Call Echos

[PIttsburgh1935]

My ougoing calls are received with deep echos, anyone no why. Thanks

[dwciardi]

Turn the volume down - I was told that's what causes echos.

[gfwalker]

Baloney. I have a severe echo and nobody has ever complained that my volume is too loud. In fact I've asked them if the volume is OK and they always say it's fine.

[vtjosh]

dwciardi, is actually not that far off. Echo can be caused by your input/output gain levels being too high in your adapter. Submit a ticket to tech support and they should be able to get this taken care of for you.

-Josh

[gfwalker]

I compained about echo to tech support several times during the summer and got absolutely no satisfaction, so I gave up. Maybe they've increased their willingness and/or ability to deal with the problem. I'll try again.

[Brian188]

Echo can be caused by a number of things, one of which is volume of your handset. If you have the volume on your phone's handset maxed out it can cause the echo. I would start there. Then I would isolate if the problem occurs on all your phones, one phone, two, etc. How many phones do you attached? Home wiring? If the problem is not with you phones, then it is most likely your ISP. But you can try viatalk support and see if they can fix the problem.

[amorey]

I did two things to fix my echo.

1st - trimming up a bad connection in a phone upstairs. The echo didn't have anything to do with the VOIP box. I found it by just inspecting each connection to make sure it was tight and clean.

2nd - I removed all unused two-way splitters from house, and then bought cable terminator caps for any piece of coax or outlet that wasn't used for anything. The eliminated the occasional slowness I was having on my internet which also helped with quality on the phone.

Adam

[littleminx]

^^thanks for those tips amorey! little tips like this are why i read these forums. :)

[littleminx]

If a router is involved this was the answer from Viatalk Technicians:

If you are having problems with your service, then you will need to enable DMZ on your network device (router).

Pick up your ViaTalk phone and enter ****, at the Configuration Menu enter 110#. A voice will read you the IP of your adapter. Write this down.

If you are unfamiliar with how to enable DMZ on your router, we recommend visiting the following site:

http://firewalling.com/routers.htm

Choose your router from the list, then click on the section called "Setting up a DMZ for the Netgear [your model here]"

Enter the configuration page for your router. If you are unsure what the IP address of your router is, follow these steps:
- Click Start > Run
- Enter: cmd
- Enter: ipconfig /all
- Your router's IP is the number next to Default Gateway

For example: http://192.168.0.1
Then, enter the setup for your router.

The default username is admin the default password is password.

Under Security in the left hand menu click Rules.

Close to the bottom of this page you will see a checkbox with Default DMZ Server next to it. Put a check into that checkbox. Then enter the IP address of the phone adapter. Click the Apply button at the bottom of the page to save your settings.

Apply/Save changes.

[Ptrowski]

2nd - I removed all unused two-way splitters from house, and then bought cable terminator caps for any piece of coax or outlet that wasn't used for anything. The eliminated the occasional slowness I was having on my internet which also helped with quality on the phone.

Adam

Hi Adam,
I was actually thinking about doing the same thing. Where did you buy your caps?

[gavmitchau]

try something as simple as turning your phone volume down.
found this helped heaps
good luck

[jepolito]

the easiest thing is to call or submit a ticket to VT and see what they can do from their end. They have a number of tweaks that they can make to your equipment to eliminate echo.

[gavmitchau]

Also correct, I had them do this and have not heard myself when calling home since.

[Agrajag]

I had continual echo until I turned off Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) in my router. With it on-echo. With it off-no echo. It was that "simple" for me. I just wish I found out about that setting months ago.

[VTAllan]

Hi Adam,
I was actually thinking about doing the same thing. Where did you buy your caps?

RadioShack carries good termination caps. That's where I purchased mine and they work great.

[DracoFelis]

Hi Adam,
I was actually thinking about doing the same thing. Where did you buy your caps?
I find they are pretty much available anyplace that has a decent selection of parts for wiring up cable TV. Try finding a place that sells bulk coax and ends (and the crimper tool to put those ends on the coax), and chances are they also have those cable caps. And even if you aren't on cable internet, those cable caps are a good idea anyway (as installing them on the cable jacks you aren't using, will improve your cable TV some)!

BTW: While most cable-TV amplifiers don't work well with cable internet, a small number of them are actually designed to be Bi-Directional and work with cable-internet. And so if you look around for a good amplifier, that may also help your cable internet some.

[DracoFelis]

I had continual echo until I turned off Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) in my router. With it on-echo. With it off-no echo. It was that "simple" for me. I just wish I found out about that setting months ago.
I can't see how a router's SPI could introduce echo that wasn't already present on the phone lines. Therefore, my guess is that your router's SPI just added enough delay to the VoIP packets, to make the already present echo more noticeable/annoying.

Remember, people's minds tend to filter out very short delay echoes, and treat them as if there were no echo present. So if you have a very short echo, people are often convinced that things are "echo free". But if something (for example, a packet delay caused by your router) ads a time lag onto that echo, suddenly people can "hear the echo", and assume it was whatever added the time lag that "caused" the echo (when really the echo was always there, they just weren't noticing the echo until the time lag was added to it).

BTW:
That's the primary reason why many people think VoIP "causes echo". In general VoIP doesn't "cause" echo, and often actually has logic to erase some echo that was already on the phone line. But the problem with VoIP, is that all VoIP adds a short (fraction of a second) additional delay in the call path. And that extra delay can easily make a previously unnoticed echo (for example, an echo caused by a cheap phone on the remote end of the call) just long enough to be very noticeable/annoying to the people trying to talk to each other...