QoS: Thibor vs Tomato

Posts: 114 · Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 3:25 pm Post subject: QoS: Thibor vs Tomato

First, let me get this out of the way. I am no longer using Vonage for phone service and have switched to [ADMIN EDIT PER FORUM RULES]

I'm still going to continue to hang around these forums since there's a wealth of information to general voip technology that applies to any carrier.

Now, back to the topic.

While I had Vonage, I was never able to get Thibor 15c on my WRT54G v4 to handle QOS properly. I would use the MAC of the voip adapter, set it to highest, put it at the top, and tried everything Natehoy recommended. My test would be to call my wife (at home) from work. I would then SSH into my Windows box at home from work, launch a browser, and go to espn.com. The outbound traffic generated to display the espn homepage over SSH saturates the outbound stream. With Thibor, I would constantly get choppy audio. I even set SSH to Lowest priority, but had no discernible effect.

Due to this, I purchased a Hawking HBB1, turned off QOS on the WRT54g, and all my issues were resolved. No matter what I did over SSH, voices never got choppy.

I recently switched to [ADMIN EDIT], and decided to try getting Thibor 15c working again. Yesterday morning, I removed the HBB1 from the network, re-enabled QOS, set the MAC of the new adapter as the highest priority, and did my normal test. Once again, choppy audio.

I then searched this forum and others for any other info since it appears others are getting great QOS with the WRT54G and Thibor. I came across a new derivative of the HyperWRT called Tomato. So last night, I flashed it onto the router, cleared NVRAM (I did the same with Thibor when I installed it as well), and setup QOS with the MAC being the highest priority.

I did the test this morning, and remarkably, the quality of the voice remained perfect. I then further stressed it by loading two espn home pages at the same time, and then moving them around. Again, perfect audio. Just like having the HBB1 in the network, but now having much tighter control. I'm going to continue testing (maybe FTP a file from home to work while loading espn) and try to break this setup.

So for those of you having trouble with QOS and using DD-WRT or Thibor, give Tomato a try. It worked for me.

-Craig

Posts: 4751 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4751

That's great. Nate Hoy has also been reporting favorably on Tomato.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:18 am Post subject:

While I've been running IPCop routers at most of my locations now, i do have 3 remote locations running WRT54GLs with DD-WRT and QoS has been very favorable on it so far. Might be worth giving a look at.

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

I just started running Tomato on a WRT54GL about a week ago myself and so far I'm very happy with it.

I used to use the HBB1 (the Hawking device) for QoS in front of a WRT54GX4, but I got a Slingbox recently and the HBB1 seems to give high priority to both Vonage and the Slingbox.

I'm hoping that setting the Slingbox to a lower priority than my Vonage device will fix this.

I have to say that Tomato was very easy to setup and the QoS configuration was pretty straight-forward as well.

I'll get a better idea next week if the QoS between Vonage and the Slingbox works well when I'm travelling, but the simple QoS seems fine and call quality is very good.

The graphs and charts on usage in Tomato are also really nice to have.

Go Tomato... go go Tomato!!

Posts: 114 · Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:47 pm Post subject:

VonageTPA:

DD-WRT is the first firmware I tried on my WRT54G when I first got it. I had stability issues with it (locking up under certain loads and/or many days in service). I loved the features and interface, but I needed something more stable. Maybe it doesn't work as well on the v4 routers.

Butterman:

I really liked the performance of the HBB1, but like you, I noticed that non-voice traffic (torrents in my case) were also prioritized higher than normal web traffic - the blue light would rapidly blink for both phone calls and torrents. I have now classified torrents to Low setting, SSH to medium, and Voice to highest. This allows me to run Azureus to download/share linux distributions, connect to home via SSH from work, and allow my wife to talk on the phone at home.

I know DD-WRT and Thibor can do the same, but for me, only Tomato has had the stability and performance I expected.

-Craig