Our Vonage experience

For almost a year, we have experienced a large number of calls in which one side or the other simply went away for a period of time. Overall call quality was good, but the dropouts became so severe that we were to the point where we needed a new solution.

Finally we reached a 2nd level support tech at Vonage who asked a question we had not heard before: "What is the DOCSIS level of your cable modem?"

This made us think - and do a bit of research. What we found was that the modem we were using was very old, a DOCSIS 1.0, and now the world is operating quite well on level 2.0. So, we exchanged the modem for a combination modem/router/gateway/switch: the Linksys Wireless-G Cable Gateway WCG200 (ver.2).

The results were amazing! We have not had a single call with the dropout symptoms for over 2 months. And the overall call quality is excellent.

During the setup process, a tech at Comcast looked at the logs and verified that the old modem was experiencing some problems, as well, so this most likely had contributed to the overall senario, but the new box solved everything. I have now ordered one for our Florida location and am exploring DSL modems for the UK (although the problem was never as pronounced over there).