Using Mumble with HSDPA

[morgaza15]

Hi,

I have been using mumble for quite a while now, and enjoyed the program thus far.

Recently however, I moved to germany for work. In order to get internet, I bought a USB datastick.

It provides me with a HSDPA connection (or 3.5G) for my computer. The connection is good enough to play games on.

Mumble does not seem to work as well though. Whenever people are recording, their stream gets interrupted every half a second.

It makes it impossible to understand what they are saying, as their stream is flashing on and off constantly.

Any advice on how to solve this issue?

Thanks in advance,

Morgaza

[kissaki]

When *they* are *recording*?

You’re talking about Mumbles audio recording feature, right?

And when *they* record, *you* hear *them* in pieces?

[xhjfx]

I think he means when they are speaking..

Have you checked the latency and/or tried TCP mode?

[morgaza15]

Correct, I meant when they are speaking, sorry for the confusion.

Thanks for the heads up on TCP mode, I will give it a try later tonight when there are people online.

[morgaza15]

TCP mode most certainly made a difference, thanks a ton for the help!

Can anyone maybe explain to me what TCP mode exactly does? I am eager to learn.

[kissaki]

TCP is a protocol that guarantees package delivery.

TCP is used for control and meta information (server connections, channel lists, …).

UDP on the other hand is used for voice packets because it’s smaller/more efficient.

So unless it can be avoided, TCP-mode should not be used/preferred.

It seems the packets can not be delivered without loss to you - hence on UDP they are simply over-jumped on audio playback.

On TCP however, they are sent again until delivered, and audio playback is waiting until delivery.

However, AFAIK this should introduce stuttering on TCP-mode as well, when people talk longer sentences/continuously transmit sound/voice - should be hearable I presume (but maybe network is just too fast :) ). So another possibility could be the provider throttling UDP (dropping some UDP packets, while not dropping TCP packets).

[morgaza15]

It did not seem to make much difference.

I get the feeling that it is weather dependable, as the breaking up happens at random. Some days it works and others it doesnt.

I am not quite sure why it is not working, since I can reach up to 5 Mbps with my USB data stick, but for some reason voice chat systems dont work propperly. Mumble is the only one that works 50% of the time.

I am running out of ideas.

[morgaza15]

Actually just found out that my internet provider is throttling down on VOIP.

I guess that the issue is no longer Mumble related.

Thanks for the help anyway guys, maybe if anyone knows a workaround for this, would be greatly appreciated.

[kissaki]

Although not the optimal solution, using TCP mode should be a good work around.

You will increase latency a bit, but that should be fine considering the alternative here.