Hawking Technology Broadband VoIP QoS Booster

Posts: 54 · Full Forum Member Joined: Aug 07, 2004 Posts: 54

ChrisFix wrote:

mogulman,
Are you having success with the TEW-611BRP? Mine isn't working well for Voip. Seems okay otherwise, but I have intermittent choppy voice when I put this router in my network (direct swap for the WRT54G) with or without the StreamEngine turned on.

Yes.. still working great for me. Much better then my Linksys.

No choppy audio even when downloading/uploading and using my slingbox too.

I have a Motorola SB5120 cable modem with Comcast. Voice adapter is a Motorola VT1005. I noticed in your other thread that you mention that turning of UPNP helped you. I may turn this off anyway, as I don't use it.

Posts: 23 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Dec 01, 2005 Posts: 23

gmw wrote:

Purchased this device over the weekend to see if it would help the QoS of my Voip.

All I can say is WOW! This device really does work. The Voice quality is supurb. This device has also improved overall download and upload speed of my home network. I can surf, work at home via a VPN, and download large files, and the voice quality has no problems.

Whatever type of streaming technology Hawking Technology is using in the device, it certainly is working and is well worth the $$$.

http://www.hawkingtech.com/
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=332637&pfp=cat3

-GW

When I first started with Vonage, I spent several weeks tweaking my WRT54GS with Hyperwrt Thibor firmware. I managed to get a decent performance level with manually setting QOS. But, I just turned off QOS and replaced it with the Hawking unit. It works really well.

I am reasonably technically proficient (I build and service PC's as a side business). But, I'd rather have it handled automatically.

One small niggle. I did have to set it up to see my router IP and had to restart it this morning. But, that's the extent of tweaking required.

Tom

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 30, 2005 Posts: 12

Because you cannot clone a MAC address in the D-Link. My router requires me to clone the MAC address of my NIC in order to communicate with the modem. Since I can't clone, the D-Link DI-102 just sits there, not able to do anything.

Posts: 114

jackc111 wrote:

Because you cannot clone a MAC address in the D-Link. My router requires me to clone the MAC address of my NIC in order to communicate with the modem. Since I can't clone, the D-Link DI-102 just sits there, not able to do anything.

With Comcast? At least Comcast service that I have enforces that the cable modem will only acknowledge the first MAC it sees when booted. If I want to change routers, all I need to do is unplug the cable modem, connect the new router to it, and plug it back in.

If that doesn't work for you, call up Comcast and give them the new MAC. Cloning is only a convenience so you don't have to call up the ISP (if it's required).

I have the HBB1 and it's fantastic. Although it's not very "tunable" like the WRT54G (which I also have with HyperWRT-Thibor), it's a black box appoach that really works.

-Craig

Posts: 63 · Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 10:43 am Post subject:

Quick questions for those with some technical expertise:

- Since I have my setup like this: Cable modem-->WRT54G-->RTP300 I would not really gain anything from purchasing the Hawking unit since my "base" for Voip is hardwired in with the rest of my setup (i.e. I'm not attaching Voip to a machine over a wireless network)

- I noticed a post above where someone added a QoS setting into their router. I have the WRT54G with DD-WRT loaded on it. Does it make sense to add in something for Vonage to give its data higher QoS?

Thanks in advance. This is all good stuff!!

PS: I have to vouch for the quality of Hawking equipment. I have a Hawking corner antenna attached to my router and it does a great job getting the signal (and hearing the signal from) hard to reach areas of my house.

Posts: 323 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 323

rdstoll wrote:

Quick questions for those with some technical expertise:

- Since I have my setup like this: Cable modem-->WRT54G-->RTP300 I would not really gain anything from purchasing the Hawking unit since my "base" for Voip is hardwired in with the rest of my setup (i.e. I'm not attaching Voip to a machine over a wireless network)

- I noticed a post above where someone added a QoS setting into their router. I have the WRT54G with DD-WRT loaded on it. Does it make sense to add in something for Vonage to give its data higher QoS?

Thanks in advance. This is all good stuff!!

PS: I have to vouch for the quality of Hawking equipment. I have a Hawking corner antenna attached to my router and it does a great job getting the signal (and hearing the signal from) hard to reach areas of my house.

There are people that know more about this than me on the forum, but let me start you off.

In your setup, QoS will probably help you get better Voip quality. The QoS doesn't really have anything to do with wireless, so don't add that to the equation. To simplify it, QoS is just the prioritization of traffic. I think of it as an HOV lane on a highway. Its not a great analogy, but its the best I can think of at the moment.

In a typical Voip setup you compete with the other active connections for bandwidth. (upstream is usually in shortest supply) What QoS does in either setup is give certain traffic higher priority.

So let's say you are uploading/downloading files from your PC. The QoS will give the Voip traffic a higher priority so that the call quality does not degrade. This impacts the speed of your file transfer, but since they not as time critical, this is the right tradeoff to make.

As I think it is mentioned earlier in this thread I used the Hawking Booster device and it has certainly helped out with call quality. My setup from a network perspective is very similar to yours.

Hope this helps,
John

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 12:54 pm Post subject:

rdstoll wrote:

Quick questions for those with some technical expertise:

- Since I have my setup like this: Cable modem-->WRT54G-->RTP300 I would not really gain anything from purchasing the Hawking unit since my "base" for Voip is hardwired in with the rest of my setup (i.e. I'm not attaching Voip to a machine over a wireless network)

- I noticed a post above where someone added a QoS setting into their router. I have the WRT54G with DD-WRT loaded on it. Does it make sense to add in something for Vonage to give its data higher QoS?

Thanks in advance. This is all good stuff!!

PS: I have to vouch for the quality of Hawking equipment. I have a Hawking corner antenna attached to my router and it does a great job getting the signal (and hearing the signal from) hard to reach areas of my house.

Basically, the only thing the Hawking would buy you is the ability to turn off QoS on the WRT54G and have the Hawking recognize your Voip packets and prioritize them.

However, I think DD-WRT will do a good job for you, as long as your router is recognizing your upstream data rate or you are setting it manually. Just put your Vonage MAC address into QoS and set it to HIGHEST.

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 30, 2005 Posts: 12

outrun wrote:

jackc111 wrote:

Because you cannot clone a MAC address in the D-Link. My router requires me to clone the MAC address of my NIC in order to communicate with the modem. Since I can't clone, the D-Link DI-102 just sits there, not able to do anything.

With Comcast? At least Comcast service that I have enforces that the cable modem will only acknowledge the first MAC it sees when booted. If I want to change routers, all I need to do is unplug the cable modem, connect the new router to it, and plug it back in.

If that doesn't work for you, call up Comcast and give them the new MAC. Cloning is only a convenience so you don't have to call up the ISP (if it's required).

Well, when I added the DI-102 to the network it didn't work, so I took everything apart and started over from scratch including resetting the modem, router, and the DI-102 itself (since someone might've bought the thing, changed the settings, and returned it). So, if the modem behaves as you say, it would have "re-registered" with the DI-102's MAC. But that isn't possible anyway because the DI-102 doesn't actually have a MAC address. There is no MAC printed on the device itself, nothing on the box, nothing in the documentation. It *shouldn't* need one since it sits in front of the router, but obviously it does with my Comcast setup. Also, I was told that Comcast no longer registers modems, so they don't even know the MAC of my current modem. It doesn't really matter, however, as the DI-102 went back to CompUSA and I bought the TrendNet device for $40 at Buy.com.

If it's possible to make this thing work with Comcast, it sure wasn't clear to me, and I'd advise Comcast users to steer clear.

Posts: 32 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: May 08, 2006 Posts: 32

Howdy,

Will this Hawking Technology broadband booster work with my setup ? Where can I connect this Broadband booster ? I don't have a Cable/DSL modem.

The instructions for this Hawking Technology Broadband booster seems to suggest that it would only work as a device between Cable/DSL Modem and your router. As mentioned, I don't have a Cable/DSL Modem, all I have is a (wireless) router. So will this work and where do I plug it in ? Can I plug this in before the router ?

I have Verizon FIOS, and there is no cable moden or DSL modem. From Optical Network Device (ONT) comes an ethernet CAT5 wire which is hooked up to Verizon supplied (D-Link DI-624) wireless router (with 4 wired ethernet ports). And this D-Link router does not seem to have Qos configuration feature. I used one of the ethernet port to connect the Vonage phone adaptor. A PC is also connected via wired ethernet port. A mac is connected wirelessly

I would appreciate comments and advice on how I could improve the voice quality of Vonage. Thanks.

Posts: 23 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Dec 01, 2005 Posts: 23

oz_80 wrote:

Howdy,

Will this Hawking Technology broadband booster work with my setup ? Where can I connect this Broadband booster ? I don't have a Cable/DSL modem.
[snip]

From Optical Network Device (ONT) comes an ethernet CAT5 wire which is hooked up to Verizon supplied (D-Link DI-624) wireless router (with 4 wired ethernet ports). Thanks.

I'm guessing that you'd put it between your ONT and the router.

Tom