Help needed with Bittorrents and VOIP/Vonage service. Thanks.

[gary11364]

b]I am having a problem downloading torrents and using VOIP/Vonage at the same time. When I am downloading the phone will not work. I was told by two Vonage techies that even with their newest equipment I cannot do both. I now have a Cisco ATA and a Netgear RP114 router. The newest that Vonage has is the Motorola 2442 combo unit.
I now have Road Runner cable service. I have a download speed of 5334kB/s. I am supposed to have a max of 10MB/s. I use Utorrent. I have a download speed of 600kB/s and an upload of 60kB/s. I use the XP Pro SP2. I would like to use Utorrent about 24/7.
I have several options-
1-Switch to Road Runner VOIP.
Or if VOIP wont cut it
2-I can go to a Land line phone company
I would prefer using Road runner so that I can buy a special package of three services.
Your advice is appreciated.
Thanks in advance.[/b]

[Guru Sonic]

VOIP service (and Bittorrent) is dependent on UPLOAD speeds as much as download speeds. Seeing that you are with TWC/RR, the problem is currently the upload speeds accordind to your post. Why is it so low?, I am usually running 5600 kB/s downloads with 450 kB/s uploads. I also have VOIP as well via ATT and TWC/RR in the Southern California/Orange County district. Is there something else eating up your upload bandwith? Maybe like remote access software or the like?

Hmm......

[jman98]

Do note that many ISPs throttle Bit Torrent traffic. While I rarely do Bit Torrent stuff, I can tell you that my speeds are truly horrible. I simply cannot under any circumstances get more than roughly 120 kB/s downloads and similar upload speeds. Even running supposedly encrypted packets doesn't help. Your ISP may be throttling you and if so, there is nothing I know of that you can do about it.

[redwudz]

When I check my setup with Speakeasy: http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/, I get about 4300K down and 430K up on cable.

The 'up' should be higher, but that's from my ISP throttling my up speed. It's more often nearer 150K up. If you haven't done it, set your uTorrent UP speed to about 30K or even lower and that should give you a bit more available bandwidth. If you are truly only getting 60K, then your up speed should be about 10 - 20K to balance your VOIP bandwidth.

BTW, try a few different locations for speed tests. Mine varies by more than 50% depending on where I check it at. Also on uTorrent, make sure you change your port from default as some ISPs block that. And set up your port forwarding properly through your router. You also might try setting 'Protocol Encryption' to 'enabled' under the 'Bit Torrent' menu.

You can also look around a bit in DSL Reports for comments on your ISP: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/cable,rr Also other information there.

[gary11364]

I am sorry but the 60kB/s is a typo. It should be 600kb/s down and 60kB/s Up. I use PG2. I have this problem if I downloading at 600kB/s or 60 kB/s. I usually set the upload at max, which is 60kB/s. Even if I am only uploading I have this problem.

[FulciLives]

I have VoIP and it sucks. I only got it because it was $19.99 and I was paying almost $50.00 for my land phone. I barely use my phone so I figured I could "get away" with VoIP but it makes my phone so worthless that I bought a TracFone which is a cell phone where you buy minutes instead of a monthly plan. I have to use the TracFone probably 1/3 of the time because the VoIP just drops me when I'm on a call and that is even when I pause my Bit Torrent traffic.

VoIP sucks ... period.

For the record I have Comcast Cable and my upload cap seems to be about 100KB/s although sometimes it will jump on torrents (if you can believe what the bit torrent program says all the time) to 150KB/s

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Vid-Kid]

Check to see if your router supports QOS (Quality of Service) feature. Many newer routers do.

QOS analyzes the network packets passing through your router and determines the priority they should receive. The priorities are generally displayed as a range of values from 1 (Highest) to 255 (Lowest).

If your router does, you should set it up so that VOIP traffic receives the highest priority value and BitTorrent or other P2P traffic receives the lowest. Streaming Media or Online games would be set to a value a bit lower than VOIP, and HTTP/FTP a bit below that. BitTorrent/P2P would get the lowest.

[gary431]

I Have just bought a Linksys WRT54GL router and I will port forward and see if that will help. I had a Netgear RP114 that was 6 years old( I don't think it was setup for port forwarding). I have always had this speed so I don't think that this is ISP throttling. On the speed test my download was 5334kbs and upload of 474kbs.

[BabyGonzo]

your cable modem makes all the difference in the world , my fisrt experience with Vonage was horrible , terrible connections an my download speeds with FTP and Newsgroups was so erratic and that i could not stand it ,so i went and bought me a new cable modem (Motorola Surfboard) and my ph line connection was close to perfect but i still noticed a bit lag on downloads as opposed to just use just the cable modem , at that time i was using a the vonage router (ljnksys) and a linksys wireless router , that worked for me but my downloads speeds were still not up to par , so i bought me a linksys wireless router that supports VOIP (all in 1) and now i am happy still not perfect better that before . so the moral of the story is make sure your modem is compatible with VOIP i believe what your looking for is this DOCSIS® 1.1 and 2.0 Certified and next try and narroaw it down to router and cable mode only .. hope this helps .