Topic 'Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls' in forum 'VOIP Tech Chat' - dslreports.com

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 01:11:23 EDT

SCADAGeo posted :

While the SNR is being set up I have voip.ms forwarding the DIDs to the cell phones, and at least twice a day I'll get an email saying new voicemail in my voip.ms mailbox, without my cell phone even ringing once. I'm completely done with VoIP.

This is why I get so concerned when providers get ongoing issues, it spills over.

said by bigbutt:

First, some nomenclature to avoid confusion:
"ringback"

For those who are reading the IETF RFC's, this is also known as early media.

said by bigbutt:

Problem 1) "voip.ms outgoing call continues ringback despite recipient pickup".

Problem 2) "voip.ms received call gives silence to caller for x seconds".

Problem 3) "voip.ms outgoing fast busy".

There are more problems,

These are all symptoms of a resource issue.

said by bigbutt:

Problem 2 seems to be a toronto (et al?) server issue,

said by connor79:

No offence but I don't think it's your Cisco.

This may occur at any POP with resource issues.

said by Viper359:

EDIT: Well Sorta, now 95% of calls are working normally, but I still have two that didn't work. I never heard it ring, and the person was talking about 10-15 seconds before I heard them. URG.

It's intermittent because it's dependent upon the available resources of the POP when the call arrives (or when you dial out).

This is the reason some people experience the symptoms, while others don't, at the same POP.

It's like a lottery.

The chance of winning (experiencing a symptom) increases with the number of tickets purchased (calls made/received).

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 20:05:33 EDT

connor79 posted : No offence but I don't think it's your Cisco. This happens to us on 3 different scenarios:

1) We had a hosted Asterisk service connected to voip.ms with Cisco and Aastra phones connected to that over the Internet. It did it on that.

2) Connected the phones directly to voip.ms and it also did it on that.

3) Lastly, I had my DID on voip.ms forwarding to my cell phone and when answering a call on my cell phone it would do it on that as well.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 18:15:28 EDT

Viper359 posted : I had the exact problems all of you have above with my SPA 112 from Cisco. I have solved mine. In my case, its my gear. WHY, who knows, even Cisco couldn't answer that.

NOT ONE setting has changed in my ATA, no weird or new log file entries, nothing I, or Cisco could see, but, this worked for me, so give it a try.

Log into your device
Reset to factory defaults, make sure both voice and network if using SPA 112.
Enter everything all over again. Mind you, I cut and pasted my dial plan.
Everything is working fine now. I know its a PITA, but, until you rule out your gear, you cannot be sure. I was back and forth with both Cisco and Voip.ms EVERYTHING looked normal on both my gear, my network, and Voip.ms end, but clearly, something happened that cannot be see from any of the sub menus of the device.

So give it shot, who knows!

EDIT: Well Sorta, now 95% of calls are working normally, but I still have two that didn't work. I never heard it ring, and the person was talking about 10-15 seconds before I heard them. URG.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 11:47:58 EDT

bigbutt posted : Please stay on-topic.

I have a similar and numerous problems. Since there are multiple problems flying around and being mushed together, this post attempts to isolate each problem:

First, some nomenclature to avoid confusion:
You the "caller" pick up your phone and dial out, and you hear the "ringback" at the same time the "recipient's" phone is "ringing".

Now, the problems:

Problem 1) "voip.ms outgoing call continues ringback despite recipient pickup". Description: voip.ms phone is the caller. Caller dials out, hears ringback as per usual. Recipient picks up, but caller still hears ringback for another x seconds (where x is between 10 and up to 30 seconds), after which time the call is connected normally.

Problem 2) "voip.ms received call gives silence to caller for x seconds". Description: voip.ms phone receives a call, which is picked up. Caller receives silence (can't hear the recipient) for x seconds (where x can be between 5 to 30 seconds). This is what the OP of this thread complains of.

Problem 3) "voip.ms outgoing fast busy". Description: voip.ms outgoing calls result in fast busy signal.

There are more problems, but these are the ones causing me the most headaches. Unfortunately, Problem 2 seems to be a toronto (et al?) server issue, as rerouting my DID to the echotest often results in echogirl's first words being cut off when I call the DID (ie. me the caller receives silence for x seconds, despite echogirl talking). Of 10 ten test calls to my echotested DID yesterday, 8 were plagued by either fast busy, hangups, or Problem 2. What a headache....

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 20:22:17 EDT

PX Eliezer posted :

said by connor79:

It's pretty bad when you're trying to sell someone a PRI and then they start asking if you're using VoIP because you're getting all delayed sounding and then the call just drops!

Certainly understandable.

Go down to Bellwoods Brewery, grab a Common Session Ale, relax, and have a great holiday! :)

EDIT: Call Trev first, THEN go relax!

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 20:21:58 EDT

Trev posted : Dude, seriously, send me a PM. I guarantee you will require less than 10 minutes of your time to have exactly what you are looking for work the way you want it to at a price that is quite reasonable.

Then you can stop writing about how VoIP isn't up to the task and that Bell is the only viable solution.
--
Wondering what I do? Find out at »www.digitalcon.ca
Get your Obihai ATA in Canada.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 20:06:24 EDT

connor79 posted : I'm just honestly at the point that I'm doing the Bell SNR with cell phones because I just have no more energy to put on this anymore. Like it's honestly the big joke around the office "we are a telecom company and our own phones don't even work." Our first phone system with Allstream hosted phone which was like $35 per user a month, worked great but paying for each phone I realized was expensive when I was paying $350 a month because I had a kitchen phone, conference room phone etc, however it gave us direct lines which spoiled us. We had then tried Asterisk using a FXO card but there was such severe echo due to lack of hardware echo canceller that we had to give up on that as well. That's when we decided to try voip and did tests in the office and found it worked great and seemed reliable and comparable to the hosted phones we had.

I love voip.ms for the fact it's per minute billing so I don't worry about the number of call paths we have. Instead we pay around $60 a month in usage to them, where as with the other providers that charge $30 per channel for example, we'd be paying far more than that when 90% of the time only 1 person is on the phone at the same time if not 95%. The other thing is I like how voip.ms passes caller ID, allowing us to change our outbound name in the PBX and have it display it, something CallCentric doesn't do for example at least in Canada.

I'm just done with it all because it's so exhausting and for awhile was all I'd spend my days doing, working on the phones. When you set up Asterisk again, configure it all get all the menus and prompts working, only to have it work for a few days then have the same issues, you just want to throw it across the room. That's why I just don't even have the energy to even look at another provider right now. If it wasn't for the fact that we work from home often, I'd just get business lines and deal with the fact we lose our direct lines, but we work remotely too often and I don't want to forward calls over business lines since we'd lose the caller ID info. So that's why we are using cell phones now, so I can finally just not have to worry about the phones working! There comes a point that we just can't keep testing things out with real customers as the guinea pigs, especially when we work in telecom. It's pretty bad when you're trying to sell someone a PRI and then they start asking if you're using VoIP because you're getting all delayed sounding and then the call just drops!

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:44:12 EDT

taytong888 posted : Linux clusters that are capable of handling many connections simultaneously to the rescue?

:D

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 14:18:15 EDT

connor79 posted : No no I know it's not all Voip. We are an Allstream partner also where we sell SIP Trunking which doesn't even compare to these services, it's just minimum 15-25 channels required, but if used with Allstream Internet then it doesn't even run through the Internet, but even with 3rd party Internet at least calls are routed through an actual provider to the PSTN not through a multitude of carriers on the back end.

I used Anveo for 2 days was okay until they got that DDOS attack which took us down, so stopped that. I've used callcentric before but I know recently they were attacked and had that flooding issue etc. So all I mean is I'm just really tired of voip, that's why I am using Bell's SNR since at least I know it's all on Bell's network and not routing differently all the time.

It's the fact that even with voip.ms forwarding to a cell, I can call the DID and one time my cell might ring immediately. I then call it back and the phone rings once, twice, three times THEN my cell starts. Call it back, rings once, then cell starts ringing. Call it back again, rings once, twice, three times, four times, voip.ms answers with no cell phone ever ringing. Like it's always just so random. And again trust me I love voip.ms, I've used them for 3 years or so with no issues. It's just lately it seems like there's so many problems. I know that 99% of the time it's the end user, but I look at it like 3 years ago I knew NOTHING about voip. I get it set up and it works fine for us for months and months. Now I have non stop problems, so I try another PBX, bust out my Cisco UC540 to try it, try phones directly connected to it etc, problems non stop and I feel like a total newbie! Then I look back and say I didn't have ANY of these problems years ago when I was new at this, and we would make changes all the time, changing the phones we used, moving asterisk distributions, moving from on prem to hosted, etc, every time we'd make a change things would continue to work. Just now I have so many problems, so make a change such as going as far as selling my Cisco phones and buying Aastra and having it still do the same thing even with Softphones. I just find it hard to believe that I've somehow suddenly got so incompetent that I can't configure anything anymore.

Again I'm not trying to bash voip.ms or tell people not to sign up, I'm simply stating my personal experiences. I was about to post a thread on this delayed answer thing and was surprised to see one already started. Made me feel good to at least know I'm not crazy!

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:19:36 EDT

anon posted : problem is with the entire system - they want us to think that isolated server problems on a daily basis (so much for "isolated") are to blame, or that somebody else is to blame, but just seems like the system is not reliable and can not handle the number of calls/customers. plain and simple. the sooner we realize this and stop spinning our wheels acting like all these problems are unique to one of us, the sooner they can do what needs to be done instead of stonewalling and taking some action to remedy the situation - and its not canada, and its not LA or NY - its the entire system, sorry to say

reviewed

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:02:33 EDT

Trev posted :

said by PX Eliezer:

This is why I get so concerned when providers get ongoing issues, it spills over.

Please don't judge all of VoIP by one provider experience.

Yep, this is a battle I fight daily when talking to prospective customers who had a family member or colleague "try VoIP but it didn't work very well."

Just because you've had a poor experience with one provider doesn't mean the entire industry will have the same problems. There are many options available with different providers as PX listed that should be able to deliver the service you want at rates better than Bell with virtually identical call quality.
--
Wondering what I do? Find out at »www.digitalcon.ca
Get your Obihai ATA in Canada.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:53:01 EDT

PX Eliezer posted :

said by connor79:

This is why I get so concerned when providers get ongoing issues, it spills over.

Please don't judge all of VoIP by one provider experience.

You know that in Canada you have lots of other options----

Fibernetics
»www.fibernetics.ca/

Fibernetics Business (Newt)
»business.fibernetics.ca/

Acrovoice
»www.acrovoice.ca/content/business_service

Iristel
»www.iristel.ca/corporate-overview/

To name a few....

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:31:28 EDT

connor79 posted : Just saw this reply as well. To say it's the end user is a bit ridiculous. We used Voip.ms in our business for over a year first with an on prem Asterisk deployment using Rogers cable Internet for business, and had no problems other than sometimes on calls over an hour long it would start to get jitter for a minute then stop. Then we switched to a hosted asterisk and still no problems at all, had that maybe 6-8 months all worked fine.

Continued to use hosted Asterisk when we closed our office to work from home, so 4 users all different locations, Rogers Internet at some sites, Bell at others and TekSavvy at one all residential, no issues. Decided didnt' need the PBX so all users registered to the Montreal voip.ms server directly or Toronto, and again still no issues all worked fine.

Then suddenly starting 4 months or so ago non stop issues with dropped calls, poor call quality or now this delayed call issue starting a couple weeks ago. Tried different servers etc still happens, and that's on all 4 users in completely different locations, 2 in Toronto one in St. Catharines and 1 in Cambridge on all different Internet providers. (Just noticed as I'm writing this my IP phone now says no service, so registration has been lost, which happens once a day or so for about 3-5 minutes then comes back. I have 2 lines on my IP phone and it will be one or the other, never both even though they are both on the same voip.ms server).

I switched my parents to voip.ms several months ago with no issue but for the past month even she has been complaining to me and they are in a small town on Rogers using a Linksys ATA device. She says they keep getting emails saying new voicemail but the phone has never rang (my IP phone just registered again, so about 3 minutes since it dropped). Other times she will answer and no one is there, she hangs up and they call back asking why she hung up on them, or the phone will just ring randomly but they can't answer it. Again this is after it working no problem for 4-5 months then this all started a month ago.

I am a Bell Canada partner, but our business isn't large enough to warrant having business lines or a PRI as we have been spoiled by voip, getting direct lines etc. But even one of my customers yesterday was asking me about porting DIDs to their Bell PRI which we discussed for awhile, then after a few emails they told me the issue was that the numbers are with voip.ms but they are having tons of problems with inbound calls just not working. This is from someone that has no idea I even use voip.ms or had trouble with them. I don't know what is going on lately but in the past month they have gone way down hill.

We actually just went out and got Fido cell phones with their unlimited Canada-wide plan and are using Bell single number reach to handle our main menu IVR for the customers that prefer to call us toll free. While the SNR is being set up I have voip.ms forwarding the DIDs to the cell phones, and at least twice a day I'll get an email saying new voicemail in my voip.ms mailbox, without my cell phone even ringing once. I'm completely done with VoIP.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:48:51 EDT

XCOM posted :

said by crazyk4952:

said by XCOM:

I also see that the issue has been in the canadian pop's...

My DIDs are US DIDs, I am not registering to a Canadian POP, and I was having this issue. I do not think the problem is solely with Canadian DIDs/POPs.

And I stand firm that this must be isolated issues to end users.

Like I said in the past I use Houston, Dallas, and some times Chicago and Atlanta and I do not experience this issue.
When I was using Comcast residential I had all sort of issues including registration drop and it turned out to be a route issue. I been 100% solid sense I moved to Business.
--
[nUll@dcypher ~]$

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:22:02 EDT

crazyk4952 posted :

said by XCOM:

I also see that the issue has been in the canadian pop's...

My DIDs are US DIDs, I am not registering to a Canadian POP, and I was having this issue. I do not think the problem is solely with Canadian DIDs/POPs.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:17:09 EDT

crazyk4952 posted :

said by embo :

I'm with voip.ms. For a lot of callers, when I pick up the phone, they cannot hear me. It takes about 10-15 seconds before they can hear me say "Hello". I'm using a Linksys SPA2102.
If you have any ideas on a fix for this, I would really appreciate it.

I have experienced similar issues starting about a month ago. When I was having this problem, people would call my voip.ms DID, I would answer and it would take about 2-3 seconds before the calling party could hear me.

I also have an IPKall DID pointed to my voip.ms SIP URI and it was experiencing the same issues too.

However, I have not experienced this issue for the last several weeks. I have been using the houston server during this time. I am not sure if changing the server fixed the problem, or not.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:44:27 EDT

Mango posted : It seems that there is an issue with VoIP.ms' ISP Telecom DIDs this morning. At first glance it seems to be only Ontario that is having the problem.

Edit: the issue is now on the VoIP.ms issue tracker.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:29:40 EDT

ancodia posted : I was on a call this morning, heard some weird static noises and the call dropped, and it hasn't worked since. Calls from my Rogers cell to any of my GTA DID #'s fail. If you are in the GTA area, you might want to check your inbound # and verify it's working.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:28:16 EDT

XCOM posted : I been tracking this set of post and what I have seen in common is that is the same posters over and over complaining about the same issue.
I also see that the issue has been in the canadian pop's...
Why is it so hard to change pop's?
--
[nUll@dcypher ~]$

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:20:42 EDT

Mango posted : That's too bad. :( I assume you've tried to route the DIDs to the Echo Test already?

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:18:13 EDT

ancodia posted : I noticed this problem too this morning - but now none of my DID #'s work. All inbound calls are failing. What a POS company.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:10:23 EDT

XCOM posted :

said by pauleyisle :

yes same here intermittently, with different ATAs, this happens 30-60% of the time. voip.ms is not reliable for incoming calls, period.

If that was the case I would have the issue and so would a 1000 others.

I blame your setup/network/route/traffic.
--
[nUll@dcypher ~]$

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 09:57:58 EDT

anon posted : yes same here intermittently, with different ATAs, this happens 30-60% of the time. voip.ms is not reliable for incoming calls, period.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 09:45:05 EDT

kaila posted : This really sounds like a network issue, where the firewall/router is initially holding up outbound rtp packets for some reason. The first thing I would do is go over the router/firewall settings, or even reboot the router first if it just started occurring.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 09:40:01 EDT

connor79 posted : I'm glad I'm not going crazy, and this is the whole reason that we are looking at other providers in another thread because it's embarrassing to have to keep answering. Like sometimes I'm like "Thank you for calling XYZ Company this is Connor speaking how may I help you?" then it's silence... then I'm like "Hello?" and the customer is like "Oh hi is this XYZ Company??" Since it sounds like I just picked up the phone saying Hello :S.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 00:00:43 EDT

PX Eliezer posted : A similar issue has been reported before with other providers.
»fonality.com/trixbox/forums/trix···nswering

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 23:51:06 EDT

jhouston21 posted : I've had numerous customers reporting the same problem to me. VoIP.ms has offered numerous suggestions, none of which have been effective. The important point is that these same customers didn't used to have the problem. I have no doubt that the problem would cease if I were to port the customers to a different provider. That is not my goal, however, at some point the customers are going to become impatient and instruct me to do whatever it takes to permanently resolve the situation.

The problem of of the incoming caller not being able to hear the party who is answering the call at my customer locations only last 2 - 5 seconds and it appears to affect somewhere around 2% of the incoming calls.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 21:26:38 EDT

connor79 posted : I used Toronto for awhile then Montreal and then Chicago and it does it on all of them. It's not all the time but it is fairly often. I have my DID on voip.ms set to go to a ring group which only has my cell as a call forward member. I have that because I have 2 DIDs that I send to my cell and by using a ring group I can prepend the caller ID to say L1 or L2 for Line 1 or 2 before the caller ID.

However my employee is connected directly to voip.ms using an IP phone and 9 times out of 10 when I call her, my cell will say "Connected" and the timer starts and i hear silence, then 5 seconds later I'll hear her background noise come on and her being like "Hello????"

Then same with if someone calls my DID and it goes to my cell phone, I'll answer and hear them no problem and they just don't hear me.

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 21:25:58 EDT

Mango posted : For those having issues: if you use a VoIP.ms subaccount to call your VoIP.ms DID, the call will not be routed through the PSTN. Do the symptoms still occur?

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 21:18:40 EDT

XCOM posted : Good catch Mango.
Seattle and Toronto have been having issues. Maybe is related...
--
[nUll@dcypher ~]$

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 21:16:59 EDT

Mango posted : I notice that the two people having issues are Canadian. Coincidence?

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 21:08:17 EDT

XCOM posted :

said by connor79:

We have the EXACT same problem, and it does it whether I'm forwarding a call from voip.ms to my cell, or using a SIP phone. We answer and I hear the other person and I'm like "Hello?" wait 5 secs "Hello?" then finally they are like "Oh hi how are you?". I've changed servers and everything and it does this all the time, that's why in my other thread I've been trying to find another phone provider.

How come I dont have this issue?
If I understand correctly you change servers and the issue persists which states that is a voip.ms issue.
I use: Houston, Dallas, and sometimes Chicago and Atlanta.
No issues here with delay.
--
[nUll@dcypher ~]$

Re: [Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 20:55:36 EDT

connor79 posted : We have the EXACT same problem, and it does it whether I'm forwarding a call from voip.ms to my cell, or using a SIP phone. We answer and I hear the other person and I'm like "Hello?" wait 5 secs "Hello?" then finally they are like "Oh hi how are you?". I've changed servers and everything and it does this all the time, that's why in my other thread I've been trying to find another phone provider.

[Voip.ms] Delay in Answering Calls

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:36:14 EDT

anon posted : I'm with voip.ms. For a lot of callers, when I pick up the phone, they cannot hear me. It takes about 10-15 seconds before they can hear me say "Hello". I'm using a Linksys SPA2102.
If you have any ideas on a fix for this, I would really appreciate it.