[Asterisk-Users] VoIP Provider problems

[Johnathan Corgan]

Johnathan Corgan wrote:

> First off, I have Sprint Broadband Direct internet service, a fixed 
> wireless setup with a 2-5 Mbps downlink and a terrible 128 kbps uplink. 
> So I know I'm in for trouble anyway.
> 
> The broadvoice edge router (63.251.209.126, their lax site) is another 
> 11 hops away. One hop before that, the packet loss rate has gone up to 
> 13%, so the Internet adds another 4% to my sucky ISP connection. Round 
> trip time to this point is 200ms, so-so but livable.
> 
> Here's the kicker:
> 
> Reported packet loss from broadvoice, one additional hop, is a whopping 
> 29%.  So between the last "Internet" router (bbnet2.lax.pnap.net) and 
> broadvoice's edge router, there is an additional 16% loss.

Just an update after about 12 hours of data--the data above was worst 
case.

During off-peak hours in the middle of the night the packet loss at my 
ISP was effectively zero, and only 3% along the way to broadvoice, with 
a 75ms round-trip time.  Broadvoice edge-router still reports 28% packet 
loss though, and an additional 30ms RTT increase for this last hop.  So 
I even more strongly suspect (or just really hope) they are 
preferentially discarding non-RTP traffic in favor of voice traffic.

I did discover that the multi-second outages are at my local ISP, not at 
Broadvoice--for some reason Sprint BBD can take up to 4 seconds to 
respond to a ping, so something is really wrong there--but is there a 
way to do this type of testing in a more rigorous and controlled fashion?

-Johnathan