The problem does not happen with preview 7. That version remains generally reliable as it always has. I have all of the necessary ports opened, and i’ve switched rapidly between preview 7 and the latest beta. So I know it’s a beta-specific problem. I definitely have the right IP addresses, and they tend not to change unless the computer name changes as well. So internal network stuff should be working as well, even though it’s not. The firewall is not causing the problem either, since I told it to unblock fideliphone the first time I used it.

I’m also having serious lag problems at times, sometimes up to four seconds. I left the default jitter size, as did the other person. So I’m not sure what the problem is. Maybe you have managed to get to the bottom of it at this point, I’m not sure.

Was my answer about jitter correction helpful to you? Ihave been thinking about ways to improve the automatic jitter correction, especially right after the connection is established, before Fideliphone has had time to really get good information about the stability of the connection. There may be some changes to the jitter buffer before Fideliphone 1.0 is officially released to try to shorten the delays.

Thanks,
Chris Peterson,
Fideliphone development team leader

One question I think I forgot to ask you in my last response is: does this same type of connection problem occur with Fideliphone Preview 7?

I got a report from another user reporting connection problems over the weekend and we’re trying to get to the bottom of it, so any additional information you think might be helpful would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris Peterson,
Fideliphone development team leader.

When someone places a call with Fideliphone, it sends a connection request every 6 seconds. It also plays a ringing sound to let you know that it’s doing that.

The question is, why is that connection request not getting to the remote computer? There are lots of things that could be causing this. The simplest test would be to check whether Windows firewalls are turned on on one or both computers. Windows firewalls will sometimes block traffic on local networks, and it’s possible that the connection request is beingblocked by a firewall.

Next, try opening a command prompt on both computers and typing ipconfig. Compare the ip addresses that ipconfig gives you with the addresses you’ve set in Fideliphone. If your local network is using dhcp to assign ip addresses, and most networks are by default, then it’s possible that one or both computer’s ip addresses have changed, especially if they’ve been restarted. In that case, Fideliphone might be trying to connect to the wrong address. The caller will still hear a ringing sound, but the callee wouldn’t ever hear a ring because the connection requests aren’t getting there. The simplest fix for this would be to change the ip address in your Fideliphone connection profile.

If neither of these causes seem to help, let me know and I’ll try to come up with more suggestions. If you notice anything that you think might be causing this, feel free to suggest it. Also, if there is anything unique about the networks you’re having this problem on, let me know that too. Any detail might help us to get to the bottom of your problem faster.

Hope that helps,
Chris Peterson
Fideliphone development team leader.

There are two ways to change the jitter buffer setting in Fideliphone. The value in the settings -> receive tab sets the default jitter buffer size for new connections.

There is another setting you can access by clicking the connection you want to change, then clicking “edit settings”. This is the setting you should be changing.

The default value of 92 ms should usually be fine for most people. On connections over our local area network, this seems to be about the size that Fideliphone settles down to after a few minutes.

Over the Internet, we notice that Fideliphone’s latency goes up to around one second in the first 30 seconds, before gradually decreasing to a value similar to the latency you’d see in Preview 7. If you let Fideliphone run for several minutes, does the latency go down again, or does it stay at around 1 second?

There are other settings that will effect your audio latency. In both the transmit and receive tabs of the settings window, there is an audio latency setting. Fideliphone uses this setting as a guideline for setting the sizes of the buffers used to communicate with your sound card. The default value is 200 ms, but you might notice better latency by decreasing this value to 50 or 100 ms.

Decreasing it too far will cause your computer to work harder, which will look to Fideliphone like higher network jitter, so if you’ve decreased this value and you’re actually noticing higher latency, try increasing it again and see if that helps.

Anyway, let me know if these suggestions help fix your problem and we’ll decide where to go from there.

Thanks,
Chris Peterson,
Fideliphone development team leader

Fideliphone uses Portaudio, which does have asio support. Steinburg has some odd licensing turms for asio and vst. We need to understand them better before we can include asio and vst in Fideliphone official builds, but it’s something we’re thinking about.

Thanks,
Chris Peterson,
Fideliphone Development Team Leader