asterisk users - Jan 2007 - Best inexpensive home office router for VoIP (QoS with maybe PoE)

Hi,
 
I'm looking for opinions on the "best value" router to use for
home offices.
It should work for a scenario in which there are 3 computers and 2 SIP
phones, handling QoS so that the phones always have higher priority traffic
than the PCs. (and not rely on the phones to do the QoS because some PCs may
not be connected to the phones).
 
QoS could be based on destination and source IP (i.e. an Asterisk server) or
MAC address of the phones. Ideally with PoE, but at this point it's just a
bonus. 
 
What are people on this list using?  I've found that the mention QoS on a
box doesn't guarantee any real QoS functionality.
 
Mike
 
 
 
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Mike wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> I'm looking for opinions on the "best value" router to use
for home
> offices.  It should work for a scenario in which there are 3 computers 
> and 2 SIP phones, handling QoS so that the phones always have higher 
> priority traffic than the PCs. (and not rely on the phones to do the 
> QoS because some PCs may not be connected to the phones).
>  
> QoS could be based on destination and source IP (i.e. an Asterisk 
> server) or MAC address of the phones. Ideally with PoE, but at this 
> point it's just a bonus. 
>  
> What are people on this list using?  I've found that the mention QoS 
> on a box doesn't guarantee any real QoS functionality.
 
 QoS on the router will only guarantee your phone traffic gets higher 
priority than other (web, mail etc..) however once the bits leave your 
router any QoS is essentially lost as the call traverses the internet.
Having QoS on your router is valuable to prevent some large download 
from buggering your calls though.

The absolute best results I have had were with m0n0wall (m0n0.ch) which
worked perfectly for me to bounce voip calls over vpns with other traffic
and no user any the wiser. Second after that but with lots of plus points
for value come the draytek routers. A couple of years ago, their firmware
used to be terrible with the boxes crashing every 10 minutes if you tried to
use any of their feautures, but I now have clients on 6 of their 2900
routers, 4 of the 3300v routers and I'm trying out a 2910 (dual wan) for
myself at the moment and they all work perfectly.
The vpn functionality seems to be very robust as well.

> I'm looking for opinions on the "best value" router to use
for home offices.
>  It should work for a scenario in which there are 3 computers and 2 SIP
> phones, handling QoS so that the phones always have higher priority traffic
> than the PCs. (and not rely on the phones to do the QoS because some PCs
may
> not be connected to the phones).
I'm using a Linksys WRTSL54GS and 3rd party firmware with great
results! You won't find QoS features in the default Linksys firmware
though, so if you want something out of the box, this isn't much help.

My main reasons for picking it over the older WRT54G's where:

1) It was (still is?) available in retail stores, whereas the WRT54G's
that run Linux are generally only on ebay these days, they have to be
older versions.

2) it has 32mb of ram, and 8mb of flash.

3) it has USB which is nice to connect storage or network printer too.

If you go with it, make sure it's version 1, the K0 serial number
though. Version 2 has less flash and hasn't been tested. See:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Linksys/WRTSL54GS
http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware

I started with Thibor's firmware (which is based on stock Linksys
code), so no special shell / command line knowledge needed:
http://www.thibor.co.uk/

Eventually moved on to OpenWRT for support of advanced stuff I'm
doing, such as dial on demand PPTP client VPNs to clients, multi-site
VPN with my friends, DNSmasq, QoS, etc.

-Kenneth

On 2007-01-04 09:56:58 -0800, Mike <list@virtutel.ca> said:
> 
> 
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
> 
> Hi,
>  I'm looking for opinions on the "best value" router to use
for home offices.
> It should work for a scenario in which there are 3 computers and 2 SIP
> phones, handling QoS so that the phones always have higher priority traffic
> than the PCs. (and not rely on the phones to do the QoS because some PCs
may
> not be connected to the phones).
>  QoS could be based on destination and source IP (i.e. an Asterisk server)
or
> MAC address of the phones. Ideally with PoE, but at this point it's
just a
> bonus.  What are people on this list using?  I've found that the 
> mention QoS on a
> box doesn't guarantee any real QoS functionality.
I am using the Zyxel X-550 which seems to be quite nice and has a 
pretty robust ability to to QoS.

I haven't actually tested in hard cases yet,  but it seems to be 
working all right so far.

Marty

PS about $30 US after rebate.

Mike

I'm using a Cisco 1605R [running IOS 12.3(5a)] small office router with 
"Fair-Weight" queueing enabled.  Works great.  The nice thing about 
Fair-Weight queueing is that it dynamically adapts to lower the priority 
of higher demand traffic (e.g. large downloads).  If you want quality 
stick with quality stuff.

Mark C

Mike wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> I'm looking for opinions on the "best value" router to use
for home
> offices.  It should work for a scenario in which there are 3 computers 
> and 2 SIP phones, handling QoS so that the phones always have higher 
> priority traffic than the PCs. (and not rely on the phones to do the 
> QoS because some PCs may not be connected to the phones).
>  
> QoS could be based on destination and source IP (i.e. an Asterisk 
> server) or MAC address of the phones. Ideally with PoE, but at this 
> point it's just a bonus. 
>  
> What are people on this list using?  I've found that the mention QoS 
> on a box doesn't guarantee any real QoS functionality.
>  
> Mike
>  
>  
>  
>
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As I posted yesterday,
Use m0n0wall from m0n0.ch on an old pc or a little router box for the best
results. 
I use draytek 2910 routers and they work fine.



On 6/1/07 19:00, "asterisk-users-request@lists.digium.com"
<asterisk-users-request@lists.digium.com> wrote:
>  Re: Best inexpensive home office router for
> VoIP (QoS with maybe PoE)

We've had a lot of success with Thompson Speedtouch 780 routers,  
which have built in adsl modems, and two ATAs. They don't seem to use  
QoS in the strictest sense, but do a very good job of prioritising  
the traffic from their own ATAs.  If you're happy to stick with  
analogue hansets instead of the SIP hardphones, they provide an  
excellent protection to upload bandwidth. They also seem to do some  
early dropping on incoming traffic to persuade the ISP's routers to  
slow down downloads once a call has been going for a bit, hence they  
can limit downloads as well.

simon

On 4 Jan 2007, at 17:56, Mike wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for opinions on the "best value" router to use
for home
> offices.  It should work for a scenario in which there are 3  
> computers and 2 SIP phones, handling QoS so that the phones always  
> have higher priority traffic than the PCs. (and not rely on the  
> phones to do the QoS because some PCs may not be connected to the  
> phones).
>
> QoS could be based on destination and source IP (i.e. an Asterisk  
> server) or MAC address of the phones. Ideally with PoE, but at this  
> point it's just a bonus.
>
> What are people on this list using?  I've found that the mention  
> QoS on a box doesn't guarantee any real QoS functionality.
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> asterisk-users mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users