VOIP and games?

Posts: 11 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Apr 17, 2005 Posts: 11

How does Voip fare competing for bandwidth when gaming? There are a couple of avid games in the house (confession - I'm one of them). If I have games banging on the network, how fares the voice quality?

chg

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 12:16 pm Post subject:

depends on your network setup and devices, and of course your available bandwidth, none of which are mentioned. tell us what your setup is (or will be) and we can guess how they'll fare.
what seems to be the best setup for preserving voice quality while using the internet is a linksys wrt54g series router with third party firmware (sveasoft) for qos. but it makes no different if your upload bandwidth is lacking.
there is a 14 day trial also.

Posts: 11 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Apr 17, 2005 Posts: 11

Well, duh, you need a setup to divine things? Smile

I have Adelphia cablemodem service (3Mbps down / 384 Kbps up).
At the moment, I'm using a Linksys BEFW1154 wireless router to handle the home network... So:

cable -> Toshiba cable modem -> linksys -> 5 laptops plus one desktop. The laptops are mainly used for web surfing and limited gaming.

I have a number of other wireless routers laying around - sorry, cannot help myself when Compusa is giving them away for $10 after rebates Smile

).

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 12:40 pm Post subject:

what toshiba is it? pretty sure the befw lacks qos, so assuming you got the linksys rt31p2 from Vonage, which is what they send and it's also available in store, you would need to set it up cable modem, linksys rt31p2, then another router. the rt31p2 offers qos which is supposed to make sure your phone call has the bandwidth it needs over the computers. it's kind of tricky and no one is sure how it really works, which is why many people opt for the linksys wrt54g series with sveasoft because the qos "acts like it's supposed to" and is easier to set up. but my rt31p2 has always worked fine while surfing or playing games (mainly return to castle wolfenstein and enemy territory). so that's where the 14 day trial comes into play. just keep in mind it starts as soon as you order (if you order online) so you're already down a few days for shipping, etc.

Posts: 11 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Apr 17, 2005 Posts: 11

John - a router with QOS support is the key. I know this, just didn't connect the dots like we all to do most of the time.

I'll take a look at the assorted routers and what have you laying around.

Thanks