Service gets better over time?

[ThorsDad]

I'm just curious if my situation is normal and/or if someone has a technical explanation for my experience. Immediately after installing my ATA call quality was hit and miss. A call to my wife was fine. A call to my mom was garbled she said she couldn't hear what I was saying. A call to my friend was dropped (could have been his crappy cell service). For the first day or so when I picked up the receiver there were a series of short beeps before I got a dial-tone.

Sometime after 2-3 days the beeps before getting a dial-tone went away. Calls to everyone are now good. Is there something in the service that changes to make things improve over time?

[BillG49]

The series of short beeps or "stutter tone" is likely the MWI (Message Waiting Indicator). This is telling you that you have a voicemail to retrieve.

[ThorsDad]

I learned something new today, thank you. My phone has a MWI light which for some reason wasn't lit at the time. I guess that is why I never put the two together. I just left myself a message and got both the MWI light and the "stutter tone" on my phone.

[christcorp]

There are so many things that can affect call quality. The #1 thing being your home network and bandwidth management. Even myself, who has been doing this stuff literally for more than 30 years, have home network issues sometimes. Usually it's a balance between available bandwidth and QOS in the system. Some people get around this if they know how to do QOS. But then you have to ensure you have a quality router. Other issues usually result because of port issues. Some people put their voip adapter into the DMZ. Some try port forwarding. Bottom line is: No two home networks are exactly the same, when you add in their local Internet service.

The best thing that improved all of my voip calls, was my cable provider now offering me 30mb down and 5mb up bandwidth. I've turned off ALL QOS because I have more than enough bandwidth to have a phone call happening while downloading or streaming.

Voip itself is a very simple concept. Your local phone company has been using a form of Voip for ALL of your phone calls that leave your town and go to any other location. They've been doing this for more than 35 years. But their network is/was dedicated to just THEIR voice packets. It isn't competing with people checking email, streaming video/music, surfing, etc... That's why individual consumer voip use can be hit or miss. It depends on YOUR ISP. Depends on your local internet service/connections/bandwidth. Depends on your home network, how it's setup, bandwidth management, and security/port setup.