Setting up Vonage with WRT54GL running Tomato firmware

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 31, 2009 Posts: 4

Hello everyone,

I've read through many posts and it looks like there are tons of folks successfully running Vonage with the WRT54GL router with tomato firmware. I'm not the most experienced in terms of networking, but hope that one of you could help me connect up my system, especially since this router/firmware combination is so popular.

So, could someone walk through step by step how to setup Vonage (behind the router) using a WRT54GL and the Tomato firmware?

Here's my stats:

1. St. Charles, Missouri USA
2. AT&T DSL Elite - Dry Loop
3. Upload @ 597 kb/sec, Download @ 5095 kb/sec (tested via speedtest.net)
4. Efficient Networks Speedstream 5100
5. Vonage adaptor is a Model: VDV21-VD
6. Currently, Modem->Vonage Adaptor->Computer & Phone. Would like: Modem->Linksys WRT54GL->Vonage Adaptor->Phone
7. Would like setup instructions to utilize wireless router with Vonage.
8. Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 5078664 bps
Upload speed: 166496 bps
Quality of service: 99 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 5 ms
Average download pause: 1 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 81 ms
Average round trip time to server: 94 ms

VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 0.3 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 3.4 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported VoIP lines: 2
Estimated MOS score: 4.0

Thank you so much in advance for your help!
TyFro

Posts: 1178 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1178

you are correct in that some here are using tomato firmware for their wireless router. however, this is not the place to get the information you are looking for. go here:

http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

you should get all the detailed information from this website including how to flash your router so that it can have tomato as its firmware.

hope this helps.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 31, 2009 Posts: 4

mundy5, Thanks. I've already flashed the router. That's not the problem.

I want to know the setup people have for these router/box combinations, because purely plugging them in doesn't work.

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

My setup is like this.

Cable Modem - WRT54GL w/ Tomato - > PCs and Vonage devices.

I then setup QoS and set my Vonage devices to have the highest class. I do I then assign everything else below this, mostly the standard ones they have already in there.

I setup the classification via MAC address so that I make sure it won't change.

I used the standard settings for Outbound/Rate limit if I remember correctly.

If you want more info, go to Linksysinfo. They have a forum just on Tomato that I have found helpful.

http://linksysinfo.org

Also keep in mind this won't limit your downstream bandwidth so if you have someone downloading torrents or something similar you can still have issues. I still see this myself when iTunes is downloading large podcasts. There is a variant firmware to Tomato that you'll see on that forum that is supposed to limit downstream speed, but I haven't messed with it.

Bottom line is that I haven't don't too much to the stock Tomato other than setting my Outbound Max bandwidth properly (90% of the best result you get from speedtest.net) and then setting my Vonage devices to be in the Highest classification.

Hope this helps, but if you need more details, head over to linksysinfo.org.

Posts: 1178 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1178

well, there is really nothing magical. the main reason for using tomato is for the QoS setup. Make sure you give the port that the vonage device is connected to the highest priority while giving the rest of the ports the lowest. this should help your router give the priority to vonage over anything else.

I use dd-wrt personally so I am not as familiar with tomato. but that's the main reason essentially.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 31, 2009 Posts: 4

When I connect my system up with Vonage behind the Linksys router, I'm getting error code 008, which is the PPPoE username/password error. With the current setup, I can't get to the Vonage device UI page (to check to make sure that I have the right user/pass for PPPoE). So I unhooked it all, and went back to modem->vonage->computer setup, and verified that yes the proper PPPoE data was in there.

Where do I go from here?

If I check in the Tomato device list, I don't see the vonage device. Do I need to manually add the Vonage device inside Tomato, via MAC address and IP?

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

You need to setup the Tomato router with your PPPoE userid and password now since it is the router connecting to your DSL.

So you need to do the following.

1. Disconnect everything.
2. Connect the Tomato router to the DSL modem and connect 1 PC to the Tomato router.
3. Log in to the Tomato router and configure it with your PPPoE credentials. (In the Basic - Network section)
4. Check to see if that worked from the Status - Overview section in Tomato.
4. Open another browser window from your PC see if you have an internet connection. (verifying that your DSL connection is active)
5. Connect your PC to your Vonage device and remove the PPPoE settings. Also make sure it has the DHCP server turned off on the Vonage device.
6. Connect both your PC and Vonage to the Tomato Router and they should both get a connection now.

I probably skipped something, but these are the major steps.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 31, 2009 Posts: 4

butterman, well done.

That was it. So simple. You just can't have DHCP on on the Vonage box and there must have been some conflict with PPPoE being used with both devices. I can't tell you how many times and configurations I had messed with.

Thank you.

Posts: 25 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Mar 31, 2008 Posts: 25

Yes butterman - good write up!

Just another tip ( I have the exact same setup as tyfro):
Hook into your vonage device and change it's IP address to something one your LAN (I used 192.168.1.2, which is the address next to my router).

This way you can access the router if necessary AND plug in another computer which still will be part of your 192.168.1.x /24 subnet.

Vonage's default IP was something like 192.168.2.15 or so (if I remember correct), which creates another subnet, separate from your standard LAN (which can be desirable as well, if you like to.)