Packet Discards vs Packet Loss

Packet Discards vs Packet Loss - mark II
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inside_man @ 28th Jan 06:54PM:
Packet Discards vs Packet Loss - mark II

In »Packet Discards vs Packet Loss ... JD requested to know the difference between packet loss and packet discard.

Packet Loss is related to your internet connection directly. Packets that are sent, but not received, are considered lost. Generally, this can be the fault of equipment, phone lines, packet gnomes, etc, but can generally be resolved by working with your ISP to determine the problem.

Packet Discards, on the other hand, is something your ISP is likely to know very little about (nor should they really care). Packet discards are a construct of VoIP codecs that are the direct result of latency and/or jitter. When a stream of SIP packets are sent, and due to latency and odd routing, they don't all show up in the correct order, the ones that show up late are considered "discarded". Packet discard is basically a symptom of the bigger problem of latency.

Now latency is something your ISP "might" be able to help you with (assuming bridging a DSL modem can help in some cases) however improving latency problems is generally out of the control of a tech-support agent, their supervisor, their supervisors boss, their supervisors bosses boss, and maybe even their network engineers. Granted, improving infrastructure and equipment may help somewhat, but chances are if things are working the way they are for 99% (or even 80%) of a customer base, they ain't gonna change now.

The simplest, and often most effective solution to latency issues would be to get your voip provider to help you switch to a lower bandwidth usage codec (like g729) which can drastically improve the stability of a voip line.

So sorry Bane75 if I sound like I'm trolling, but you're wrong about talking to someone higher up. Someone in the voip department, maybe, and only if your ISP is also your voip provider.
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anon @ 7th Mar 11:45PM:
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