QoS Recommendations and Multiple Phone Lines For Business

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 04, 2006 Posts: 5

I am trying to work out the kinks in this, and want any suggestions you have.

I have a small home based business, with multiple computers, server traffic, etc. I have Comcast Business service with 8MB down, and 900-1M up. I have tested this all over and it is consistent. Also, as a IT consultant, I have done lots of tweaking on this. Tis my nature.

I have 2 Linksys PAPs for a total of three Vonage lines. (Two biz lines, one for home) The quality is turned all the way up.

Here is the config:

SMC8013
|
V
Netgear FVS318
|
V
3Com Switch (all equipment is located here, including my PAP's)

I had put my PAP's directly on the switch I have in between the FVS318 and the SMC router, however, oddly enough, it was much, much worse! Choppy, incongruent conversations, etc. It drove me batty. My wife is highly critical of the little annoying errors we get with Vonage over our prior configuration (Convergent T1 with 4 lines of Voip on a Cisco IAD) such as clicking when you answer the phone, calls not being dropped, poor quality of voice, etc.

I truely think that a QoS router would solve my problems, but I'm not 100% positive. I saw that Hawking box, but really don't want to add more junk in between my router and server. In addition I have a RangeMax 240 for my wireless clients behind the FVS.

What is the best QoS router out there? I have thought about a new Netgear or SonicWall to replace this 318. Thoughts? Ideas?
The kicker on this is that it needs to be rock solid as I have 3 phone lines, and this is the lifeblood of my business!

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 04, 2006 Posts: 2

Guido13 wrote:

I am trying to work out the kinks in this, and want any suggestions you have.

I have a small home based business, with multiple computers, server traffic, etc. I have Comcast Business service with 8MB down, and 900-1M up. I have tested this all over and it is consistent. Also, as a IT consultant, I have done lots of tweaking on this. Tis my nature.

I have 2 Linksys PAPs for a total of three Vonage lines. (Two biz lines, one for home) The quality is turned all the way up.

Here is the config:

SMC8013
| V
Netgear FVS318
|
V
3Com Switch (all equipment is located here, including my PAP's)

I had put my PAP's directly on the switch I have in between the FVS318 and the SMC router, however, oddly enough, it was much, much worse! Choppy, incongruent conversations, etc. It drove me batty. My wife is highly critical of the little annoying errors we get with Vonage over our prior configuration (Convergent T1 with 4 lines of Voip on a Cisco IAD) such as clicking when you answer the phone, calls not being dropped, poor quality of voice, etc.

I truely think that a QoS router would solve my problems, but I'm not 100% positive. I saw that Hawking box, but really don't want to add more junk in between my router and server. In addition I have a RangeMax 240 for my wireless clients behind the FVS.

What is the best QoS router out there? I have thought about a new Netgear or SonicWall to replace this 318. Thoughts? Ideas?
The kicker on this is that it needs to be rock solid as I have 3 phone lines, and this is the lifeblood of my business!

I have a solution to your problems this will help your business out big time. call me at 917-361-6159 then we can speak all about it i am willing to help Kevin Forde

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

Guido13 wrote:

Here is the config:

SMC8013
|
V
Netgear FVS318
|
V
3Com Switch (all equipment is located here, including my PAP's)

I had put my PAP's directly on the switch I have in between the FVS318 and the SMC router, however, oddly enough, it was much, much worse! Choppy, incongruent conversations, etc.

I'm a bit confused here. With the PAPs directly on the 2Com switch service is much worse than what? Have you tried plugging the PAPs directly into the FVS? Have you looked at the FVS firewall as a source of the trouble?

If this setup can't be made to work, I would tend to agree with you that a good QoS router is the way to go (but I have no recommendation).

Posts: 142

kevin208 wrote:

Guido13 wrote:

I am trying to work out the kinks in this, and want any suggestions you have.

I have a small home based business, with multiple computers, server traffic, etc. I have Comcast Business service with 8MB down, and 900-1M up. I have tested this all over and it is consistent. Also, as a IT consultant, I have done lots of tweaking on this. Tis my nature.

I have 2 Linksys PAPs for a total of three Vonage lines. (Two biz lines, one for home) The quality is turned all the way up.

Here is the config:

SMC8013
| V
Netgear FVS318
|
V
3Com Switch (all equipment is located here, including my PAP's)

I had put my PAP's directly on the switch I have in between the FVS318 and the SMC router, however, oddly enough, it was much, much worse! Choppy, incongruent conversations, etc. It drove me batty. My wife is highly critical of the little annoying errors we get with Vonage over our prior configuration (Convergent T1 with 4 lines of Voip on a Cisco IAD) such as clicking when you answer the phone, calls not being dropped, poor quality of voice, etc.

I truely think that a QoS router would solve my problems, but I'm not 100% positive. I saw that Hawking box, but really don't want to add more junk in between my router and server. In addition I have a RangeMax 240 for my wireless clients behind the FVS.

What is the best QoS router out there? I have thought about a new Netgear or SonicWall to replace this 318. Thoughts? Ideas?
The kicker on this is that it needs to be rock solid as I have 3 phone lines, and this is the lifeblood of my business!

I have a solution to your problems this will help your business out big time. call me at 917-361-6159 then we can speak all about it i am willing to help Kevin Forde

Why can't you tell us? This is a discussion board for helping everyone out and for gaining knowledge in here.

Anyway, having something like this setup: Modem -> router -> router -> router -> Voip phone adapter is a bad ideal. You will have to tell 2 daisy-chaining routers to setup QoS for your PAP2.

Your Voip phone adapter should be setup where there's less number of hops between router to router.

A modem to Vonage adapter (if you have a Motorola VT2142 or VT2442, for example) to router or a modem to router to Vonage adapter (if you have D-Link VTA-VR or PAP2) would be a much better ideal. But if you have the Voip adapter behind the router, you may need to configure so that the firewall doesn't interfere with Voip and that you setup static IP address and if needed, enable DMZ for your Voip phone adapter.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 04, 2006 Posts: 5

I forgot to post that when I had the problems I had the PAPs attached straight to the Comcast router, then I moved them back after the issues. Also, the PAPs are hooked on the 3Com switch directly attached to the FVS. I am thinking that a good QoS router is the best solution. Which is the best one to get? I don't want to get an integrated router as I have the PAPs. They are also DHCP reserved on my router as well.