I am ecstatic - great QOS, reliability, port forwarding

Posts: 66 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 15, 2003 Posts: 66

I am THRILLED!

Well, I finally can say, I love the Vonage service. I just tried the Motorola router/voice gateway in its "transparent" mode - with the V1000 connected to the RoadRunner cable modem and my Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless gateway connected to the Motorola. The Motorola has the 1.16 software. It is configured with NAT turned off and I set port 22 to forward to 192.168.22.0.

It all works wondferfully! I get ZERO voice problems while uploading a file at nearly the full 384K uplink speed of my RoadRunner service. I have a Windows 2K box behind the Linksys that is running Microsoft's PPTP VPN server, SMTP mail, SSH server, a web server, an FTP server. All of these apps work fine. I can even connect to the web server from inside the Linksys. This did not work before.

I can also run multiple outbound PPTP and L2TP VPN sessions from my laptop AND my Win 2K server connected to the Linksys. The only thing I have not yet tested is outbound Cisco IPSec VPN Client.

I am THRILLED! I am now ready to recommend Vonage to anyone.

Posts: 66 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 15, 2003 Posts: 66

Sorry, meant to say the forward address was 192.168.102.0. Also, the LInksys is set for DHCP on its outside port. It and the Motorola each get their own address from RoadRunner

bobbabai wrote:

I am THRILLED!

software. It is configured with NAT turned off and I set port 22 to forward to 192.168.22.0.

Posts: 67 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 22, 2004 Posts: 67

I have had no success with this. However, I don't quite understand the port forward reference you make. If the vt1000 is not doing NAT, port forwarding should not matter.

Port 22 is usually ssh. Why did you forward port 22?

Posts: 66 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 15, 2003 Posts: 66

I run Cygwin's SSH server on my Win2K home PC. I think I was wrong about the port 22 forwarding. I just now removed the port forward for 22 and SSH still works.

HOWEVER --

I had to power-cycle the cable modem and Motorola once today because I had no dial tone and no Internet. I tried then using NAT with the DMZ feature and statically addresses the outside interface of my Linksys. Nothing but pings could get through - no DNS, no TCP anything.

I have since read on this forum that others have seen the same problem.

Ugh.

wd5gnr wrote:

I don't quite understand the port forward reference you make. If the vt1000 is not doing NAT, port forwarding should not matter.

Port 22 is usually ssh. Why did you forward port 22?

Posts: 67 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 22, 2004 Posts: 67

Love Cygwin!

I think what is happening -- and this is just a guess -- is that the MTA asks for an IP and gets it. Then when the router/PC asks for an IP, it gets one but the MTA doesn't know it has been revoked. So everything works fine until the MTA's lease runs out and it renews or the IP gets reassigned.

By the way, I switched to a newer cable modem and that seems to have fixed my problem (fingers crossed).

Posts: 66 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 15, 2003 Posts: 66

I don't think the DHCP issue is the cause. The VT1000 says its address lease expires in 19+ hours. My service died long before 19-20 hours. And besides, if the VT1000 is truly bridging, the VT1000 and my Linksys get different IP addresses from each other. I think one's DHCP lease has nothing at all to do with the other's lease.

Posts: 67 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 22, 2004 Posts: 67

Well, I'm just guessing so I could be wrong. And if it were "normal" DHCP I would agree. But I know here in Houston, Time Warner has ours set up so that if you do a 2nd DHCP from the same cable modem MAC, it drops your first request. In other words, unless you are paying for extra you will get one IP. You can ask for a dozen, but only the last one you get is any good.

Just got off the phone with my business manager and had no problems other than I had the quality set to 30K and he thought my voice sounded a little funny, but it was acceptable. I am now setting the high quality and will try it a bit later.

Amusing how they put the lowest as "normal" instead of "low" -- reminds me of the old story about NASA's space suit plumbing. Comes in three sizes: Large, Giant, and Huge because no one wants to ask for suit plumbing in a "small" size!

Posts: 50 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 10, 2004 Posts: 50

What broadband service are you on?? I'm on Comcast and go weeks without an IP renew.

Posts: 66 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 15, 2003 Posts: 66

OK, I figured out why things weren't working reliably -- Ethernet autosense. My Linksys BEFW11S4 version 2 router was plugged into the VT1000's PC port. Every few seconds to 90 seconds, pings through the router and VT1000 would stop for 15-45 seconds while voice worked fine. If I plugged the router, cable modem and VT1000 all into a switch, all was fine for many minutes - but no QOS. AFter a while, voice would stop working, too.

So, I decided to cable like this:

Cable modem --> VT1000-WAN
VT1000-PC --> switch --> Linksys-BEFW11S4-WAN
LinksysLAN --> PCs

All works nicely for many minutes - no dropped pings, voice works great with QOS. The VT1000 and the Linksys each get their own IP address. My home PC's PPTP server, SSH server, web server work great. Outbound PPTP, L2TP and Cisco VPN Client IPSec work just fine.

We'll see how things go for a day.

I AM HAPPY!

Posts: 50 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 10, 2004 Posts: 50

That looks like it might work. I hadn't thought of doing it that way but you get QOS and SPI firewall to PCs'