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Lots of blueface problems overs the last week

JimmySmith

Has anyone else noticed that blueface has been very flakey over the last week?
Used to be great but now its really getting to the point that i'll have to go back to utv for my phone.

Calls breaking up on the other side.
Dropped calls and then not being able to make a call for another 30 minutes plus.

This has happened at least twice a day over the last week.

Its not an option to have your phone go on and off like that.

I have one phone connected to the router.
When the computer isnt on it still happens.

Its not the network, because i've gone online and checked at the same time that the phone is off and all is well there.

Blueface, it was a great try, Sorry to say that, but the level of service, while high doesnt cut the mustard.

bottom line is less than 100% with a phonline is not workable.
A phone needs to be 100% on all the time or you lose sales etc.

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MrPudding

I've had no problems myself.

MrP

RangeR

My Blueface went down about 40 minutes ago. Haven't checked if its back up yet. Happened briefly a week or so too but other than these 2 small putages, I've been fine.

But I do agree that a phone service should be 99% to 100% up, especially for a business. I'm still testing the service and will continue to do so for a month or two befre I fully switch over.

JimmySmith

IrishTLR wrote:

My Blueface went down about 40 minutes ago. Haven't checked if its back up yet. Happened briefly a week or so too but other than these 2 small putages, I've been fine.

But I do agree that a phone service should be 99% to 100% up, especially for a business. I'm still testing the service and will continue to do so for a month or two befre I fully switch over.

Thats whats been happening. The problem here is that you only know when its happen9ng when you are either on a call or trying to make one. People could be trying to ring you and its off and you'll never know unless you pick up the phone.
I've had several people call me on my mobile telling me they cant get through on the phone. Voicemail doesnt even work when its down.

RedRooster

I had to reset my router last night. I couldn't ring my mobile (i couldn't find it:v: )

Freddie59

JimmySmith wrote:

Has anyone else noticed that blueface has been very flakey over the last week?
Used to be great but now its really getting to the point that i'll have to go back to utv for my phone.

Calls breaking up on the other side.
Dropped calls and then not being able to make a call for another 30 minutes plus.

This has happened at least twice a day over the last week.

Its not an option to have your phone go on and off like that.

I have one phone connected to the router.
When the computer isnt on it still happens.

Its not the network, because i've gone online and checked at the same time that the phone is off and all is well there.

Blueface, it was a great try, Sorry to say that, but the level of service, while high doesnt cut the mustard.

bottom line is less than 100% with a phonline is not workable.
A phone needs to be 100% on all the time or you lose sales etc.

Have Blueface a couple of months now. A couple of teething problems, but once you select the correct codec there's no difference to Eircom.....and NO LINE RENTAL!!!!:D

MartMax

JimmySmith wrote:

Thats whats been happening. The problem here is that you only know when its happen9ng when you are either on a call or trying to make one. People could be trying to ring you and its off and you'll never know unless you pick up the phone.
I've had several people call me on my mobile telling me they cant get through on the phone. Voicemail doesnt even work when its down.

u can use PBX features on blueface control panel to divert any calls coming in during service breakdown or unavailability. i have mine diverted to my mobile, so i know when blueface or ntl is down, all calls are sent to my mobile.

RedRooster

mart_max wrote:

u can use PBX features on blueface control panel to divert any calls coming in during service breakdown or unavailability. i have mine diverted to my mobile, so i know when blueface or ntl is down, all calls are sent to my mobile.

This seems to be not working for me. I've had several calls on my mobile (not rerouted via PBX) with people saying my Voip line was "Call rejected" on their mobile:mad:

frost

i've had bad call quality (echoes, jitters, warbles, dropped packets) recently and also couldn't dial out to PSTN for periods of time. Call quality has never been as consistently as good as PSTN but availability/reliability, until recently, has been good.

RedRooster

Yeah, I couldn't get a dial tone.

RedRooster

This is a response I got from Blueface. I got a similar one last weeking saying the same thing, ie once off conversion, won't happen again:mad: I wonder whether it was just my details that got messed up or everyones

Hi Rory,

There was a problem with your settings. We are doing a once off import of customer configurations into a new database and there was an error with your import. It's been fixed now and won't reoccur.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

ac00785

RedRooster wrote:

This is a response I got from Blueface. I got a similar one last weeking saying the same thing, ie once off conversion, won't happen again:mad: I wonder whether it was just my details that got messed up or everyones

Hi Rory,

There was a problem with your settings. We are doing a once off import of customer configurations into a new database and there was an error with your import. It's been fixed now and won't reoccur.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Why all the negativity?? Blueface have taken alot of risk over the past 12 months. I have been with them since April 2005 and no problems that a reset of my ATA would not fix. Eircom have faults on their lines all the time. You do not get a fast, courteous and even knowledgeable Customer Service from Eircom like you do with Blueface! I would recommend Blueface to anyone that wishes to cut their landline bills and not have to pay line rental. Most of the problems are ISP related and not down to Blueface! Skype doesnt have have 100% uptime. VoIP is still evolving so I think we can bear a few outages until the Industry Standard is set. Blueface are well up there with Vonage/Skype etc... Aaron is a top guy ie always will to resolve probs asap or will point you in the right direction

RedRooster

Don't have a cow Aaron. I don't think I'm being overly negative. My point was I got two emails saying that they were doing a ONCE off conversion and my details happened to have "some" error and each time they said I wouldn't happen again. I got the same stock response from the problems I had when my PBX account settings didn't "import" correctly.

I work in the IT industry and it's the nature of the beast for small problems to pop up now and again. If it was ISP related, why then did Blueface say it was a problem with an import process? Sometimes, things can fook up and a bit of honesty can foster customer loyalty.

I think Blueface as a company, is a breath of fresh air. They never fail to amaze with with their technical support and virtually 24 hours of customer support. None of this "Our office hours are between....." answering message when you email them.

JimmySmith

ac00785 wrote:

Why all the negativity?? Blueface have taken alot of risk over the past 12 months. I have been with them since April 2005 and no problems that a reset of my ATA would not fix. Eircom have faults on their lines all the time. You do not get a fast, courteous and even knowledgeable Customer Service from Eircom like you do with Blueface! I would recommend Blueface to anyone that wishes to cut their landline bills and not have to pay line rental. Most of the problems are ISP related and not down to Blueface! Skype doesnt have have 100% uptime. VoIP is still evolving so I think we can bear a few outages until the Industry Standard is set. Blueface are well up there with Vonage/Skype etc... Aaron is a top guy ie always will to resolve probs asap or will point you in the right direction

Nobody is having a cow. People here seem to be just telling it like it is. Everyone who has posted has not layed into blueface. They are merely making the point that bueface is not 100% and as such is not good enough. How many times in the last year have you picked up your eircom phone and not been able to make a call. Or tried to call it and got nothing?
This happens fairly often with blueface. I think blueface is a great company and they have tried their best. I would love blueface to be perfect, but its obviously not. I need it to be perfect for business, but its unreliable and this
cant be sustained.

Its all well and good saying, they were porting the details, reboot your router or your ISP is the problem. In all cases bottom line is, no matter how good blueface are, when you use them you will experience downtime, no matter whose fault. You shouldnt have to reboot a router or call support etc to get your phone working.

And people should know, before going voip that their phone will be off for periods of time and they may not even know when.

I love blueface as a company but i need my phone to work ALL of the time.

cormac_byrne

JimmySmith wrote:

And people should know, before going voip that their phone will be off for periods of time and they may not even know when.

I love blueface as a company but i need my phone to work ALL of the time.

Most of the disconnects will be due to a bad ISP (yes people should be aware of this if going VoIP)

I'm sure that I read somewhere that after an outage your phone won't come back on straight away. At preset time intervals the phone re-registers it's connection with the SIP server i.e. blueface. At this point it turns itself back on. So if your phone is set to register once a day it could be off for that length of time before recovering. If I recall there was a setting you should be able to change (on some ATAs anyway) which would tell the phone to register on a more frequent basis.

Sorry if this is a bit vague, I'm sure if anyone is having probs Aaron would give you the proper details.

JimmySmith

cormac_byrne wrote:

Most of the disconnects will be due to a bad ISP (yes people should be aware of this if going VoIP)

I'm sure that I read somewhere that after an outage your phone won't come back on straight away. At preset time intervals the phone re-registers it's connection with the SIP server i.e. blueface. At this point it turns itself back on. So if your phone is set to register once a day it could be off for that length of time before recovering. If I recall there was a setting you should be able to change (on some ATAs anyway) which would tell the phone to register on a more frequent basis.

Sorry if this is a bit vague, I'm sure if anyone is having probs Aaron would give you the proper details.

Most of the time it is blueface. I have tested this with my friends voip account plugged into my router. He set up phone one jack with his account details and the other jack is set up with my blueface details.
Both codecs are the same. When blueface starts to break up during a call i will call someone with the other phone using the other voip provider. Always the calls on the other provider is crystal clear while blueface is breaking up.

As another test i reboot the router when i notice blueface breaking up and then make 2 different calls using both providers at the same time after the reboot. Blueface is still breaking up and the other call is fine.

This suggests to me that the problem is on blueface's end. By no means does it suggest that the other voip provider is any better, just that they are not breaking up at that point in time.

While its easy to blame it on the ISP without testing the issue, this has not been the case with me. I'm sure the ISP causes its share of problems but i have tracked mine back to blueface's end. Also, Redroosters problems do not appear to ISP related as blueface have told him there is a problem.

I really hope they can sort it out, because it would be a great service from a great company if it was dependable.

WillieFlynn

JimmySmith wrote:

This suggests to me that the problem is on blueface's end. By no means does it suggest that the other voip provider is any better, just that they are not breaking up at that point in time.

While its easy to blame it on the ISP without testing the issue, this has not been the case with me. I'm sure the ISP causes its share of problems but i have tracked mine back to blueface's end. Also, Redroosters problems do not appear to ISP related as blueface have told him there is a problem.

What you are seeing could be down to the different route the connection between you and the two providers takes.

For example blueface works fine from Finland and Texas but it is quite possible that it wouldn't work from some ISP in Ireland depending on route and capacity of their connections to different parts of the internet.

To get a better idea of what is happening try from a command line:

ping sip.blueface.ie
tracert sip.blueface.ie

and then again to your friends VoIP provider.

If you find the ping's take longer or the tracert has many more hops, this may shead some light on the problem. And if the differnce is large then that would suggest that the problem is not of bluefaces making. Whether you blame the ISP then......... is another question.

JimmySmith

WillieFlynn wrote:

What you are seeing could be down to the different route the connection between you and the two providers takes.

For example blueface works fine from Finland and Texas but it is quite possible that it wouldn't work from some ISP in Ireland depending on route and capacity of their connections to different parts of the internet.

To get a better idea of what is happening try from a command line:

ping sip.blueface.ie
tracert sip.blueface.ie

and then again to your friends VoIP provider.

If you find the ping's take longer or the tracert has many more hops, this may shead some light on the problem. And if the differnce is large then that would suggest that the problem is not of bluefaces making. Whether you blame the ISP then......... is another question.

Thanks for the help. I dont think its solved the problem though. Broadtalk has way more hops and higher pings than blueface when the breakups happen. The phone has been very flakey tonight. people cant hear me on the other end - keeps breaking up.

I have mates on blueface and they tell me that sometimes they get break up too. They dont use the phone as much as me though, so wouldnt notice the frequency as much.

Really though a phone should just work. I shouldnt have to ping things and reset routers etc.

Its a pity though as i like blueface as a company and the idea is great. I'm going to give broadtalk a try and if thats a bust its back to utv.

bhickey

JimmySmith wrote:

Most of the time it is blueface. I have tested this with my friends voip account plugged into my router. He set up phone one jack with his account details and the other jack is set up with my blueface details.
Both codecs are the same. When blueface starts to break up during a call i will call someone with the other phone using the other voip provider. Always the calls on the other provider is crystal clear while blueface is breaking up.

Any chance you could tell us who this other provider is? I for one would like to know what provider delivers consistently better quality than Blueface under the same tested conditions using identical equipment. Also what broadband provider are you with?

RangeR

JimmySmith wrote:

Really though a phone should just work. I shouldnt have to ping things and reset routers etc.

Seriously, if you feel that way, then don't use VoIP and get Eircom or whatever back in. VoIP is not going to be 100% for a couple of years, if ever. It's just the nature of the internet. Things go wrong, congestion, IPS problem, VoIP problems, router problems. It will happen.

jakeyb

IrishTLR wrote:

Seriously, if you feel that way, then don't use VoIP and get Eircom or whatever back in. VoIP is not going to be 100% for a couple of years, if ever. It's just the nature of the internet. Things go wrong, congestion, IPS problem, VoIP problems, router problems. It will happen.

As good as the customer service of Blueface is, the bottom line is that they need to inprove things and stop putting all the blames to ISP releated issue. All most every now and again my wife will text me complaining about not able to ring or receive calls. We all know the VOIP is still not at the advanced stage yet. Can you imagine wanting to make that one call that might change your life and the phone is dead? Honestly, I didn't have to ring or mail Eircom for one day about and phone outage(s). Blueface, if you are reading don't get'me wrong, you guy's are great but we need a more reliable incoming /outgoing phone services.

Danke

jakeyb

They(Blueface) respond when called upon, but better service is need.

RangeR

jakeyb wrote:

As good as the customer service of Blueface is, the bottom line is that they need to inprove things and stop putting all the blames to ISP releated issue. All most every now and again my wife will text me complaining about not able to ring or receive calls. We all know the VOIP is still not at the advanced stage yet. Can you imagine wanting to make that one call that might change your life and the phone is dead? Honestly, I didn't have to ring or mail Eircom for one day about and phone outage(s). Blueface, if you are reading don't get'me wrong, you guy's are great but we need a more reliable incoming /outgoing phone services.

Danke

I'm not so sure as to where to put the blame, if blame is needed. I use Blueface pretty much all the time between 2pm and 5pm and occaisionally outside those hours.

I can safely say that I have almost never missed a call inside my core hours. I am on a support queue and have a visual representation of incoming calls. They all make it to me. I have only had two incidetns of calls not coming through. One was Blueface's problem. The other I couldn't track down.

msmx5

JimmySmith wrote:

The phone has been very flakey tonight. people cant hear me on the other end - keeps breaking up.

I too had reports from a caller last night about poor quality at their end. I phoned them straight back a second time (from a fixed phone to eliminate the DECT) but quality didn't improve, I was using G729 Codec. No other internet activity at my end so don't think QoS was the problem.

It one of very FEW problems I've had with Blueface.

bhickey

msmx5 wrote:

I too had reports from a caller last night about poor quality at their end. I phoned them straight back a second time (from a fixed phone to eliminate the DECT) but quality didn't improve, I was using G729 Codec. No other internet activity at my end so don't think QoS was the problem.

What ISP are you with just as a matter of interest. I'm just wondering if people experience more problems with one ISP compared to another.

msmx5

bhickey wrote:

What ISP are you with just as a matter of interest. I'm just wondering if people experience more problems with one ISP compared to another.

I'm with NTL - 1M package, so I have to keep an eye on upstream b/w.

Just noticed more problems in the last hour. I called my wife at home(VOIP end) and noticed that the line had a faint crackle through it - it wasn't breaking up or dropping out, I could hear the far end constantly but with a slight crackle. She could hear me perfectly. Sounds like the same problem that my brother described when I called him last night.

I tried calling my Blueface number again a while later (20mins ago) and could not get connected at all... no tone from my end at all / silence, didn't get directed to voicemail or didn't get forwarded to my mobile. Eventually a fast busy tone.

Worked a few mins after though - although still a bit crackly.

I don't think that it was an NTL issue as I had no problem setting up a VNC sesion to my PC at home and connecting into my ATA which reported that it was registered OK to Blueface.

I'll look into it futher when I get home - maybe the ATA needs a power cycle!!?

msmx5

msmx5 wrote:

I'll look into it futher when I get home - maybe the ATA needs a power cycle!!?

It looks like it might be down to the codec... I was using G729ab 20ms when experiencing the poor quality.

Changing to G711 seems to have eradicated the problem. I've also used the G726 codec at 32K and it seemed fine both ways.

I wonder if Blueface were having any problems decoding G729 that would explain the crackely line quality?? Normally changing to the lower bandwidth codec G729 improves sound quality issues caused by IP issues.

cormac_byrne

jakeyb wrote:

As good as the customer service of Blueface is, the bottom line is that they need to inprove things and stop putting all the blames to ISP releated issue. All most every now and again my wife will text me complaining about not able to ring or receive calls. We all know the VOIP is still not at the advanced stage yet. Can you imagine wanting to make that one call that might change your life and the phone is dead? Honestly, I didn't have to ring or mail Eircom for one day about and phone outage(s). Blueface, if you are reading don't get'me wrong, you guy's are great but we need a more reliable incoming /outgoing phone services.

Danke

"All most every now and again my wife will text me complaining about not able to ring or receive calls"

I posted earlier about SIP phones going dead because of ISP issues and a delay in the phone re registering with the SIP server

I looked it up and the relevant setting is "register expires" and is a value in seconds.

Lowering the value should allow the phone to recover quicker after a dropped connection. Also frequent re-registration may keep alive a connection that would otherwise be dropped (see below)

The setting may be hard to find.
On a WRT54GP2 it's on a hidden menu
http://192.168.15.1/Voice_adminPage.htm

N.B. I disclaim all responsibility for anybody messing up their settings

Here's an example I found relating to this exact issue,
I'm not an expert so can't claim this is what's happening in your case, but it might be worth exploring.

http://voxilla.com/forum-viewtopic-t-4908.html

Sometimes getting "unregistered" is a router and/or ISP issue.

For example, some ISPs (including my DSL service) will "time out" after a few minutes of not doing anything on the internet, and drop your connection. Now your router will likely immediately reconnect you when you next try to access the internet, but you may get a new (public) internet IP (address) when this happens. The problem here, is that the Sipura "registration" would be for the OLD (pre-disconnect) IP address, and therefor you will lose registration.

And sometimes it's your local networking equipment fighting you. For example, some routers will "times out" the specific connection (and close the "port" used by the registration), even if you don't time out the ISP itself (and get another IP address). The result is the same as far as the Sipura registration is concerned. Because you no longer have the open connection, you lose "registration".

Here are some Sipura settings that may help, no matter what the cause:

"NAT mapping enable: yes"
This tells the Sipura line to try to compensate for a NAT router (which most of us "home users" are behind).

"NAT keep alive enable: yes"
This setting tells the Sipura to send out a small packet every few seconds. Sometimes this can prevent the type of "timeouts" you may be experiencing.

"Register Expires: 300"
This causes the Sipura to try to reregister every 5 minutes (instead of the default of once/hour). While this doesn't prevent loss of registration, it does make it much less of a problem. Because if you do lose registration for any reason, you will have it back in a few minutes at most! And if it really takes 10 minutes of inactivity to lose registration (and the Sipura is setup to reregister every 5 minutes of inactivity), this may prevent the problem from occuring at all!

RedRooster

There also could be something to do with filesharing. I have Blueface, NTL 3mb and a WRT54GP2 router. I am constantly getting TCP/IP event 4226 errors, with the modem resetting. I know NTL are doing some upgrade work at the mo. So, Aaron could be right in saying it could be ISP releated.

Check your event viewer - System log.:v: -