PLEASE HELP: Choppiness during conversations

[Ibiza911]

All,

I have been struggling with this problem for the longest time and Nortel is not helping at all?!? The problem we are have here is choppiness during phone conversations Internally/Externally it gets so bad that they have to call them back on a landline, we had a site survey done and we installed 19 AP's model (2231), we use the 2270 security switch, 5520 switch and the 2245 and 2211 phones which are all upto date in updates/patches. I have checked the QOS service voice is platinum and data is bronze? Sometimes you even get choppiness when the AP is in the next room!! I've gone through lots of troubleshooting with Nortel and nothing has improved, people are getting upset, they think it must be a walk in the park to get this going smoothly!Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.



j.k

 

[biv343]

Are the phones on their own WLAN/VLAN/SSID? Have you properly configured QOS on the wired side of the network?

Sounds like the wireless data packets are stomping on the voice packets and causing your problems.

 

[Ibiza911]

Yes we have Vlans setup for voice and data... when you say "configured QOS on the wired side" wouldn't adjusting the QOS of the AP's apply to the wired stations as well? Can you tell me where I can adjust the QOS for hard wired stations i wasn't aware of this! Thanks for your help.

 

[biv343]

QOS on the AP's/2270 applies only to the wireless world - it doesn't affect the data packets once they leave the air and land on the wired side of the LAN.

There's a document called "Configuring Quality of Service
and IP Filtering for Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5500
Series, Software Release 4.2" available on Nortel's site. That gives pretty good info for configuring the QOS rules on the wired side of the LAN.

 

[Ibiza911]

Thank you.. I will take a look this coming week, keep you posted.. Thanks again.



Jamie

 

[Liqer]

we have been having the same problem and nortel has also been absolutly no help. they even flew in a tech to try and fix this and he couldnt get it fixed. we have 9 APs, 35 2211s, those are the only phones on the network, there are no computers or wired phones on the network. we still have the same problem. QOS is all set up, even though there is nothing but the voice traffic on the network. any help would be appreciated. thanks.

 

[Ibiza911]

I have been playing phone tag with Nortel for the last few months now about this issue I've done everything that I am capable of doing I.E QOS, tracing packet loss, even provided them with the company layout plan,.. I think I may need someone to come down from Nortel as well since we do have a service contract with them still!

"Liger" - was it difficult to get a tech to come in to troubleshoot the issue? I may need to do this as well...

 

[Liqer]

i wasnt the one that got the guy to come down from nortel one of our VPs threw his weight around. im actually starting to think it is these access points themselves. we set it us so that we had 1 access point running and we could only get 3 conversations going at once before it started to chop out. im going to take down a cisco aironet access point and try with that sometime today. i would love to tell nortel that their equipment is junk.

 

[Ibiza911]

See we were thinking the same thing that it may be our AP's, Home Depot has the same setup except that they are using Cisco AP's and they work flawlessly..!!

 

[Liqer]

we tried the phones working through a Cisco Aironet 1200 and guess what. not 1 phone chopped. i know big surprise. my advise is to get cisco gear. it sounds like we are. we also have a pretty good idea of where to stick this Nortel gear too.

 

[Ibiza911]

That is good to hear!! Now i have a slight idea on what I can try next, we have 19APs 2231's, have you actually implemented and replaced all the Nortel AP's with the Aironet 1200?? Or did you just test our one AP so far..

 

[Ibiza911]

Liger - Before I give this a try are you using Nortel hardware as well such as the 5520/2270/2245?? I would love to give this a try but i wanted to make sure that this Cisco AP would be compatible with the hardware we've already purchased! Thanks again for your help.

 

[Liqer]

when we got the wireless equipment it was still under the Trapeze name, so im not sure what model it is now. we did do an upgrade in it so it is running the same version of code as the nortel models. but the cisco unit isnt even running through that system. we are using 2211 phones and the 2245. right now we have about 10 phones on the cisco network for testing. i stopped in there this morning and the customer said they have had no problems with them. we still have the nortel aps in place though, for now anyway.