If you are using a Belkin Pre-N router, read this

Posts: 23 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 11, 2006 Posts: 23

This has caused me an insane amount of aggravation.
I love the extra range and boost I get from the belkin pre-n, but any phone calls made through vonage (using a pap-2, but issue cuts across other voip boxes as well) were choppy--- almost cylclical choppiness, with about every other word cut off.
After searching around, on this web site and on the web, I finally got it working.
To anyone thats interested, here's what I did:
1) DISABLE dmz.
2) DISABLE the firewall
3) ENABLE UPNP (no idea why this has any effects)

I also did the following, but don't think this has anything to do with why it works:
1) QOS enabled
2) create a static IP address for the router (map the MAC address to a specific ip address)
3) open the following ports to the ip address assigned to your voip box: 53, 69, 10000-20000, 21 (all UDP).

hope this helps someone else.. I know it's been hit in other threads, but it caused me days of aggravation. Hope this avoids the same for someone else.

Posts: 23 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 11, 2006 Posts: 23

For full disclosure, forgot to mention that I have DHCP disabled at the router... I have a win 2003 enterprise server performing DHCP duties.. I'm going to turn on DHCP on the router later today and make sure it still works.

BTW-- here are my stats after implementing these changes:

Download 18,236,880 bps
Upload 3,877,760 bps
QOS 64%
RTT 17 ms
MaxPause 29 ms

Posts: 23 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 11, 2006 Posts: 23

For full disclosure, forgot to mention that I have DHCP disabled at the router... I have a win 2003 enterprise server performing DHCP duties.. I'm going to turn on DHCP on the router later today and make sure it still works.

BTW-- here are my stats after implementing these changes:

Download 18,236,880 bps
Upload 3,877,760 bps
QOS 64%
RTT 17 ms
MaxPause 29 ms

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Posts: 3

Just my two cents...

I am a new Vonage subscriber after having had Timer Warner Digital Phone service for over a year now. I got the Motorola router from Vonage earlier today, plugged everything in, started making calls and experienced the same choppy call behaviour that others are seeing who put their Vonage routers behind their Belkin Pre-N wireless routers. Make a long story short... I tried all the Vonage troubleshooting tips, had a long conversation with support in India, then started digging around on the web until I found this and other treads. I tried all the different combinations suggested here like port forwarding, QOS, DMZ, etc., but the ONLY setting that fixes the problem in my environment is to disable the firewall in the Belkin. I guess I can live with that since I like the extended wireless capabilities of the Belkin but it still is kind of annoying and should be an easy fix for Belkin.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 30, 2006 Posts: 1

jmg wrote:

2) DISABLE the firewall

This is the only thing you need to do. I have a Belkin Pre-N router and a Linksys PAP2 adapter. I disabled the firewall and restarted the router. No more rhythmic drop outs during calls. The info that came with your router will tell you how to adjust the firewall setting.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Posts: 3

I really didn't like the idea of disableing the firewall in my router so instead, I just put my router behind the Vonage router. That way, I can keep my internal network protected AND fix the drop out problem.

Posts: 142 · Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 1:17 pm Post subject:

QoS, or Quality of Service, prioritizes the VoIP/Gaming traffic so that if you have a VoIP phone adapter, all the VoIP traffic gets the priority over any other normal priority traffic like surfing websites, downloading music, videos, etc.

UPnP does not have anything to do with VoIP or anything. If you open "My Network Neighborhood" or "My Network Places" in Windows, you should see your router as a UPnP device. This will also help if you have Windows Vista and you're setting up a network and you wanted to view the map of all computers connected to a computer.

DMZ bypasses the firewall for your Vonage VoIP phone adapter if you're putting it behind a router. If you enable DMZ for your computer, for example, your computer will be visible to the Internet, bypassing Network Address Translator (NAT for short) and your router's firewall. Disabling your firewall and NAT is like enabling DMZ for all your computers and it's a bad ideal to do that, except your Vonage adapter.

What is your setup of your Vonage and your networking hardware? Mine is cable modem -> Motorola VT2142 -> D-Link Di-524 (router). If you have your Vonage adapter, such as Motorola VT2142, between your cable modem and your router, this should make it a whole lot easier for you.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Posts: 3

Yeah, neither the DMZ setup or the QoS (which is enabled by default) worked for me. My setup is cable modem -> Motorola VT2142 -> Belkin Pre-N which seems to work just fine and hasn't negatively effected my relative bandwith.

Posts: 94 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Sep 15, 2006 Posts: 94

A couple of thoughts:

1) If you enable QoS, and keep the firewall enabled, it still doesn't work?

2) If you do port forwarding, and keep the firewall enabled, it still doesn't work?

I'm surprised that the router is having difficulty with the firewall on. I definitely would not want to leave the firewall off. I don't have this draft-N router, but have a different one, D-Link's, which I'm planning on using soon, and would be disappointed if I had to disable the firewall. Right now I'm using D-Link's LB-604, and it doesn't have any issues with its firewall on.

Posts: 142 · Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:32 pm Post subject:

I agree. I wouldn't buy a Draft-N router until the 802.11n gets standardized around 2008.