drop outs and ping pong

Today I added a second node to my system and had my first inter-asterisk QSO. I found two problems which may, or may not, be related.

first issue:

During the QSO, there were a lot of drop outs (both ways apparently). These were accompanied by "Hungup..." messages on the console. I think these are not anything to do with audio or USB, but rather with the internet (parrot mode works fine, for example). I wonder what other people's experience is with this? Could it be something my ISP is doing to me (they are famous for this kind of thing).

This happens in monitor-only mode too, and apparently it is noticeable on the other and as at some point when I was doing this a control operator came on and said my node was 'coughing' and then proceeded to disconnect me from his end. I hate to think I am screwing up other peoples systems by just listening to them. What to do? I noticed that there is a "drop count" parameter in IAX

[from this I concluded that the inter-asterisk exchange protocol must have some end to end acknowleements ?]

second issue:

when I connect my first node to my second node on the same machine I get a ping-pong effect (or similar) where the first node keeps playing the courtesy tone (and PTT remains on continuously) and the second node drops the PTT but immediately keys up again. No received audio passes from node 1 to node 2 while all this beeping is going on.

I have commented off the CTCSS commands for node 2 and courtesy tones as well.

I expect this is something stupid I have done that should be easy to fix.

Thanks,
Ken
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