010 07:33 AM

I just setup my parents up with VOIPo and they have uverse as well (They only have 3Mbps internet) and it works FLAWLESSLY.

I did assign a static IP to the phone adapter and forwarded the UDP ports, but that is about it. Contact support before you dislike the service, give them a chance to make it right.