Trying to learn here and would appreciate a second opinion on this one.
We are experiencing fairly regular choppiness in audio and drop outs of audio during VOIP calls.
I've run PingPlotter and see what looks to me like jitter. Also a high latency at hop #9.
Would you be suspect of router at this #9?
I've got PP data export here - https://www.dropbox.com/s/7r7dtrla6u5vqpb/allen%20miller%20-%20Meridian-64.2.142.153.pp2?dl=0

I appreciate your assistance.
Thank you.
Regards,
Allen

Hey Allen,

Thanks for reaching out - sorry to hear about your VoIP issues.

The high latency and packet loss that you're seeing at hop #9 isn't necessarily indicative of any issues. Some devices aren't fond of multiple timed out ICMP requests. Sometimes, when they receive a lot of them in a shorter period of time, they may start down prioritizing them (or, stop responding to them all together) - which can show up as packet loss. As long as the pattern of packet loss isn't carrying through the whole route to the final destination (which it doesn't appear to be here) - then you don't usually need to worry about factoring it into your troubleshooting efforts. If you're interested, we cover this concept in more detail here:

http://www.pingman.com/kb/5

In the results you've provided, it looks like there are some intermittent spikes in latency happening as early as hop #2 (and in some cases, hop #1) that appear to be carrying through the entire route to the final destination. If these spikes match up to times that you experienced VoIP issues, this may imply that the culprit in your issue is somewhere "close to home."

Your goal should be to correlate your experience with your VoIP service to any patterns you can identify in your PingPlotter results. You'll want to continually trace (24x7, if possible) to the service you're having trouble with, and when problems arise with your VoIP service - make note of them in PingPlotter (more details on how to do this here: http://www.pingplotter.com/manual/time_line_graphing.html). This will allow to see if there are any "problem" patterns are present in your PingPlotter results when you're actually running into problems with your VoIP service. We cover this practice in quite a bit more detail here:

http://www.pingman.com/kb/47

We've also got a walkthrough that goes over how to use PingPlotter to troubleshoot network issues (much like the one you're experiencing), which may prove helpful to you here:

http://www.pingplotter.com/fix-your-network

Hopefully this helps out. If you should find yourself with any questions, or needing any further guidance - please don't hesitate to reach out!

Best wishes,

-Gary