Help Me!!!

[prose1212]

I cannot seem to get the person on the other end of the phone to hear anything I am saying... I never use my home phone because of that and it's really running up my cell phone bill...

The other person can hear slightly, but then it just breaks up on them - I go in and out.

Has anyone else had this problem? How did you fix it?

[Lunatic]

Yeah I had that problem once. I had to make sure that my Linksys VOIP device picked up an IP address via DHCP from my network router. Also seem to remember having to set the DNS addresses on my router. Once that was done it started working perfectly again. OH YEAH! one more thing... If you are using a router make sure that the IP address you give to your VOIP hardware device has DMZ (Full unrestricted access) to the internet.
Hope this helps!
Lunatic.

[KLH]

Moved to the correct forum.

[jnuzzi]

Purchasing a router with QoS or enabling QoS on your existing router may help also.

[DracoFelis]

All VoIP ("internet phone") service (not just ViaTalk's) ultimately depends upon the quality of your internet. And so if your internet has "issues" they can show up as problem for your "internet phone" service.

And what you describe is a classic symptom of insufficient bandwidth and/or other internet problems (remember a normal VoIP "phone call" uses up about 100k download, and more importantly around 100k upload, just to transmit the voice traffic, for the entire time you are on the "phone call"). And if/when you don't have enough internet bandwidth left (after doing other things on the internet at the same time), your call voice will start suffering (and in extreme cases of this, cut out entirely)!

So if you are having internet trouble (either because of your ISP, or because of what else you are doing on your internet at the same time as the call), you really need to identify the source of that problem and "fix it". Because once the internet/bandwidth issue is "fixed" your voice quality should improve almost instantly. But until you identify where your (internet) problem is, it's pretty hard to know what the proper "fix" should be.

Some questions to try to get to the source of your troubles:

What is your supposed (advertised) bandwidth from your ISP (both download and upload bandwidth)?

Have you used some tool to test your bandwidth? If so, what did the tests say?

Are you often doing heavy internet traffic while trying to talk on the phone? If so, what are you doing? As a test, have you tried turning off your PC while on the phone, and seeing if the voice problems go away? Remember, some internet traffic (such as many "peer to peer" file sharing programs) will almost always kill your internet for many other uses (including voice for your phone). But even "less obvious" things (downloading files, heavy "web surfing", updating your anti-virus signatures, and even ad/spyware on your PC, to name just a few) can equally take away from bandwidth that you need for reliable voice calls.

The bottom line, is that it's first necessary to locate where the real problem is. Once that is done, it is then possible to try to find "fixes" to your problems.

For example, if you just don't have enough bandwidth for internet phone service, you either have to get more bandwidth (at your ISP) or stop trying to use your internet phone. OTOH if it's something that you (or some software running on one of your PCs) is doing, the fixes are different. In that case, you would either want to see if you can turn off the offending "bandwidth hog" while talking on the phone, or (alternatively) see if you can configure your home LAN to prioritize your phone call traffic ahead of other internet traffic. The latter approach is calls "QoS" (or "Quality of Service") and can be a PITA to setup (even if your equipment supports it, and not all networking equipment does). However, QoS is very nice if/when it is setup correctly, as it can be configured to slow down other internet uses while you are "on the phone" (so that the phone has enough bandwidth for reliable voice), but then free that bandwidth back to other computers/devices on your LAN when you aren't talking on the phone!

[gavmitchau]

DracoFelis nice post, that should be stickied for basic troubleshooting and information!

[DracoFelis]

DracoFelis nice post, that should be stickied for basic troubleshooting and information!
Only trouble is, the OP still hasn't tried answering any of those questions. And until the OP actually looks into (and answers) some of those questions, it's pretty hard to give any meaningful advice on how to proceed.

[firewall]

With the post as old as it is he either fixed the problem or moved on. Too bad because problems and ultimately solutions help us all.

[DracoFelis]

With the post as old as it is he either fixed the problem or moved on.
Good point. I hadn't noticed the date on the original post (until you brought it up), as I was just responding to posts in recently active threads. Looking back over the posting dates, it looks like it was user "mslaga" that most recently revived this old thread, and the rest of us just didn't notice that it was a thread brought back from the dead (vs a newer thread, where we might actually be able to help).

Too bad because problems and ultimately solutions help us all.
Quite true.

Only problem is, it can sometimes overwhelm the newbe to get all of us seasoned VoIP users rushing in with various questions, when all the user really wants is for it to "just work"...

[sbradshaw]

Only trouble is, the OP still hasn't tried answering any of those questions. And until the OP actually looks into (and answers) some of those questions, it's pretty hard to give any meaningful advice on how to proceed.

Add since the OP has not logged in since 12/29/06, it's probable that this will not happen.