Has anyone else had trouble with audio quality on Vonage?

Question

When using the phone, suddenly the transmitted sound drops off entirely. It comes back on after about ten seconds, while in the meantime it sounds like the phone went completely dead (on the receiving end). Does this sound at all familiar to anyone?

Answer 1

- It sounds like your ATA (analog telephone adapter) dropped registration with Vonage service.  

- When ATA's drop registration, your telephone line will be completely "dead".  That is because there are no signals being received from your registered VoIP service (in your case Vonage).

- It is "possible" Vonage network went down temporarily.

- However, it is "more likely" a problem with your Internet connection or your Modem, Router, ATA losing Internet connectivity.

- Monitor all Modem, Router, and ATA "status" lights.

- Note how the lights flash when "normal" and all is good.

- Note how the lights flash or change when having "problems".

- Modem Status lights - will often help you identify if the problem is loss of Internet signal or loss of IP address registration.

- Router Status lights - will often identify problems connection to Modem and thus Internet.  If ATA is separate box, it will often show status of ATA connection to Router.

- ATA Status lights - If you have a separate telephone adapter, its status lights will indicate if it is "Registered" with your VoIP service

If it loses "registration" to VoIP service, then you will only hear dead silence on phone.

If there is a problem with Internet signal, Modem, or Router, they can all, or anyone, cause loss of signal causing loss of ATA registration with VoIP service provider.

If the ATA configuration settings have been changed in any way, it may lose registration.

If Router configurations have been changed in any way, it could cause "port blocking" which can cause loss of registration or loss of voice data packets.

When it comes to VoIP and Internet, quality of service can be a complex issue to solve, unless it is just straight-forward hardware failure....

Sometimes, one of the boxes "lock-up".  

This is common in Routers.  In which case, sometimes it is only a matter of shutting off all power to all the devices such as Modem/Router/ATA for few seconds and then re-apply power.  This will usually reset all devices to normal operation.