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weird FIOS problem w/ VOIP: REVISED -- problem not fixed.

Started by ducatiz, January 05, 2010, 04:43:40 PM

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ducatiz

January 05, 2010, 04:43:40 PM Last Edit: January 09, 2010, 08:40:11 AM by ducatiz
I have FIOS internet

Have a VOIP phone line, direct wired to the router.

Have a WIFI enabled blackberry (VOIP calling).

Have had no problems for the last 2 months:  make and receive calls on both home voip phone and wifi blackberry phone.

All of a sudden, I have a weird problem on BOTH lines.

I make a call.  Get a dial tone (from the VOIP box).  No ring, nothing.  However, if I call my wife's cel phone (regular mobile CDMA) it rings and she can hear me saying "hello" but I cannot hear her.

My phone(s) will ring, but I answer and can't hear anything, but the other party can hear me.

Summary:

Two separate VOIP lines.
One wireless/wifi.
One hard wired.
Both ring when called, but can't hear caller.
Both dial out when dialed, but no ring and cannot hear called party when they answer.

Anyone?
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"Yelling out of cars, turning your speakers out the window to blast your music onto the street, setting off M-80 firecrackers, firing automatic weapons into the airâ€"these are all well and good. But none of them create a merry atmosphere of insouciance and bonhomie quite like a revving motorcycle.

superjohn

#1
January 05, 2010, 04:49:45 PM
My guess is something got screwed up on the CallManager and you're getting one way data. Someone at Verizon would have to fix it.

Is the Blackberry using the same VOIP as the house?

ducatiz

#2
January 05, 2010, 04:59:38 PM
Quote from: superjohn on January 05, 2010, 04:49:45 PM
My guess is something got screwed up on the CallManager and you're getting one way data. Someone at Verizon would have to fix it.

Is the Blackberry using the same VOIP as the house?

Nope, Blackberry has it's own 802.11g wifi so it connects to the wireless router separately and pipes VOIP along with web, etc.

the home VOIP line is not Verizon either
Check out my oil filter forensics thread!                     Offended? Click here
"Yelling out of cars, turning your speakers out the window to blast your music onto the street, setting off M-80 firecrackers, firing automatic weapons into the airâ€"these are all well and good. But none of them create a merry atmosphere of insouciance and bonhomie quite like a revving motorcycle.

superjohn

#3
January 05, 2010, 05:01:23 PM
Weird. One way audio is a common VoIP problem, but unfortunately I got into management before I had to learn to fix it.

ducatiz

#4
January 05, 2010, 05:06:49 PM
Quote from: superjohn on January 05, 2010, 05:01:23 PM
Weird. One way audio is a common VoIP problem, but unfortunately I got into management before I had to learn to fix it.

having a symptom name is useful.  i got out of technology right as VocalTec (one of my old clients) was developing H.323...  sigh...  i used to understand this shit.
Check out my oil filter forensics thread!                     Offended? Click here
"Yelling out of cars, turning your speakers out the window to blast your music onto the street, setting off M-80 firecrackers, firing automatic weapons into the airâ€"these are all well and good. But none of them create a merry atmosphere of insouciance and bonhomie quite like a revving motorcycle.

il d00d

#5
January 05, 2010, 06:35:39 PM
Just wanna be sure: when you make an outbound call when you are having the problem, are you hearing dial tone or a busy tone?  Check out these links for busy and reorder tones, let me know which sounds closest if it is not a dial tone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_tone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reorder_tone

When you have the problem with voice calls, does this correspond to problems with internet access?

When you place a call on a VoIP system, there are actually two separate streams of data established: upstream -or what the other party hears- and downstream -what you hear from the other end.  As you've discovered, it is possible to set up a call successfully (signaling exchanged between endpoints and intermediate device) and have audio fail in a few different ways.  The reason for this is the "callmanagers" are the man in the middle - they handle call setup and teardown, then get out of the way (in most cases).   

In your case, you are having problems getting data from somewhere in the cloud, but you can send audio successfully.  This tells me that you are not experiencing an interruption in your connection to verizon (although it would be good to verify that you have a web connection when the problem is happening) The fact that you experience the same problem on two different devices, with different VoIP hardware (DSPs) which have different LAN connections tells me the problem is most likely at the gateway or the provider's equipment - it is not isolated to a wired or wireless connection. Also since the problem is with getting data and not sending data, I am inclined to think this is an issue on the provider side - since the vast majority of all residential broadband is asynchronous (upstream and downstream bandwidth is unequal - you have a lot more down than up), you are more likely to max out your upstream bandwidth (callers would have problems hearing you) than you are your downstream (you have problems hearing callers).  So, it is not a bandwidth issue.

This is pretty much the extent of the troubleshooting that can be done at the endpoint level.  Your FIOS modem should not be doing anything fancy with the residential phone calls, just taking an analog call and making it digitial - the Blackberry call should just look like data, the modem does not need to help complete that call.   One other question -do you have admin access to your modem/router?  If so, PM me and we can arrange to take a look at the settings if you want.

Bottom line: One-way audio is almost always a routing issue in the case of VoIP calls - that is to say, there's a problem routing IP traffic (encapsulated voice) traffic to the other endpoint in the call.  In some cases there are issues with DSPs, or transcoding, or protocol translation, but it is most likely a problem with a SIP server (the "callmanager") in the Verizon network.

ducatiz

#6
January 05, 2010, 06:41:29 PM
Quote from: il d00d on January 05, 2010, 06:35:39 PM
Just wanna be sure: when you make an outbound call when you are having the problem, are you hearing dial tone or a busy tone?  Check out these links for busy and reorder tones, let me know which sounds closest if it is not a dial tone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_tone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reorder_tone

When you have the problem with voice calls, does this correspond to problems with internet access?

zero internet access problems

home phone has dial tone and DTMF fine -- but that comes from the VOIP box

blackberry has no dial tone -- just like any cel phone.  dial the number and SEND

both:  no ring tone.  but it does ring the other end -- if i call my wife's cel phone, her phone rings, but i cannot hear the ring on either VOIP phone.

bandwidth isn't an issue, voip uses about 90kb from what i understand, and we have 50Mb

i am pretty sure it's verizon's problem, i just needed some info on it. 
Check out my oil filter forensics thread!                     Offended? Click here
"Yelling out of cars, turning your speakers out the window to blast your music onto the street, setting off M-80 firecrackers, firing automatic weapons into the airâ€"these are all well and good. But none of them create a merry atmosphere of insouciance and bonhomie quite like a revving motorcycle.

il d00d

#7
January 05, 2010, 08:47:30 PM
OK - just a heads-up, dialtone can come from anywhere, including the phone itself (analog phones rely signaling from some external device, like your modem).  No ringback (hearing progress tones) is symptomatic of the same issue - no audio in the reverse direction due to routing issues, even if signaling is working right.

Also, I mean to mention that making calls to VZB subscribers, while calls out to the PSTN failed makes sense - a call to your wife is on-net, and other calls to (for example) ATT users are off-net.  This problem is most likely on some PSTN gateway within Verizon's cloud.

VoIP uses a maximum of 64kbs for g711 (without overhead) - you are likely using something with more compression.

Good luck on the call to Verizon, and lemme know if I can help at all.  Keep us posted...

ducatiz

#8
January 06, 2010, 02:21:00 AM
she uses tmobile so i figured it was off net..
Check out my oil filter forensics thread!                     Offended? Click here
"Yelling out of cars, turning your speakers out the window to blast your music onto the street, setting off M-80 firecrackers, firing automatic weapons into the airâ€"these are all well and good. But none of them create a merry atmosphere of insouciance and bonhomie quite like a revving motorcycle.

ducatiz

#9
January 06, 2010, 04:00:55 AM
so i talked with verizon support.  i assume it was level 1, the guy's first sentence was "we don't support other people's voip"..

i ignored it and pushed, explaining i was having the problem on my wifi blackberry

basically, i got the "i'll open a ticket with networking"

ugh.
Check out my oil filter forensics thread!                     Offended? Click here
"Yelling out of cars, turning your speakers out the window to blast your music onto the street, setting off M-80 firecrackers, firing automatic weapons into the airâ€"these are all well and good. But none of them create a merry atmosphere of insouciance and bonhomie quite like a revving motorcycle.

ducatiz

#10
January 06, 2010, 06:44:46 AM
Emailed on my lists.  Found some Verizon engineers I knew.

Turns out a little "update" was sent out on Sunday night, and one of them was a filter that blocked the udp ports which VOIP uses.  I assume they did this for their customers who do NOT use Verizon VOIP. 

assholes!

I removed the filter, VOIP works fine now.
Check out my oil filter forensics thread!                     Offended? Click here
"Yelling out of cars, turning your speakers out the window to blast your music onto the street, setting off M-80 firecrackers, firing automatic weapons into the airâ€"these are all well and good. But none of them create a merry atmosphere of insouciance and bonhomie quite like a revving motorcycle.

superjohn

#11
January 06, 2010, 12:10:02 PM
Quote from: ducatiz on January 06, 2010, 06:44:46 AM
Emailed on my lists.  Found some Verizon engineers I knew.

Turns out a little "update" was sent out on Sunday night, and one of them was a filter that blocked the udp ports which VOIP uses.  I assume they did this for their customers who do NOT use Verizon VOIP. 

assholes!

I removed the filter, VOIP works fine now.

Gee...I didn't think it'd be as simple as an access-list. Glad you have it fixed.

ducatiz

#12
January 09, 2010, 08:42:56 AM
So the filtering "problem" wasn't the problem at all.  My wifi phone was connected to the neighbor's network and I was getting calls thru it not realizing I was connected to them..  [bang]

I spoke to Verizon Fibre Support Center and they told me to pound sand.  They said if my TV and internet (read:  web surfing only) was working that the router was fine and if I had some other device connected that was not their problem.

I am looking into other options.  I am not 100% sure, but I believe it is against FCC regs to block VOIP.  I need to look into it. 

I cannot believe this is happening though. We had this VOIP phone running on Cox internet for the last 3 years -- not a single problem.  We get FIOS and it runs fine for hte last month and then blammo! it's gone.

[bang] [bang] [bang]
Check out my oil filter forensics thread!                     Offended? Click here
"Yelling out of cars, turning your speakers out the window to blast your music onto the street, setting off M-80 firecrackers, firing automatic weapons into the airâ€"these are all well and good. But none of them create a merry atmosphere of insouciance and bonhomie quite like a revving motorcycle.

cduarte

#13
January 09, 2010, 09:03:51 AM
check this out....

http://gigaom.com/2007/05/04/is-verizon-blocking-voip-on-fios/

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/03/verizon_fights_rules_for_voip.html

btw, what does your home network topology look like? Do you have a single router attached to your fios connection?
build a man a fire and he's warm for a day, set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...

cyrus buelton

#14
January 09, 2010, 09:25:08 AM
So basically, while at home, you are using your mobile phone free over your internet pipe?

Didn't even know you could do that.
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