Voice latency

[jmatero]

I give up.

This product was supposed to solve the only problem I had with my iPhones at home: 1 Bar.

It took over a week to get the unit activated and then, connecting with both phones was as advertised and I got 5 bars everywhere. However, the voice latency (even when it was setup in priority) was terrible. I could have accepted the voice delay but when dealing with automated systems that required keypad input... forget it. Then, there was the severe degradation of my WiFi network at home... no matter how far I placed it. The final straw, however, was that since updating my iPhones to 4.0.1, neither will auto-connect to the microcell. In fact, even when I force-connect (airplane on/off) when I wake in the morning, the phones have one bar and are not connected to the microcell... despite being placed right next to it.

Worst of all, i'm past the 30 days. eBay to the rescue.

[hbtacoma]

Add me to the list. Unfortunately I have never been able to get a reasonable connection inside my house. Reasonable to me is being able to move with my phone, in my house, and talk on the phone without it dropping the call. From day one with AT&T it has been one to zero bars. If I left the phone in a specific spot on a specific desk in a specific room I could get three bars, but if I moved the phone I would lose the connection. Oh yeah, I signed up with AT&T when I purchased the 1st Gen iPhone. They have been extraordinarily helpful by telling me that I should be able to get a strong signal because of where I live.

People in the house need to make calls, which is the reason we purchase phones and pay AT&T for their version of service. Due to the inability of AT&T to provide a reasonable service in our home, I invested in an antenna and a few additional attachments in order to bring in one to two bars when I’m at the ground level. The purpose of this addition was to pull in an AT&T signal in order to make call. Still, the ability to have a conversation on my phone and not drop the call was less than reasonable. Then the M-Cell was offered in our area where I should be able to get a strong signal. My understanding was that the M-Cell was designed to pull in an AT&T signal, as was the antenna that I spent too much money on. Oops. More problems.

Now in order to make and receive calls I have to make sure the settings on my phone are turned off. I purchased the phone because of what it offers, but I have to remember to manually turn them off when I’m home if I want a reasonable connection to occur, and when I go out I need to remember to turn the setting on. The latency issue has pushed the decision meter towards leaving AT&T.

I have invested more money and time in attempting to get a signal in my house than I should have...my mistake. Not canceling my contract when I could have a few weeks ago was a mistake...again my mistake. Paying full price for an M-Cell that I must reboot daily, and every now-and-again two to three times a day in order to receive calls and voice messages…my mistake. Having so many family members on my plan and seriously looking at dumping AT&T due to the lack of reasonable service…AT&T’s mistake.

Bottom line: We pay for a service that is not being delivered. Financially this has put me in a corner, but in the end it looks like paying off AT&T to go with Verizon and get what I’m paying for is going to end up being the best corrective action for my mistakes.

[richlove]

Have not seen any recent posts on this subject so I thought I would confirm that it has not been fixed yet.

I have almost a full second outgoing delay when talking to someone.

I am going to unplug this thing and wait for ATT to fix the problem.

I have zero latency problems using MagicJack (which also uses VOIP on my internet connection).

I have a very fast cable modem connection and have tried priority mode cabling suggested by ATT with no change in symptoms.

Also, have the problem of intermittent garbled voice.

Yesterday, I tried disconnection the MicroCell on the ATT web page and re-connecting and rebooting the MicroCell.

No change.

Wasted money to purchase the microcell.

Rich

[pswlctct]

 I switched from Verizon a year ago because AT&T saved our company a couple of hundred dollars a month on their wireless services.  Unfortunately none of the phones work within our building, (low to moderate signal area).  Verizon wants us back but I wanted to give AT&T a chance, I called our business rep and explained the situation, which she was aware of.  She stated that we could purchase the MicroCell for $150 and/or receive it at no charge for the unit and pay additional monthly fees.  I complained that we shouldn't pay for AT&T's short comings (signal), and they sold us (orginally) a working system.  I told them that this is a last ditch effort to save themselves from being dumped, and they sent me a MicroCell at no charge. 

  I received the Microcell and setit up according to the directions, had a few snags but relatively easy programming and setup.  We (in the office) were happy to see full bars, (thinking YES finally), but to no avail.  We're plagued with aggravating voice latency (delays) in our conversations.  A couple of dropped calls, (which used to happen all the time before the Microcell), and a couple of calls that went straight to voice mail without the phone ringing at all.

  Our IT company checked all connections and speeds and their is nothing we can do on our end to fix it.  So I'm hoping that telling this story and it's problem will entice someone (AT&T) to fix the fix before ultimately losing our account.

Pete

[DVDC]

I initially had huge latency issues.  While researching this, I noticed that a lot of people complaining were using Comcast as their ISP.  Being a comcast customer myself, I had the chance to replace my comcast modem with a new one (old just died after a couple of years in service).  Ever since, the latency issues are gone.  Nothing else (I am aware of) has changed since.  So, my conclusion is, that the cable modem from comcast was part of the problem.

[pswlctct]

Comcast maybe an issue, I use AT&T and pay for their better DSL service so that blows the "Comcast Only" issue out of the water.

[gbeardmore]

"I initially had huge latency issues.  While researching this, I noticed that a lot of people complaining were using Comcast as their ISP.  Being a comcast customer myself, I had the chance to replace my comcast modem with a new one (old just died after a couple of years in service).  Ever since, the latency issues are gone.  Nothing else (I am aware of) has changed since.  So, my conclusion is, that the cable modem from comcast was part of the problem."

Based on this info I'm going to swap my Time Warner cable modem tonight. My latency is about a second or more. I use the phone in my basement office for business calls, and conversations are very difficult and annoying to my customers!

Hope this does the trick! I'll post my results tomorrow.

Go Packers!

[dru858]

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DVDC wrote:

I initially had huge latency issues.  While researching this, I noticed that a lot of people complaining were using Comcast as their ISP.  Being a comcast customer myself, I had the chance to replace my comcast modem with a new one (old just died after a couple of years in service).  Ever since, the latency issues are gone.  Nothing else (I am aware of) has changed since.  So, my conclusion is, that the cable modem from comcast was part of the problem.

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I disagree with that statement.  I had Cox with a Motorola DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem, the latest and greatest, and experienced latency.  I then switched to AT&T Uverse which is literally over fiber all the way to my garage where it terminates to an ONT which then goes over Cat5e to the RG in my closet.  I get 10ms or sub-10ms ping times on my wired connection and I still have the latency thru the MicroCell.  So it is definitely NOT related to the service provider or the modem.  Sorry...

It's incredibly frustrating trying to have a conversation while on the MicroCell.  It's much easier to have a conversation over Skype on my iPhone or my work BlackBerry from T-mobile that uses UMA over my wifi.  So it's definitely not anything to do with anyone's modem or ISP because as many of us have pointed out while the MicroCell has a delay other VoIP technologies do not over the same internet connection.

[nsayer]

Before you do that, try this test: run a traceroute and see what the first-hop latency is.

If you're running windows, the command for this is spelled tracert. On a mac (or other *nix-like OSes), it's traceroute.

Give it, for example, www.google.com as a target.

As it counts off the hops, the first one that shows a much higher number than the ones before it (probably the 2nd if you're behind a typical home NAT router) will be the latency of your Internet connection itself. All the hops after that are the routers between your ISP and google, and are not interesting for this test.

Something like 85-95% of the latency of any thing you hit from a residential Internet connection is going to be crossing the first hop (unless you have unbelievably good fiber connectivity with FIOS or miraculous DSL).

For example, the first-hop latency on our DSL connection under no load is about 7 ms.

We *just* got a Comcast cable modem a couple days ago and are on our way to switching to their 50/10 service (I'm giving up our static IP addresses and moving the server off into the cloud after almost 20 years of having the IP address of my house be an unchanging number). The first hop latency of that is anywhere between 10 and 40 ms and is much more variable. This is with a brand spanking new DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem from Motorola, so for cable modems, I think this is a best case scenario.

In any event, none of that can come close to explaining the 250-300 msec of latency I sometimes observe in making calls over the microcell. We have a Vonage box (I'm trying to replace Vonage with Microcell unlimited calling, but haven't been able to yet) connected to the exact same Internet connection, and the latency compared to that is easily 100 msec higher.

I can accept that VoIP generally will have higher latency than POTS, but I can't wrap my head around the latency for the Microcell being so much more than Vonage that you can actually hear it.

So unless your first-hop latency is over 50 msec, I would say that your cable/dsl/fiber modem and/or router are probably not why the latency of the Microcell is bad.

[gbeardmore]

I see that this thread has been open since last May and it appears that the entire forum is hosted by AT&T. I've done a little searching, but can find nothing that shows AT&T has even acknowledged there is a problem. 

Am I missing something that shows they're working on it, or does the organization simply NOT CARE?

[nsayer]

You're not missing anything. They've made it abundantly clear over time that on this and every other Microcell issue, that they do not care. Not even a little.

[pixelmountain]

Replacing my very old Comcast modem with a new modem definitely helped. Latency was extremely frustrating before. Now it's either gone or just not enough to be noticeable. I feel no need to run tests – the difference is so obvious it's very clear it's not an issue any longer.

[gbeardmore]

Well, I have an update to report. In the last week a couple of things have happened. First I had Time Warner Cable come out and replace my Cable Modem. They agreed it was time, as my old unit was over 4 years old. 

Then that evening, my Microcell stopped working at all, stopping all traffic for my Blackberry and my kid's iPhone. We went to bed, and when we got up in the AM the Microcell was back online, working fine. Since then the Voice Latency problem seems to have vanished entirely.

Since I had 2 events happen almost at once I can't say if the problem was fixed by either the new Modem OR what apparently was a firmware update. But in any event, all's good!

(Just wish I could be specific for y'all about what actually fixed it!)

Greg

[jefe]

Just for reference, gbeardmore, what part of the country are you in?

[gbeardmore]

"Just for reference, gbeardmore, what part of the country are you in?

Green Bay, WI

[gbeardmore]

Well, the Latency is back, about 2 weeks ago. Has anyone got input or news on this issue? I thought I had it fixed with a new Cable Modem, but the 1-2 second lag is back.

Thanks!

[pubius]

This (voice latency) has been going on pretty bad for me for the past 6 months. It's part of the lovely microcell experience. Please call off any attempts to remedy or blame the situation on your modem or ISP. The fault clearly lies exactly where we expect it to, with little hope for a cure.

[nsayer]

Before AT&T tries to fix the Microcell, they need to fix their attitude towards the customer. Alas, it's clear that that is never going to happen.

[zedalpha]

@Aviation76:
Be cautious if you disabled SPI & opened these ports, especially 443. You might be able to open those ports just for your uCell. I can't remember if the stock wrt54g firmware allows that. I'm pretty sure ddwrt does.

http://www.enigmagroup.org/exploits/rport/443/
http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

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zedalpha wrote:
@Aviation76:
Be cautious if you disabled SPI & opened these ports, especially 443. You might be able to open those ports just for your uCell. I can't remember if the stock wrt54g firmware allows that. I'm pretty sure ddwrt does.

http://www.enigmagroup.org/exploits/rport/443/
http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

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You do realize that you've responded to a post that is almost 3 years old. 443 is one of the ports that needs to be open if one is to do port forwarding to the MicroCell with an assigned static IP address.