QoS - Does The ISP's Equipment Have To Support It?

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 17, 2007 Posts: 5

I have broadband via Cox in the Phoenix AZ area. Am I correct in assuming that a routers QoS will only function if the ISP’s equipment supports QoS? In other words the ISP manages the traffic flow to my router based on its QoS settings. And if so how do I test to see if the ISP’s equipment has QoS capabilities?

I had a Linksys WRT54G and turned on QoS put in my PAP2’s MAC address in and called a friend several states away while uploading files via FTP and he said my voice was breaking up badly. I tried other variations in the router without any success. I returned the router to the store and hooked my old Linksys BEFSR81 W/QoS back up. Tried the call again and still my friend said my voice was broken up.

Even if I just click on webpage while talking he said the voice quality breaks up.

I know the BEFSR81 is a about a year or two old but the QoS light is illuminated.

I love my Vonage and hate to give it up but I sure seemed destined for copper wires (again). Sad

Any Help Or Ideas Is Much Appreciated
Jim

The Vonage VoIP Speed Test reads a follows

Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 6453520 bps
Upload speed: 563072 bps
Quality of service: 94 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 109 ms
Average download pause: 1 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 73 ms
Average round trip time to server: 147 ms

VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 3.6 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 8.3 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.2 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported VoIP lines: 9
Estimated MOS score: 3.7

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

The ISP does not need to support QoS in order for it to work on your router.... but the quality of your broadband connection is very important to your overall call quality.

The QoS settings on a home router prioritize what gets out to the internet from your network and who goes first. (I am really simplifying it here Lol

)

It sounds to me like the QoS in those devices just isn't working for you or you just haven't found the right settings yet.

I was looking at the manual for the BEFSR81 and I see there aren't tons of options for priority. Have you tried more settings other than just setting the Vonage port to high? Maybe setting the FTP to low or maybe even setting your PC's port to low to see if that helps?

Based on what you have detailed I think the problem is that you don't have enough options to get QoS setup properly with this router. I've never used it, so I could be wrong, but it does sound like this.

As you can see from my signature I have a WRT54GL with the Tomato aftermarket firmware and that does QoS very well. It gives you more options around QoS and they seem really work that way.

If you aren't against buying another router and loading aftermarket firmware, I would recommend the WRT54GL and some 3rd party firmware. I started using Tomato based on some people having luck with it on this forum (NateHoy) and I have been very happy. There are others that have been very happy with Thibor and others, but I really like Tomato because of the great QoS options as well as the easy setup.

Here is a Wiki page about Tomato which can give you some more ideas about it.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Tomato_Firmware

Hope this helps.

-John

Posts: 114 · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 12:45 pm Post subject:

Another recommendation for Tomato. I have a WRT54G v4 - Tomato is the only firmware that's worked for me (I couldn't ever get QoS in Thibor working correctly).

-Craig

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 17, 2007 Posts: 5

Thanks for the feedback Craig & John,

I'll take a look at the WRT54G v4 W/Tomato option I wonder how hard it will be to find a version 4 router? The one I bought was version 6.

I still question the whole QoS implementation thing. I understand how it can help the upload stream but the research I did left me believing that the ISP with QoS in place can hold back the least important packets so VoIP traffic is free to travel down the line unimpeded!?

Again Thanks for help.

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

Jim,

You aren't going to find a WRT54G V4... at least not a new one. You can get a new WRT54GL which will work. This is basically the current version that Linksys sells.

As for your question about QoS from the ISP. They might, I repeat might be able to do this...but I don't think it would matter.

The bottleneck you are fighting with most likely is what gets out to the internet first. These priorities are controlled by your personal router. Any rules that the ISP would apply would take effect after they are out of your network.

If your problem was overall bandwidth the ISP QoS would make a difference, but I've never heard of this being an issue. In most cases it is QoS for your connection (anything behind your cable modem) or simply a bad internet connection from your ISP (dropped packets, etc)

I used Cox service in Northern Virginia a few years ago and Vonage worked just fine with a decent QoS setup on my local network.

Hope this helps and makes some sense.

-John

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 2:28 pm Post subject:

Just to set expectations for you on what QoS will and will not do, and how to configure Tomato (which I also use, by the way) for best QoS performance..

http://vonage.nmhoy.net/qos.html

Posts: 172 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Apr 19, 2006 Posts: 172