Poor Audio Quality for Remote Users of 3CX Phone System?

[Zeyadne]

I work remotely from my home office for a company that recently installed 3CX. I elected to install the 3CXPhone on my corporate laptop and am having issues with call quality. Call quality is excellent for inbound and outbound calls to other employees that reside in the corporate office. However calling other numbers outside of our office is another matter. It seems that my call has to pass through the corporate network to dial out, which degrades the call (?) The same quality issue occurrs with inbound calls that do not originate from our phone system.

I'm experiencing intermittent combinations of echo, static, humming, audio delays and audio break up using two different headsets. Callers claim that I sound "far away" and that the audio cuts out. I'm using ver 5.0.149 of the 3CXPhone and I've tried both the Plantronics USB wireless headset and the Logitech USB wired headset with no improvement. Corporate doesn't have the time or resources to figure out how to solve the problem. Has anyone experienced a similar scenario with remote employees and figured out how to solve the problem?

 

[davidbenwell]

can you run speedtest.net from both locations and post the resaults here?

 

[jr3151006]

Are you using the laptop with LAN or WIFI connection?

I´m using my laptop with Windows 7 + 3cx Phone for Windows to connect remotely to my extension without problems to outbound or inbound calls!

*** That issue seems to network latency/internet speed... If you need, I can help you to monitor your internet connection and check that issue.

Renato P

 

[Zeyadne]

can you run speedtest.net from both locations and post the resaults here?

My home office results: Download: 8.79 Mb/s Upload: 1.12 Mb/s Ping: 21 ms
My corporate office location results: Download: 3.12Mb/s Upload: 0.40 Mb/s Ping: 100 ms (Slower than 71% of US)

 

[jr3151006]

Can you upgrade your internet connection at office???? The result seems to have high time (100 miliseconds)... Maybe you also have concurrent network connections!!!

Renato P

 

[willow]

I suspect that the internet connection at the office is to blame. .4 mg up is awful. remember that to make a call from a remote extenison out a sip trunk at the main site it basically 2 calls worth of bandwidth. you have the call coming in from the extension and then another going out the the sip provider. all of this at 64k per call if using g711 is almost half of that .4mg up. and that is not including any other applications or phone calls that are taking place over the internet.

 

[davidbenwell]

4Mb down will support a fair amount of calls, if you had 4MB both ways for example

you would get around 40 concurrent Calls using 711 Codec


We have 30MB down and 3MB up and this alone will support over 250 Calls via 729 Codec (limited by the upload speed

So i dont thnk its a bandwidth issue that you have

PS how in the earth is a single G711 half of 4MB????? with otherhead you are looking at max of 100KBPS

So for a 1MB Connection, you would get around 10 Calls

 

[davidbenwell]

You need to work on getting the ping rate down.

Can you goto http://www.pingtest.net and post resaults back here please.

can you run speedtest.net from both locations and post the resaults here?

My home office results: Download: 8.79 Mb/s Upload: 1.12 Mb/s Ping: 21 ms
My corporate office location results: Download: 3.12Mb/s Upload: 0.40 Mb/s Ping: 100 ms (Slower than 71% of US)

 

[willow]

re read the post . it stays .4 mg not 4 mg.

 

[davidbenwell]

he would still be able to get at least 3 concurrent calls.

 

[willow]

your statement implys that nothing else is being transported over the internet connection at the time of the calls. if he is calling from a remote phone and the pbx is delivering audio and he is using a sip trunk that is 2 calls right there. from phone to pbx and pbx to sip provider. increasing the bandwidth or troubleshooting the slow ping time would be the first 2 steps.

 

[davidbenwell]

Ah yes sorry i see what you are saying

100K up and down from Voip Provider side and then the same again for the remote user = 400Kbps

 

[willow]

Try testing the bandwidth at the office at an non peak hour to get a more true bandwidth test. Configuring QOS may help the situation. its not going to stop what comes into the router but if the router supports it it can clear the queues for out going traffic that may help your issue. increading the bandwidth is a nice idea but should be done as a last resort. you may need to have someone do an assessment of the network. it could be as simple as a few bad apps or nic cards that are losing down the network.

 

[davidbenwell]

not sure if you get your internet down the phone line like (if you are from the uk) if so try the BT speed test, it will tell you the speed of your IP Profile at the local exchnage. is the router connected to the master socket?

a normal BT connection would get you around 512kbps up

 

[tward]

The system I have does not use a SIP trunk, an am experiencing the same issue.

System:

OS : Windows 7 Pro, SP 1
3CX Phone System : 12.0.36097.670
3CXPhone for Windows : 12.0.37098.738
Patton : SN4114/JO/EUI
HW Version : 4.4
SW Version : R6.3 2013-05-01 H323 SIP FXS FXO

POTS : 3 via AT&T

 

[lneblett]

Well, perhaps similar symptoms, but maybe not the same issue.

As you pointed out, you are not using a SIP trunk, but an Analog FXO adapter to connect to the PTSN. What is important to know with remote extensions in this type of situation are:

1, Does the same issue exist with calls from the remote extension to internal extensions, to include items such as voice mail, IVR or other system generated prompts? Is it all calls or just some?
2. Do internal extensions sometimes or never have a similar experience when making calls via the same device?

Echo is normally associated to analog calls where the energy being introduced is more than the analog line can accommodate which then results in a reflection of some of the energy thereby causing the echo. There is also an echo cancelation setting in the softphone that can help mitigate the issue.

Static can be caused by a number of issues - bad analog line, cell phone too close to some devices which do not have adequate shielding, blue-tooth interferences or weak signal (the original post had blue-tooth headsets as well as USB involved, do you?), etc.

If the voice communications is jittery or broken-up somewhat, then this is likely jitter. You can normally piece together what is being said and still communicate, but it can be annoying. This is when the data packets leave a location at a given rate and order and arrive at the remote location at a different rate or even with packets out of order. This is usually the result of insufficient bandwidth, congested network, or other devices not being able to handle effectively. QoS may help in some cases if the network behind the router is congested or even if your network is and end-to-end controlled network. You do not mention how you connect to the internet, what speeds are available and if any VPN is in place or if you use the 3CX tunnel. You also did not mention the CODEC being used.

If the voice stream is such that gaps occur which makes it impossible or, almost so, to understand what is being said, then this may be a highly congested or faulty network where some of the packets are simply being lost/dropped altogether. This is the more extreme form of jitter and may even result in a dropped call.

The lesser issue, but still associated is latency. This is where there are delays in the communications to the extent that callers may tend to "talk over" one another as the silence heard on either end is interpreted as the period in which the other person can speak. It can get so bad in some cases that it makes you want to end each sentence with "over" as in using a two-way radio so that the other side knows that they can now speak. The packets arrive complete and in the same order, just delayed. This is usually an outside network issue associated to the internet itself and perhaps how connected. A satellite connection, as an example, would have far more latency than most other types due to the distances involved.

 

[jpillow]

Have you attempted to change to codec being used at the remote location? That is usually one of the first things I would do when having call qaulity issues on a remote extension.