Home Network Considerations

Posts: 1 · Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:18 pm Post subject: Home Network Considerations

Technology has hit our household like a bad flu bug and is highly contagious!

As a long time cable internet subscriber and a technology hungry idiot I took the plunge and ordered Voip from Vonage a few months back. So far I am pretty pleased. We started out with the Vonage shipped Motorola phone adapter which fed my Linksys 4 port router connecting two computers to the feed. With some quality disappointments and a bit of curiosity I purchased the Linksys phone adapter to try out. It fit into the configuration differently but seems to give us better quality phone calls, although still not perfect. One major inconvenience is the fact that when my ISP changes the IP address my router seems to fail at getting the new address and implementing it. As a result my wife frequently has to reset the router, and is becoming anti-Vonage. (She doesn't know any better).

In a quest to improve quality in my Vonage service as well as further equip my household with technology, I am getting ready to add some more stuff into the mix.

I just built a windows 2000 server, that I plan to create as a mater domain controller and also run ISA Server. Having limited knowledge of servers and networks, I am hoping to learn something by doing all this. The IT guys at work are helping me along and I have explained my network components. They cautioned me that ISA is very picky and secure. It may not see my current Linksys phone adapter or fail to allow it to do it thing. So I am considering going back to the Motorola adapter, but I am uncertain as to whether or not that is the best way to go.

So here I am hoping someone might be bale to shed some light on this subject for me.

The components that will be involved are as follows. One motorola cable modem, one 4 port Linksys router, a linksys PAP2 phone adapter, a motorola phone adapter, a Server running Windows Server 2000, and two workstations.

I do not know what order to put this all together. I am hoping to gain security, and performance, as well as make the network phone self sufficient (not needing to reset the router on a daily basis!).

I have considered adding another linksys 4-port router to the mix so that I can still use the Linksys phone adapter. I would use my existing 4 port router before the server. I would go from the Cable modem to the 4 Port Router, the Linksys 4 Port Router would connect to that router via DHCP. From that Linksys Router I would then connect to the Server via a static IP Address. From the server I would go to the new 4 port router and connect the workstations. My concern with this config is that I probably won't solve my connection problem.

I don't know. Any suggestions out there? Anybody have a similar set-up that is configured properly and running smooth?

Thanks in advance for any help or advice! I really appreciate it.

grep

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: May 24, 2005 Posts: 1

I am not a guru but have found that the modem and routers cannot be near each other. They must be a few feet away or they somehow goof each other up. At the beginning I set one on top of the other and had problems and was resetting. Then found someone on the net that said move them apart and wahhhlaaa problem was gone. Hope this helps some.

Posts: 90 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: May 05, 2005 Posts: 90

Plug the Vonage Linksys box into your cable modem. I have mine about 3 feet apart. Does that help? Beats me, but I have GREAT service!

Plug your router into the Vonage Linksys box. I have a Linksys router and the two stack nicely together.

Vonage needs all the bandwidth it can get. I think plugging the Vonage box into the network box may limit your bandwidth, as it is now sharing a network with your other computers. Give the Vonage box a direct link to the cable modem and let the network link off the Vonage box.

As for "building" a server for your home, I think this puts you in the category of folks who over-think this stuff. I stopped building computers when I realized they can be purchased for less than the cost of a good meal at a nice restaurant. And they usually work better, than the ones I made myself.

People who have trouble with Vonage seem to fall into two categories - the too dumb and the too smart. Stop trying to over-think this thing. Just plug it in and let it do its thing. You should not have to reboot it all the time.

And why, pray tell, does your ISP keep resetting your IP address of your network? Mine hasn't changed in 5 years.

Dumb it down a bit, and I'll bet your troubles will go away.