DrXenon
join:2007-01-20
Kingston, ON
 ·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| VOIP in the presence of throttling I'm in the process of switching to TekSavvy from Sympatico. I just ported my home phone number to Vonage, and I'm having a problem where the throttling is causing my voice communications to cut out frequently because I don't always have a chance to shut off my bit torrents when someone calls me. The QoS feature of my Linksys WRT54G doesn't seem to help.
It seems clear that I won't be able to escape the throttling by moving to TekSavvy, as I thought I might be able to previously.
So, the question is: how can my VOIP and my bit torrents coexist in the presence of throttling? Is there a router that I can buy that does a better job of QoS than my Linksys? | |
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Gokuu
join:2001-08-27
| Tomato firmware If you have the right hardware version of the WRT54g, you can try out Polarcloud's Tomato firmware, which has excellent QoS mechanisms that actually work.
»www.polarcloud.com/tomato
Make sure you check to see if your router is a supported hardware revision, since Linksys moved to VxWorks powered units which are not compatible with this firmware. | |
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DSL_Ricer
Premium
join:2007-07-22
| Re: VOIP in the presence of throttling said by DrXenon  :So, the question is: how can my VOIP and my bit torrents coexist in the presence of throttling? Is there a router that I can buy that does a better job of QoS than my Linksys? In short: you can't.
In long: yes, there's something you can do, but it's quite distasteful: using QoS, limit your entire line to their lowest throttling setting. At current it's 30KB/s. If they decide to add lower settings then you'll have to reconfigure it, so it's not robust at all. Your router's QoS should allow you to set a maximum rate.
If you go the linux route, with non-trivial effort, you could do to make it more palatable: you could trigger a script to run when a VoIP call is detected to then limit your link to 30KB/s. You could also limit this effects to certain periods of the day. The fact that the throttling periods and rates aren't fixed makes this difficult and means that you'll never be able to be fully utilizing your link during your calls.
BTW, the problem you described is exactly why I switched from Bell to Teksavvy (and, at least so far, I'm still not throttled on Teksavvy). | |
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andrewhaji
Premium
join:2002-03-02
North York, ON | I'm a little confused by this thread. Why would BitTorrent throttling affect VoIP? I was under the impression that the throttling only affected BT packets? | |
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 | bbuchanan
Premium
join:2004-02-05
Peterborough, ON
| Re: VOIP in the presence of throttling I'm confused too. The throttling of your BT traffic should not have any effect on your VoIP traffic. We've heard several people say that their regular traffic (ie web surfing, irc) is not being effected by the throttling.
It may have something to do with how you have things configured. Can you give a description of how you having all the boxes connected together?
For the QoS on any VoIP adapter to work, the VoIP adapter MUST be the device that connects to your DSL/Cable modem (DSL modem in your case). If this is not the case, then you need to configure your router to honor QoS (which all don't do equally).
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Nexicom - »www.nexicom.net | |
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| | DrXenon
join:2007-01-20
Kingston, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
1 edit | Re: VOIP in the presence of throttling said by bbuchanan :I'm confused too. The throttling of your BT traffic should not have any effect on your VoIP traffic. We've heard several people say that their regular traffic (ie web surfing, irc) is not being effected by the throttling. It may have something to do with how you have things configured. Can you give a description of how you having all the boxes connected together? As was said in a later post, the VOIP traffic is clearly not whitelisted by Bell. I ran an experiment: I initiated a call, which proceeded clear as a bell. Then I fired up my bit torrent client, capped to half of my 3 Mbps DSL link. The call could not proceed after this; there was only intermittent, unintelligible sound every 5 seconds or so.
The network configuration is a Linksys WRT54G with a VOnage PAP2 and an XP box. | |
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| | | bbuchanan
Premium
join:2004-02-05
Peterborough, ON | Re: VOIP in the presence of throttling Sounds like they must be playing with UDP traffic (the actual voice conversation). That really is bad news. | |
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| DSL_Ricer
Premium
join:2007-07-22
| said by andrewhaji :I'm a little confused by this thread. Why would BitTorrent throttling affect VoIP? I was under the impression that the throttling only affected BT packets? Under regular circumstances, BT packets only affect VoIP by the fact that they take up time on the line. Classically, if you're uploading faster than your line can take, your router would start buffering and your latency would to the 500-3000ms range and with similarly large jitter. VoIP can't compensate for those kinds of stats. QoS enabled VoIP PAP's and routers came along to solve that. They make sure VoIP packets are put at the front of the buffer, guaranteeing low delays and jitter. The software solution to do the same is to limit uploads to less than what is needed by VoIP.
Bell's throttling is problematic in two ways. First, Bell's throttling doesn't just affect BT. It also affects other protocols.
What Bell most likely classifies traffic into two different categories; let's call them good and bad traffic. Good traffic, like web, is never throttled. Bad traffic like BT isn't always throttled, however, if something triggers the throttling all bad traffic gets capped.
For some reason VoIP is classified in the bad category. Chances are, it's a generic filter that just catches non-whitelisted traffic. However, that still means it gets caught.
As second point, and going back to the QoS routers, a good deal of them function by limiting the total upload to line speed. When bell suddenly throttles, these routers continue on their merry way thinking that nothing has changed. You the start getting large amounts of packet drops and, I'd assume, latency. Bell's throttling renders these devices useless. Other such routers function by limiting to a user supplied value. How many of them would be pleased with entering a number under half of what their line is actually capable of, especially since, for bell, all web traffic doesn't count against this cap, but will for the adapter? The torrent software equivalent for this would be to limit to 10KB/s, or less...
You'll also note the fact that I say I'd assume. All speed tests I know of are web based. Since web traffic isn't throttled, it shows full speed. I have Vonage speed tests (web) showing 4Mbit/498kbit with a quality of service rating of 96% and yet, the same line, under the same conditions, is unable to place a call because not enough VoIP packets are getting to Vonage. During the same periods, switching to a teksavvy login gave me worse overall stats, but the line was 100% clear. | |
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koreyb
join:2005-01-08
Etobicoke, ON
 ·Primus Talkbroadband
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| If bell is doing this, this is TOTALLY anticompetitive acts, that I can't see going on for long without the CRTC/Gov getting involved.
I've been having issues with VoIP on the G711 setting and this leak about bell's move, is the answer I bet. Funny I mentioned this a few weeks ago asking if this could be the cause. | |
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| daboom
join:2001-12-16
Oshawa, ON
·Primus Talkbroadband
| Re: VOIP in the presence of throttling Decides the fact that Vonage is slowly going down hill in service and reliability hence why I left them several months ago. If Bell is indeed focusing on UDP traffic this could be a nighmare for alot of ppl. Again we'll have to see the outcome tommorow from Bell and Tek hopefully they post in a new thread about it.
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Come join us on EFNET irc.dks.ca #teksavvy for live chat  | |
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montrealer194564
@teksavvy.com | Well, i'm on TekSavvy and throttled! My VOIP use is minimal but yeah it's messed up even when nothing is running, and worse i cant upload my work in ftp as the connection times out constantly!
who do i sue! Grrrrrrrrrr. | |
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| SSP
join:2007-04-30
| Re: VOIP in the presence of throttling I use voip heavily as its my main phone line. I dont have any problem so far, and I usually have BT on almost all the time, therefore throttled when ever their definition of "peak" time is.
I made sure my upload is limited to 40kb/s leaving the rest for voip. my max upload is 55-60. | |
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theninjasqua
join:2007-09-26
Oakville, ON
| For everyone that thinks their Voip is being effected by the throttling, has anyone gotten in touch with TS to have them get Bell to investigate? Or getting in touch with Deadpool to have him investigate on their end?
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-theninjasquad | |
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| DrXenon
join:2007-01-20
Kingston, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
1 edit | Re: VOIP in the presence of throttling At the time I had sympatico, and in the universe of a Sympatico call centre agent, we all have our single computers directly connected to the modems, with nothing in between. Router? Multiple computers? VOIP? What's that? That's not allowed. Please connect your modem directly to the computer, sir, or else I can't help you.
Believe me, I tried. For hours.
Now I have Teksavvy home phone and it works quite well. I had to eat my vonage contract, which was a bummer.
My TS DSL will be activated in a few weeks, so I'll be rid of Bell soon. Joy. | |
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EcHoMaN
join:2003-05-04
Toronto, ON | Sounds like the a similar problem Sympatico had with Ventrilo, if you ran BT and used Ventrilo pings would be 400+. At one point certain games were affected. | |
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SHARPSHARK
join:2002-05-10 | I confirm too. Gaming, Ventrilo and VoIP are affected like you. Only HTTP and some very essential services seem unaffected.
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SHARPSHARK | |
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oxymoron69
join:2004-11-10
Belleville, ON | Oh I agree, in recent days making calls with SkypeOut has been more hit n miss than usual.
gah! it's like... they're trying to force me... to actually .... get a POTS line.... arrrrgh!!!! lol | |
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MissM
join:2007-12-13
Toronto, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| I was concerned about this issue as well, since I have been using VOIP from Primus for almost a year. I know nothing about how Vonage works, but I know with Primus I can change the bandwidth usage from high quality to low quality. When I changed to TekSavvy from Sympatico, I had to change from high bandwidth to low. This is because I was getting a much better speed and a much clearer line from TS!
So far, knock on wood, my VOIP service has been unaffected by the throttle. I wonder if it is because I continue to have my VOIP set to low bandwidth use?
BTW, much and eternal thanks to Steve at TS for the hours of patience and dedication figuring out how I could have better VOIP (it was horrendous before!) and still use BT at the same time! This involved reconfiguring my router (don't ask me, I don't remember what he had me do! LOL!)as well. | |
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| Annex
join:2007-11-21 | Re: VOIP in the presence of throttling Bittorrent + throttling + Ventrilo/Teamspeak = 10000 to 20000 pings and unusable VoIP. | |
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hgklertodsa
@rogers.com | I've been using the Hawking HBB1 Broadbane Booster for years and it works really good. I know Linksys has a similar unit as well.
I don't use Vonage but Skype. And my Skype works great even I am doing heavy downloading. | |
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Comment
@teksavvy.com
| Re: VOIP in the presence of throttling said by hockeynomad :Is this a worthwhile install? It re-orders the sequence of output from YOUR system (mainly ACKs) so they are not 'blocked' behind a long output queue (usually created by overstating output buffers and concurrent output P2P transfers). It can be dramatic.
But it can't do anything to stop Bell once they get their hands on the packets. | |
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