Fix for making Magic Jack work with some wire less phones

[2cbtaylor]

Personally, I love this service, but I can't for the life of me figure out why they won't be more upfront about their problems and what they will and will not do about them. I even told them that I would easily pay double the amount if they would just fix the problem.

I have two magicjacks. The second was the result of being too lazy to return the first which would not work with one of my wireless phones. MJ worked if I used the software interface on my PC to dial the number, but I could not dial out with the phone connected to the MJ.

The second worked with one wireless phone but not with my more expensive system that has multiple wireless headsets and one base that connects to the MagicJack. The problem here was that they phone would dial the number and then hang up.

I loaned the first device to a friend and told him of the problem. I told both him and the MJ support person that I thought it was a loading problem where their device liked a more heavy loading like you would get with an analog phone. Since he has DSL, he had to connect MJ through one of the DSL filters. Surprise! Surprise! It now works.

Here is the clue for you having similiar problems. If your MJ works with an analog phone but not with one of the electronic/wireless phone station bases, then get a hold of a DSL line filter and simply insert it between the MJ and the phone.

Just recently I had chatted with one of their support persons. I tried to get them to give me a way to contact someone in a management position so I could tell them what I thought the problem was. No luck!!

This company has a great idea that just needs a little work. And if they are strapped for cash, I wish they would charge a little more and get busy offering things and fixing things that need to be offered/fixed.

Carl Taylor
Suwanee, GA 30024

PS Be aware that MJ is very sensitive to just how fast your DSL really is. I have high speed cable, but when I try to talk and Remote Desktop to a remote computer, MJ is basically un useable.

[hsweiss]

PS Be aware that MJ is very sensitive to just how fast your DSL really is. I have high speed cable, but when I try to talk and Remote Desktop to a remote computer, MJ is basically un useable.

MJ "needs" about 100K. On "high speed cable" (which I assume is at least 5M down and 2M up) you should not have any network-related problems. There should be plenty of spare bandwidth. Now on the other hand, if your remote desktop app is sucking down 100% of your CPU, then you'll have problems. Check to see how much CPU is being used.

[2cbtaylor]

My wireless router is connected to my cable modem. I am running an 803G wireless network with very little traffic and the weaker encryption. I believe the spec on the 803G is 54 Mbps.

But MJ is connected to my file server which is connected to my wireless router by an ethernet cable so there is no wireless links in this path.

Evertime I log in to work using VPN on my development computer (which is connected by my wireless router) MJ becomes basically unuseable.

I can enable and disable VPN and the audio quality degrades every time VPN alone is connected.

So from my experience, I still maintain that MJ is just not useable when doing either VPN or Remote Desktop on a high speed cable Internet connection.

The degradation in audio sounds like missing digital packets. I am also not sure that this issue can be understood on Internet bandwidth considerations alone.

I believe the TCP protocol includes a mechanism for handling dropped packets. When this happens then the destination computer has to go back to the origination computer to recover the lost information.

My guess is that there are lost packets and considerably more bandwidth is required to recover the lost packet in the time needed to preserve a faithful recovery of the original audio.

Having said this and considering that MJ is apparently not designed correctly to work with all high end telephones that run off 120 VAC, I am not so sure that the problem can't be corrected by either better hardware or handeling at the packet level.

In wrapping up, let me stress that I very much like what this company is doing and that if successful, they will rock the communications world in a way that has never before been seen. I want MJ to succeed and knock off the big guys. But when hardware problems on 2 out of 2 MJs can be fixed by simply adding more loading, then why is this not already fixed? The only answer that makes any sense is they don't have sufficient operating capital for what they are try to do.

I am willing to pay DOUBLE for this service. I just want it to work and have the features that other VOIP services offer - in a more timely manner...

[murphy]

Evertime I log in to work using VPN on my development computer (which is connected by my wireless router) MJ becomes basically unuseable.

Most vpn tunnel software forces everything to go through the tunnel. Make sure that traffic not destined for work through the tunnel has a separate path to the internet. It's been a very long time since I did this and don't remember the details. Your office night not approve of it since it opens up a path from the global internet through the tunnel onto the work intranet.

[2cbtaylor]

On the computer that is logged in via VPN, it has a different IP address than the computer that has MJ connected.

The IP address of the VPN computer reflects the corporate subnet where the MJ computer reflects the local net being managed by the wireless router.

Considering this, it seems very unlikely that a computer with a different subnet would be included in the tunneling.

If your bandwidth requriements are accurate, then the problem has to be something else. A network monitor would tell, but it is not worth effort when I can just briefly dissconnect and then reconnect after I get through talking. And if I need to do both at the same time, then I will use my cell phone.

Who should be concerned is the corporate technical people. Having been around awhile, they probably are but are having their hands tied by the business folks.

Bottom lins is though I am bringing out what I believe to be problems, I absolutley like my MJ and want this buisness to really take off.

[mberlant]

I believe you have two problems. One problem is CPU hogging by Remote Desktop and the other problem is bandwidth hogging by the VPN software.

The VPN hogging should be simple to manage by using your router's QoS functionality to give priority (minimum guaranteed bandwidth) to the PC that hosts your MJ over the PC that hosts your VPN client software. Alternatively, the VPN client software should have a setting that limits its consumption of bandwidth.

You should also be able to de-prioritize Remote Desktop, so as to allow MJ's softphone more access to CPU resources. Unfortunately, having to do this is just part of the deal when working with a device that must share resources with a PC's other tasks.

[2cbtaylor]

First thank you for you very considerate and thoughtful responses.

MagicJack has problems with VPN running and no desktop applications running, including Remote Desktop. I do understand that there is network traffic by services that are doing things like checking for updates. But one would think that network traffic would be pretty minimum.

In terms of the VPN hogging bandwidth, I am not sure and will check into this. I guess I need to check into some network monitoring tools and check with some of my friends about how to configure things like you suggested.

Is there anyone out there that is using MJ without audio degradation at the same time they are logged in over the Internet to a remote network via vpn?

Thanks
Carl Taylor
Suwanee, GA

[2cbtaylor]

In my web search, I did see where some are having trouble using MJ and VPN at the same time, but I also found others that said that it worked just fine.

I need to digest the below how-to, but I thought I would post this for any other interested users


http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MagicJack/ ... How-To/VPN

[hsweiss]

My wireless router is connected to my cable modem. I am running an 803G wireless network with very little traffic and the weaker encryption. I believe the spec on the 803G is 54 Mbps.

I presume you mean 802.11g? Yes, the signaling rate is 54Mbps but you'll almost never get much more than 20-30Mbps over the wireless link.

But MJ is connected to my file server which is connected to my wireless router by an ethernet cable so there is no wireless links in this path.

Evertime I log in to work using VPN on my development computer (which is connected by my wireless router) MJ becomes basically unuseable.

I can enable and disable VPN and the audio quality degrades every time VPN alone is connected.

So from my experience, I still maintain that MJ is just not useable when doing either VPN or Remote Desktop on a high speed cable Internet connection.

I have essentially the same setup - MJ is on a WinXP desktop machine hardwired into my router. I have a company laptop with a VPN that I use over the 802.11g wireless. Not a problem using MJ when on the VPN.

The degradation in audio sounds like missing digital packets. I am also not sure that this issue can be understood on Internet bandwidth considerations alone.

I believe the TCP protocol includes a mechanism for handling dropped packets. When this happens then the destination computer has to go back to the origination computer to recover the lost information.

My guess is that there are lost packets and considerably more bandwidth is required to recover the lost packet in the time needed to preserve a faithful recovery of the original audio.

Yes, TCP will do rexmits but MJ does NOT use TCP. It runs over UDP - no rexmit with UDP. Packets simply get dropped. If you had rexmits on voice you'd get replay delay - bad. You're just "hearing" dropouts. Have you run any speedtests to see if your ISP is doing this to you? speedtest.qwest.net will show you your connection speeds (up/down). You might also check to see how well your ISP handles VOIP services - especially jitter (interpacket delay that affects voice quality). Run the tests at http://myspeed.visualware.com/voip/

Having said this and considering that MJ is apparently not designed correctly to work with all high end telephones that run off 120 VAC, I am not so sure that the problem can't be corrected by either better hardware or handeling at the packet level.

I'm not sure what you're talking about? Most of us are using cordless phones plugged into MJ and those run off wall power (120v in the US). What does 120v phones have to do with anything that you're experiencing? Now there are some digital cordless phones that don't work for unknown reasons but a large majority of cordless 120v phones do work - search for various posts on this board about phone that work with MJ.

In wrapping up, let me stress that I very much like what this company is doing and that if successful, they will rock the communications world in a way that has never before been seen. I want MJ to succeed and knock off the big guys. But when hardware problems on 2 out of 2 MJs can be fixed by simply adding more loading, then why is this not already fixed? The only answer that makes any sense is they don't have sufficient operating capital for what they are try to do.

I am willing to pay DOUBLE for this service. I just want it to work and have the features that other VOIP services offer - in a more timely manner...

One of the major problems with MJ is that it RELIES on the 'goodness' of the customer's PC. And we know how every Windows machine is "perfect" - right? NOT. That makes the hardware cheap but just runs the gamut of problems that can be experienced up through the roof - as exhibited by the number of issues expressed on this board. Other VOIP systems (e.g., ooma, Vonage) have their own router/adapter box and there are much fewer end-user problems - but they cost more. There is also the problem of oversubscribing the available resources. MJ is so busy selling their stuff on late night TV infomercials that they have not kept up with user demand and so their infrastructure is creaking trying to keep up. Hence we end up with oversubscribed SIP proxies which result in terrible sounding calls - if the calls complete at all.