Voices get choppy unusable during peak

[MegaBuck]

this for me is a long story going back many months, over many operating systems and several different processors, different cable modems, a router, a swtch and a hub (these last to share the internet connection via the cable modem) but only one internet provider: Road Runner-

My present system is running (or trying to) a teamspeak server on a Win XP OS, Pentium 3 500mhz computer, 384 MB of Ram and a New 30GB Harddisk. Soundcard is only in use when I am connecting and listenting, usually all I have is an open link so I can monitor if there is activity on the server or not but I'm on an unoccupied room/channel-but if it helps I have a fairly new Soundblaster card.

Finally I have a cable modem and reliable 1MB download speeds and anywhere between 150 and 380 MB upload speeds-I havn't made any changes to my default Win XP settings for high BW since I am told UDP is not effected either positively and presumably negatively by any of the things one can adjust.

Very little is running in the background other than some default stuff associated with win xp and I have my antivirus shutoff.
The firewall I have turned off before and had no improvement.
I'm left to believe I have some kind of problem with my internet connection but RoadRunner and Time Warner Cable I have spent hours and hours and hours with only to walk away and attempt one more hardware or software upgrade to get a decent Voicecom server going. From win 95 to win xp, from P2 120mhz and 80 odd MB of Ram to P3 500mhz and 384 MB of Ram

The problem is peoples voices getting chopped up so bad its unrecognizable who is talking especially during peak hours of the night on the East Coast of the United States-I'm open for good suggestions! Help!

One thing I always felt but cannot say for certain-wet weather seemed to always make things worse. This might be grasping at straws though.

Edit> I know this sounds like wierd stuff, still there should be an explanation for this and to date all my attempts to fix this have not panned out. I would add that it is not a constant phenomenon either. It happens enough to be a problem though.<Edit

[Judas]

Hi MegaBuck

I think that your hardware setup is more than enough to run a decent server. Your connection to the Internet (1024/384 if i got that right) should be sufficent for at least 50 users if TS is the only thing running.

First thing I would do is to test the connection. Ask your friends to ping and tracerout your TS server. Do that repeatedly and especially when the sound quality becomes poor. Maybe your server is running propperly but some backbone servers are crap.

Second, make sure that the connection on which the TS server is running really isnt used by anything else. If you are browsing the web on the same line the traffic will render your TS server usless (http traffic usually delays all other trafic on my computer). I dont know all that much about routing, though i think that you have to use traffic shaping to allow your TS server a minimum of bandwidth.

Third. In case you are using ADSL, which i think you are, and you really have the impression that bad weather conditions worsen your problem you should watch the problem a little bit more closely. Its theoretically possible that a bad or flawfull phoneline can cause trouble with ADSL. This could lead to lost of ADSL carrier signal for short periodes of time which will ultimately lead to bad voice transmition. Get someone from your phone-company to check your phoneline in that case.

well.. hope any of the above provides some help

Judas

[MegaBuck]

Well, the cable operator contracted someone to replace my line back to the local Tap with RJ 6 cable, and make a replacement run to my modem-after that it has to be the major hardware associated with this neighborhoods internet service or...I prefer not to think about it yet.

Thanks for the reply Judas.

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by MegaBuck
Well, the cable operator contracted someone to replace my line back to the local Tap with RJ 6 cable, and make a replacement run to my modem-after that it has to be the major hardware associated with this neighborhoods internet service or...I prefer not to think about it yet.

Thanks for the reply Judas.

This sounds like a bandwidth issue.

Road Runner's actual committed information rate is 128kbps upstream, 768 kbps downstream from within the Road Runner network. During peak-period utilization, this can actually drop, not because of Road Runner, but due to downstream contention for the bandwidth running to and from Road Runner. The device with the slowest throughput along the path between your clients and your server determines the effective speed. If all your clients were on Road Runner, there would be few, if any, issues. If the clients experiencing difficulties are on xDSL, they would most likely be experiencing network saturation during peak periods.

I presume you have looked at Task Manager and Performance Monitor if you're running NT/2k/XP to determine that there are no server-specific bottlenecks?

Good luck!