Just hooked up Hawkings Hbb1 booster and
Moderators: Pilot, Bill Smith
Just hooked up Hawkings Hbb1 booster and
I ran a test from testyourvoip like I've seen recommended here and then I hooked up my Hawkings Booster. I was so hopeful that it would make a huge difference.....before hooking up, preserving speech quality my results was 3.9, after it was 4.1. Then I ran the test again preserving bandwidth and before hawkings results was 4.1...after it was 3.6, I ran that one again and it came up to 3.8. I also have a wireless laptop and I did the test on it also and it dropped too. Should the computers be restarted for it to work or the modem reset maybe. I really want to see MJ work like everyone else, but I'm starting to get a little embarrassed when people call and I have to say, let me try calling you back and see if that helps. Which sometimes it does help, but not often enough.
These boosters don't actually boost anything. Their purpose is to limit traffic on your LAN that is not time sensitive, such as WWW, email, downloads, and file sharing, so that time critical traffic such as voice or gaming can pass unimpeded. If you test when you don't actually have any competing traffic, you shouldn't expect to see any difference. If you live alone, you probably don't need a booster, since you can just refrain from using the Internet while on the phone. If you have a family, these boosters are wonderful, because one person can be talking while another is surfing, each unaware of the other.
Because MJ does not presently support compression codecs, the relevant test is "preserve speech quality". On this test, a perfect score would be 4.4; your 4.1 is very good and if your MJ actually performed that well, it's very unlikely that there would be any complaints.
When you have trouble, what is the nature of the impairment(s), e.g. choppy voice, dropouts, volume too low, noise, distortion, etc? Does the problem affect what you hear, what the remote party hears, or both? Note that testyourvoip is a 15-second test; if your problem is e.g. dropouts occurring every two minutes, the test likely completed during an unimpaired interval and showed an unrealistically good result.
Try a test using a headet, instead of a phone plugged in to MJ. That will eliminate a number of possible causes.
Because MJ does not presently support compression codecs, the relevant test is "preserve speech quality". On this test, a perfect score would be 4.4; your 4.1 is very good and if your MJ actually performed that well, it's very unlikely that there would be any complaints.
When you have trouble, what is the nature of the impairment(s), e.g. choppy voice, dropouts, volume too low, noise, distortion, etc? Does the problem affect what you hear, what the remote party hears, or both? Note that testyourvoip is a 15-second test; if your problem is e.g. dropouts occurring every two minutes, the test likely completed during an unimpaired interval and showed an unrealistically good result.
Try a test using a headet, instead of a phone plugged in to MJ. That will eliminate a number of possible causes.
-
- Dan Should Pay Me
- Posts: 701
- Joined: Wed Feb 27, 2008 9:20 pm
It works great occasionally and I can hear so much better than with my landline that I have to turn the volume down, but other times (or most often) it has echoes, delays, or very choppy to the point of having to really strain to understand anything. I'm not technical at all so a lot of the things I've read on this forum are so over my head I wouldn't know where to start to try them. I did read somewhere to press CTRL, ALT, DELETE and set the MJ to Realtime or priority. I thought that helped to begin with, but then again there were calls that were the same as before. I've had MJ aboout a month and a half, up until a couple of days ago I only had one computer and the kids would play Wii online. Now I have a laptop also, so I'm really hoping that today I will see this booster really make a difference. I have dsl, overall does cable work any better with MJ?
Echo that you hear is supposed to be removed by an "echo canceller" at the MJ server. If it's not working correctly, there is nothing you can do at your end to fix it -- you'll have to report the trouble to them. I use MJ quite a lot and rarely have an echo problem; it's well under 1% of calls. If you continue to have trouble, make a note of what destinations are affected, so you can pose a meaningful complaint. However, you can make echo less annoying by reducing the Speaker volume in the softphone. If the remote party hears you louder than needed, reducing the Mic volume will also help.
Long latency usually occurs when the capacity of a line is insufficient to handle the traffic, so packets get queued. This could happen at your end, at your ISP, or at the server. Because of the rapid growth of the MJ customer base, MJ has had some capacity issues. However, they recently implemented a load balancing system that spreads the traffic among their many sites, eliminating the problem (at least for a few months). This system started working properly at about 3 PM EDT on March 31.
At your end, non-voice traffic is the likely culprit. It could be traffic that shouldn't be present, e.g. neighbors freeloading off your wireless router, virus, worm, etc. Or, it might be traffic that you forgot about, such as filesharing or software updates running in the background. If your DSL upstream speed is 256 kbps or better, try starting testyourvoip while you are on a bad call. For the most meaningful result, use a computer other than the one running MJ.
Choppy voice can be caused by the same issues that affect latency, by interference to a cordless phone (test with a corded one or using a headset instead), or by background tasks on your PC (test with MJ on another computer). It could also come from the remote end, e.g. a cell or cordless phone in a poor coverage area, or the remote party's VoIP service. Test by calling someone known to be using a corded phone on a landline; this is almost certainly the case when you call a large business.
In most cases, DSL is better for voice than cable, because the path to your ISP is not shared with your neighbors.
Long latency usually occurs when the capacity of a line is insufficient to handle the traffic, so packets get queued. This could happen at your end, at your ISP, or at the server. Because of the rapid growth of the MJ customer base, MJ has had some capacity issues. However, they recently implemented a load balancing system that spreads the traffic among their many sites, eliminating the problem (at least for a few months). This system started working properly at about 3 PM EDT on March 31.
At your end, non-voice traffic is the likely culprit. It could be traffic that shouldn't be present, e.g. neighbors freeloading off your wireless router, virus, worm, etc. Or, it might be traffic that you forgot about, such as filesharing or software updates running in the background. If your DSL upstream speed is 256 kbps or better, try starting testyourvoip while you are on a bad call. For the most meaningful result, use a computer other than the one running MJ.
Choppy voice can be caused by the same issues that affect latency, by interference to a cordless phone (test with a corded one or using a headset instead), or by background tasks on your PC (test with MJ on another computer). It could also come from the remote end, e.g. a cell or cordless phone in a poor coverage area, or the remote party's VoIP service. Test by calling someone known to be using a corded phone on a landline; this is almost certainly the case when you call a large business.
In most cases, DSL is better for voice than cable, because the path to your ISP is not shared with your neighbors.