What VOIP services play well with CenturyLink DSL?
December 13, 2013 3:43 PM Subscribe
I'd like to move from using a land line to a VOIP service over my CenturyLink DSL. I'm afraid the service will suck. How can I evaluate this before committing to porting my phone number?
I had a VOIP phone (VOIPO) on Comcast for several years. The service was moderately okay, meaning it didn't suck too bad most of the time. Usable with some noticeable latency. Best part was $8 a month. Killer deal. Then there's the Comcast cost, which was $60/month, which sucked, so I moved to CenturyLink DSL for Internet service at less than half the cost.
On the DSL circuit, my VOIP connection got totally unusable. No one seemed to be at fault, neither Centurylink or VOIPO could point to a real cause for this. Next step >> landline.
That's where I am at now, paying more for Internet plus phone than I was on Comcast + VOIPO. Of course, the phone service quality is better.
I'd like to go back to VOIP and wondering what VOIP service might play well with Centurylink DSL? Also, I would want to evaluate the service for a month, are there any VOIP services that are offering that kind of deal?
Finally, if I am doing the evaluation and seeing dropouts, latency or failures of various kinds, what kinds of tests can I do to see what's going awry? I have networking chops, at least I can ping servers, and run traceroute. Another way to phrase this might be, if there are problems how can I ascertain whether it's an overbooked consumer DSL network causing issues or something a bit more active in the way of degrading or de-prioritizing VOIP connections that are not in CL's interests to support.
I had a VOIP phone (VOIPO) on Comcast for several years. The service was moderately okay, meaning it didn't suck too bad most of the time. Usable with some noticeable latency. Best part was $8 a month. Killer deal. Then there's the Comcast cost, which was $60/month, which sucked, so I moved to CenturyLink DSL for Internet service at less than half the cost.
On the DSL circuit, my VOIP connection got totally unusable. No one seemed to be at fault, neither Centurylink or VOIPO could point to a real cause for this. Next step >> landline.
That's where I am at now, paying more for Internet plus phone than I was on Comcast + VOIPO. Of course, the phone service quality is better.
I'd like to go back to VOIP and wondering what VOIP service might play well with Centurylink DSL? Also, I would want to evaluate the service for a month, are there any VOIP services that are offering that kind of deal?
Finally, if I am doing the evaluation and seeing dropouts, latency or failures of various kinds, what kinds of tests can I do to see what's going awry? I have networking chops, at least I can ping servers, and run traceroute. Another way to phrase this might be, if there are problems how can I ascertain whether it's an overbooked consumer DSL network causing issues or something a bit more active in the way of degrading or de-prioritizing VOIP connections that are not in CL's interests to support.
What do you get when you do a speed test? How does stuff like Skype work for you right now? That'd help to see if the trouble had been just the old VOIP service or whether the trouble was just your connection not being very good.
posted by Sequence at 6:39 PM on December 13, 2013
posted by Sequence at 6:39 PM on December 13, 2013
Best answer: I have had so many problems with centurylink DSL it isn't even funny. They're the worst provider of anything i've ever had to deal with. Front to back. The service, the phone CS reps, the technicians, everything. They're utterly fucking useless.
It's extremely, incredibly unlikely the problem has anything to do with your equipment. It's probably a bad circuit at their end, or a bad card in DSLAM or some shitted up piece of crap at the CLEC office.
I've spent months, actually closer to over a year battling this hunk of poop company at 3 different places i've lived, and multiple locations for the company i work for with their "commercial" service. If it isn't one thing, it's the other. They're always passing the buck and creating new support tickets which they'll quickly close without interacting with you as "resolved".
It's extremely likely if you push them they'll just tell you that they're technically providing what you agreed to in the contract since you weren't guaranteed X lantency or Y advertised speed, but rather extremely shitty minimums or even more weasely percentage based ones.
I mean even if you look at it from an occams razor standpoint, it just seems so much more likely and plausible that their network is just shit and they don't care than that they're actively screwing with VOIP like they do with torrents at some ISPs.
Mostly though, it's just that i know how much they suck. How incompetent they are, how apathetic they can be as a borg collective of undermotivated employees and a conglomeration of turds that don't really care about anything other than that people keep paying the bill.
Pretty much, be thankful you can even browse to here and post this. Or that you're getting more than like, 100Kbps. I've gotten worse from them.
For all the hate comcast gets, i don't even care anymore. I just pay them, and try and strongarm them into promotions when i can. At least it works.
posted by emptythought at 7:08 PM on December 13, 2013
It's extremely, incredibly unlikely the problem has anything to do with your equipment. It's probably a bad circuit at their end, or a bad card in DSLAM or some shitted up piece of crap at the CLEC office.
I've spent months, actually closer to over a year battling this hunk of poop company at 3 different places i've lived, and multiple locations for the company i work for with their "commercial" service. If it isn't one thing, it's the other. They're always passing the buck and creating new support tickets which they'll quickly close without interacting with you as "resolved".
It's extremely likely if you push them they'll just tell you that they're technically providing what you agreed to in the contract since you weren't guaranteed X lantency or Y advertised speed, but rather extremely shitty minimums or even more weasely percentage based ones.
I mean even if you look at it from an occams razor standpoint, it just seems so much more likely and plausible that their network is just shit and they don't care than that they're actively screwing with VOIP like they do with torrents at some ISPs.
Mostly though, it's just that i know how much they suck. How incompetent they are, how apathetic they can be as a borg collective of undermotivated employees and a conglomeration of turds that don't really care about anything other than that people keep paying the bill.
Pretty much, be thankful you can even browse to here and post this. Or that you're getting more than like, 100Kbps. I've gotten worse from them.
For all the hate comcast gets, i don't even care anymore. I just pay them, and try and strongarm them into promotions when i can. At least it works.
posted by emptythought at 7:08 PM on December 13, 2013
Response by poster: I haven't had quite the horrible experience that emptythought has had. I'm testing at around 9Mbps down and .8Mbps up. That's probably the issue right there. The upload is so slow with mediocre quality connection averages that any VOIP is probably doomed.
I'm not quite ready to flee back to the Comcast monopole but definitely considering it. Thanks for the tips.
posted by diode at 9:24 PM on December 13, 2013
I'm not quite ready to flee back to the Comcast monopole but definitely considering it. Thanks for the tips.
posted by diode at 9:24 PM on December 13, 2013
Get a router that can run OpenWRT, configure and enable upstream QoS. OpenWRT uses a newish linux queueing discipline called CoDel that does a great job of maintaining reasonable and consistent latency, even when the upstream is stuffed full.
Personally though, I finally got sick of waiting for CenturyLink to roll out their Fiber to the node service so I could have decent uplink speeds and switched to Comcast. I don't love the price, or the fact that I thought they'd only raise my introductory price once rather than twice , but I can't complain about the service. Uptime and performance have been good, and they've actually nearly doubled my speed grade, something CenturyLink hasn't been able to do for almost a decade -- they still haven't rolled out FTTN service in the 18 months since I jumped ship.
posted by Good Brain at 11:11 PM on December 13, 2013
Personally though, I finally got sick of waiting for CenturyLink to roll out their Fiber to the node service so I could have decent uplink speeds and switched to Comcast. I don't love the price, or the fact that I thought they'd only raise my introductory price once rather than twice , but I can't complain about the service. Uptime and performance have been good, and they've actually nearly doubled my speed grade, something CenturyLink hasn't been able to do for almost a decade -- they still haven't rolled out FTTN service in the 18 months since I jumped ship.
posted by Good Brain at 11:11 PM on December 13, 2013
Actually if the problem is that your voice breaks up, then you can almost certainly resolve that with qos on your router, and I'd be shocked if voipo didn't suggest that.
posted by empath at 11:16 PM on December 13, 2013
posted by empath at 11:16 PM on December 13, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by COD at 5:07 PM on December 13, 2013