Flowroute Endorsement

I just have to post about http://www.flowroute.com who has been providing me over the top customer service. If you are looking for a provider, you might want to give them a try. They are there when you need them, and I appreciate it. And, no, I don't derive any income in any form from them. Just a very satisfied customer!

I second that motion. I'm going on 4 months, no problems, great quality.

Especially for anyone who calls the Dominican Republic. Not even Vonage could get me a clear connection there, but FlowRoute is clear.

I used flowroute for a month and had frequent jitter issues with incoming and outgoing calls. I suspect it had to do with the 100ms latency to their server and my ISP (Cablevision) stripping QoS Flags. Flowroute said they automatically handoff the SIP session from sip.flowroute.com to the nearest RTP server after the invite. After packet sniffing I discovered their closest server was in California, I’m in Connecticut, not exactly close. Flowroute said they had many happy Cablevision customers, but I couldn’t continue using their service the call quality was just too poor.

Flowroutes support was fantastic, they actually answer their phones!! Their support staff is very knowledgeable, their pricing is pretty good. If they had a closer server I’d probably switch back.

I switched to VoIP.ms, they’re “live chat” staff aren’t very knowledgeable, submit a support ticket if you have any “real” questions beyond simple navigation of the site, but they have a server in NY with a 12ms ping, as I understand from posters they proxy their traffic elsewhere but I assume it gets flagged with QoS. I use their Premium Routing, I’ve never used Value, but the cost is negligible. I’ve had no jitter issues and call quality is great.

VoIP.ms also provides CallerID by Name lookup which Flowroute doesn’t, so with flowroute you’d need to pay another company to do your CNAM lookup’s. Flowroute support said they plan on implementing this in the future. VoIP.ms also jacks their per minute rate up on DID’s that are ported in, VoIP.ms looks like it has some PBX features so you can use their server in a limited capacity as a PBX instead of using asterisk.

I guess if your near one of Flowroutes RTP servers call quality is great, I just wish they had one in New York

I am puzzled. I can confirm they do in fact hand off the audio to the LEC, so the location of the sip server should not affect call quality. I am in MA, so I understand your latency concern - just not sure how this was your issue.

I tried CID Superfecta, the results returned were useless, it was better not having it enabled at all. After trying the various directory listings the majority of results returned were from TelcoData which gave some crazy replies. I get mostly residential and cellphone calls, VoIP.ms picks the large majority of them up correctly. I guess millage varies by use. CID Superfecta had maybe a 50% success rate on businesses. Other than that, not great.

Honestly, I don't know what the cause was, all I know is call quality was terrible (weird audio distortions, choppy voice), I used WireShark to look at the pcap dumps and there were a large number of out of order packets and jitter.

The way they described their network is they use sip.flowroute.com to hand off to their "Direct Media Delivery" system which are basically wholesale bandwidth providers that they have deals with to provide "cheap" bandwidth bringing down their operating costs which then facilitates the transfer of data between you and the LEC. They said they're unable to alter the provider chosen however it "should" be the closest to you.

In my case when I used Wireshark I could see IP address sending the RTP stream and it resolved to Los Angeles. When I'd ping the IP address the latency was ~100ms.

I also noticed that the DSCP Flags (QoS) were being stripped on inbound and outbound traffic so I assume either my ISP or one of their upstream providers are stripping QoS from the packets.

I'm guessing its probably a combiniation of QoS not being honored and a high latency which is at fault. With VoIP.ms QoS is also stripped but with a 12ms latency everything is fine

Strange

I'm in the Dominican Republic. My total latency when I ping sip.flowroute.com is anywhere from 90-120ms. That being said, I've never had any quality issues.

I am moving to Vegas in a few weeks. I just tested from my desk there via TeamViewer and got 50-60ms.

Please keep us updated on how the quality is with your new carrier. It's always nice to have options.

Also, on the Superfecta idea. While it works, and in some cases is very handy as it pulls from anywhere including my ERP, it has given me some buggy behavior. I'm working on an issue with it now in another thread. Speaking for myself, it would be nice to just have the CNAM delivered from the carrier.

Well, the QoS part is not really in play here. No residential class ISP honors those bits.

Both sites, Vegas and DR are business DSL.

I did that with the exception of skipping directories targeted outside the USA. None of them could do look up's by cell phone number or unpublished numbers. I was using the default directories included in Superfecta. Whoever VoIP.ms is using for their CNAM queries they're doing a good job.

VoIP.ms also claims to be able to publish standard CNAM DIDs to LIDB for $10.00 however they're unable to do Toll-Free DIDs which is odd.

Granted they charge $0.008 per lookup but compared to other CNAM services its not to far off the mark once you factor in no monthly subscription fee.

Flowroute told me they can publish CNAM for DID's but its dependent on the recipients telco pulling from their database which I got the impression doesn't happen much.

I have been using Flowroute for about 2 years now and like OP have had excellent service from them. Every support request I have had has been responded to promptly and to my satisfaction.

Ping times to them are about 90ms but I have not had any call problems caused by there service. My quest dsl line on the other hand is a joke