Question about bad routes and "route treatments"

[GreenLantern]

Can anyone explain bad routes and why they can't be resolved all at once, rather than 1 number at a time?

It is to the point that every time we dial a number, we cross our fingers and hope that the number actually dials and doesn't require opening a support ticket for a "route treatment".

Some accounts require numerous, separate route treatments for various numbers. And we never really know if we got them all.

This situation erodes my confidence (and my clients' confidence) in the service.

[Ansextra]

I have the same issues with relatively constant "route treatments" and it is extremely frustrating. I have many numbers that only ring once and die. Problem is they may not be numbers I call regularly so it is ridiculous to go back and test them after the "route treatment" is done. I need the number to connect when I dial it. I renew in a year and if this keeps up I will possibly be looking for another provider although I'm not certain others are better. I love VOIPO but the infamous "route treatment" is getting old.

[Ansextra]

I needed another "routing treatment" for two numbers that previously worked fine. This is extremely upsetting as I need my phone service to be reliable when I want to call someone. What's worse is I haven't seen a response to this thread explaining why this happens. Very disappointing. I have another year to go on my 2 year contract but if this continues I won't be renewing unless I hear that this is a common ailment among VOIP providers.

[racerdude]

What kind of issue are you guys getting that requires a route change? Are you seeing the call disconnect after a certain period of time (say 15-30 seconds)? I've been experiencing that problem with some calls for a long time, I always have to open a support ticket for a route change and it normally is resolved but sometimes occurs again at a later time.

[GreenLantern]

Route treatment is often required due to an outbound call to a particular number that fails in a variety of ways... error messages, won't ring, rings but won't connect, connects but no audio, connects then drops immediately or fairly quickly, etc.

[Ansextra]

Route treatment is often required due to an outbound call to a particular number that fails in a variety of ways... error messages, won't ring, rings but won't connect, connects but no audio, connects then drops immediately or fairly quickly, etc.I understand that but still don't understand why it should be necessary in the first place? It almost sounds like each number needs to be entered manually into a call manager. That would be an absurd state of affairs.

[GreenLantern]

I understand that but still don't understand why it should be necessary in the first place? It almost sounds like each number needs to be entered manually into a call manager. That would be an absurd state of affairs.

Having to "treat" individual numbers suggests that there are many (!!!) other numbers with broken routes, just waiting to be discovered.

User's won't discover these broken routes until they try calling a particular, affected number.

At that point, the user must open a support ticket, then wait for a route treatment, before they can complete that call.

That is, if they know to ask for a route treatment. Many customer will waste precious time fiddling with routers, ports, and phone settings before reporting the issue. Then as a reseller, I waste more time asking the user if they have tried rebooting their router, opened ports, etc. Then voipo asks me the same things before finally performing a route treatment.

As a result, end users have to hold their breath anytime they dial a new number.

I don't understand why I experience this with voipo, but never had this problem with older voip services like vonage.

I do know that this issue has caused me to lose (and tick off) lots of customers, because (understandably) they lost confidence that they would be able to reliably dial and connect.

[wingsohot]

Having the same issues here also.

[Ansextra]

Having to "treat" individual numbers suggests that there are many (!!!) other numbers with broken routes, just waiting to be discovered.

User's won't discover these broken routes until they try calling a particular, affected number.

At that point, the user must open a support ticket, then wait for a route treatment, before they can complete that call.

That is, if they know to ask for a route treatment. Many customer will waste precious time fiddling with routers, ports, and phone settings before reporting the issue. Then as a reseller, I waste more time asking the user if they have tried rebooting their router, opened ports, etc. Then voipo asks me the same things before finally performing a route treatment.

As a result, end users have to hold their breath anytime they dial a new number.

I don't understand why I experience this with voipo, but never had this problem with older voip services like vonage.

I do know that this issue has caused me to lose (and tick off) lots of customers, because (understandably) they lost confidence that they would be able to reliably dial and connect.As an end user I can confirm that I am rapidly losing confidence that I can reliably dial and connect. This is a shame because I really like VOIPO in every other way (customer service, features etc). BUT, the primary reason I have the service is to make and receive phone calls when I need to and if I can't do that I will not hesitate to research alternative providers. Many times the number I'm trying to reach (that requires a routing treatment) is a one-off dial and I don't have the need to call that number again. That makes testing the number to confirm it is fixed irrelevant (especially when in my view the issue should not have happened in the first place). Strangely, this week I had issues with two regularly called numbers that always previously worked without any issues. That I truly can not comprehend. Something must be going on behind the scenes that shouldn't be going on. I would like to hear from VOIPO regarding this because it is certainly changing the amount of people (and there have been many) that I recommend this service to.

[VOIPoTim]

Sorry to hear this. Would you be able to e-mail me some example destinations/samples you've had issues with?


We use dozens of carriers and if I can isolate them from the samples, maybe there's a carrier in our mix that should be removed.

I really need a list of specific examples though to establish a pattern.


Some LCR is normal with VoIP, but I saw another user post about this earlier about this so maybe there is a broader issue with one of our carriers and if I can narrow it down I can remove them if that's the case.

Please e-mail me at tim @ voipo.com with examples and I'll look into it for you.

[GreenLantern]

Hi Tim,

I am sending you a list of support tickets, where a route treatment was required.

Thanks for looking into this! :)

[VOIPoTim]

Hi Tim,

I am sending you a list of support tickets, where a route treatment was required.

Thanks for looking into this! :)

Ok sounds good. If we can narrow it down to a specific carrier, we could remove them from routing.

[VOIPoTim]

Ok sounds good. If we can narrow it down to a specific carrier, we could remove them from routing.

Thanks to the samples a few of you e-mailed, we did narrow it down some. It looks like the bulk of the reported failed calls were going to a specific carrier so we've removed that carrier completely from our mix (we use a few dozen of them) for the time being until we review it further.

There will always be some re-routing required occasionally with VoIP due to the nature of the technology, but in this case it does look like there was an abnormally high failure rate with that particular carrier so hopefully removing them resolves this for those of you that were having issues.

[Ansextra]

Thank you Tim.

Hopefully this fixes the problem (although I don't expect 100% results).

I appreciate your looking into this.

[GreenLantern]

Outstanding!

We'll be sure to report any further issues, but hopefully this will eliminate the majority of outbound routing problems.

Thanks!

[GreenLantern]

Lately, I've had some tickets resolved by voipo setting up a "packet filter" on the user's account.

That's a new one, but it seems to have worked for the few accounts that were affected.

Might be something to ask about if you are troubleshooting with voipo support.