Vonage w/ Apple Airport Extreme?

Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2003 10:08 am Post subject: Vonage w/ Apple Airport Extreme?

Hi Everyone,

I have been considering switching my home telephone service over to Vonage (or at least trying it). BUT I was thinking about how the Vonage service might impact my home computer network, and I was wondering if some one might give me some advice if the set up will be easy.

My essential question is this: I already have a wireless router (the Apple Airport Extreme) and a network switch (Asante Netgear). Will I be able hook the Vonage phone into my network switch, or will I be forced to integrate also the Vonage router into my already existing home LAN?

Thanks,
Tiran, NYC

P.S. Background on my home network:

I have Apple Powerbook G4 running on a home wireless network using the Airport Extreme. The Airport Extreme is hooked into a LAN using a Netgear SWITCH (not a router and not a hub, I am told by the Apple store). Running off the LAN, I have an old printer (hooked in with an Asante Bridge), TIVO, and another computer (my old Apple G3).

Because my network runs on two operating systems (the G3 on OS 9 and the G4 on OS X), and the old printer which requires AppleTalk, my network can be very fickle.

Recently I had to buy a new switch after the other one broke. I accidently bought a router, and the system wouldn't work. When I returned the router and got the switch, everything worked fine. I am worried that if I have to integrate the Vonage router into my present home network, I will end up with the same problems it took me a week to sort through.

All thoughts would be welcomed....

Posts: 9 · Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2003 6:03 am Post subject: Hope it's close enough

I too use PowerBook G4, and it's working fine.

My setup is like this:

internet -- VT1005v --- Cable Modem --- Linksys Router --- TiBook

I configured *wired* (via enternet) first, then went to wireless (AirPort Card). As long as current network works, adding Motorola VT shouldn't be much of the problem. Make sure to copy the MAC address, though... in my case, both VT and Router has MAC address of the Ethernet port on my TiBook copied over. So I'm assuming you'll need to copy MAC on AirPort Base Station to VT.

Hope it helps.

-K.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: May 04, 2005 Posts: 5

If you plan to use VPN on your powerbook you might want to look somewhere else. VPN doesn't work on the mac through the Vonage router.

Posts: 34 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 07, 2005 Posts: 34

internet - motorola 4100 - RT31P2 - Airport extreme - powerbook g4

I have the airport configured to pass through DHCP IP addresses from the RT31P2 to avoid double NAT.

With the comcast 768kb/6mb connection, this set up works fine.

QoS for Vonage is provided beautifully by the RT31P2.

My Xten eyeBeam using BroadVoice also works very nicely on the powerbook over the 801.11g network.

And VPN does work, at least for my configuration (Cisco), but the client broke in Mac OS X 10.4 (waiting for the cisco update).

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: May 04, 2005 Posts: 5

Yeah, we don't use Cisco, we use the Microsoft VPN that comes with Windows (PPTP). This seems to be the piece that the router has problems with, even with PPTP passthrough enabled. No problems working with a windows machine, but mac PPTP is hosed.

I'm going to try putting the Voip router behind the wireless router, but I understand this has a risk of severly degrading my Voip service so this may not be a solution.