variable connection quality (good to lousy, call to call)

monkeyboy · Post by **monkeyboy** » Tue May 06, 2008 10:22 pm

I find that the call connection quality on my (new) MJ varies wildly from call to call -- I place a call: terrible quality with dropouts, etc., then I redial the same number and the connection quality is great, then again next call is lousy, but then another call, not five minutes later is great...

I suppose it could be that the laptop I have MJ on is underpowered (300Mhz PII with 128mb), but its still hard to explain why back to back calls vary so much in quality. And it seems more related to the connection that is established, i.e. a good call doesn't turn bad or vice versa, so I don't think it is an issue with the laptop, nor my Internet connection (TW RR cable).

Any thoughts ?

LikeMagic · Post by **LikeMagic** » Wed May 07, 2008 12:35 am

Search the forum for MJ performance tips.

Basically, you could
- Adjust best performance to background services (System Properties/Advanced/Performance Settings/Advanced)
- bring up task manager/Processes and assign "high" priority to magicjack.exe

monkeyboy · Post by **monkeyboy** » Wed May 07, 2008 1:19 am

I'll try that sort of thing, but I really don't see how that could explain a CALL by CALL variability in connection quality, as opposed to a moment by moment variability in quality, i.e. I have one call that lasts 30 minutes with great quality, then not 30secs later I start a second call that has lousy quality that never gets better... then a 3rd call immediately afterwards that has great quality for another 30 minutes... How can that behavior be related to process priority?

LikeMagic · Post by **LikeMagic** » Wed May 07, 2008 3:00 am

monkeyboy wrote:I'll try that sort of thing, but I really don't see how that could explain a CALL by CALL variability in connection quality, as opposed to a moment by moment variability in quality, i.e. I have one call that lasts 30 minutes with great quality, then not 30secs later I start a second call that has lousy quality that never gets better... then a 3rd call immediately afterwards that has great quality for another 30 minutes... How can that behavior be related to process priority?

The process priority is just to assure that Magicjack.exe will have higher priority than other processes just in case Magicjack.exe has to compete for CPU time. There are many factors that could contribute to a bad VOIP calls:

- PC: Slow CPU, too little RAM to handle foreground/background processes, slow HDD (used as virtual memory), router that does not support voice QoS, etc
- Internet: slow internet, call server issues, internet traffic delay, etc.

The internet is like a highway, sometimes there's more traffic, sometimes less. Internet traffic may not go the same route from A to B every time. Every time you make a MJ call through the MJ call server, your internet request may go through many "hops" to get to the destination. Internet routing is usually "dynamic", designed to take the alternate routes to balance the load-sharing of all the "hops" (nodes) out there. So your MJ calls could go through different nodes for different calls and that explains why the call quality may vary.