Many audio dropouts using SmartLINK (4.1.15)

W4AFK Bruno

The setup:

• Remote Flex-6400 on Palomar Mountain
• "Last mile" - Club Microwave link from the radio site @ ~5600 feet to the cable modem based internet gateway
• Club members access the Flex-6400 using SmartLINK
• Admins (like me) can access via SmartLINK or using SmartSDR running on a local computer next to the radio, and connected via a paid "RemotePC" subscription.

The challenge (help please)

• When using SmartLINK, there are many audio dropouts and hesitations
  • This is noted by all users and it doesn't make it fun for them to use.
• When us admins connect via "RemotePC", there are NO AUDIO DROPOUTS
  • Same computer and internet connection on this end (fiber, 1 Gbps U/D for me)

Scratching my head … We are reaching the radio via the same "last mile" microwave link and the rest is via the same ISP gateway and provider.

When we "admins" connect via RemotePC, we are using the same Internet path to the radio from the gateway and there are NO AUDIO drop outs. However, when we use SmartLINK, the dropouts are present.

This "seems" to tell me that we have "UDP packet drops", but it's hard to pinpoint

What are we missing?

Any suggestions on what we can do as if it's the ISP's gateway, we want to know what to tell them BECAUSE the problem does NOT occur when using RemotePC via the same ISP gateway

Mike-VA3MW

Sorry to hear you are having issues.

The dropouts are the loss of the UDP data stream and is likely being handled by devices outside of your control. I think this is what you are seeing. SmartLink is a peer to peer connection.

You may want to run some iPerf tests

https://community.flexradio.com/discussion/8033111/testing-your-network-performance