WRTP54G Version 1.00.37 Firmware Now Available

Posts: 40 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jul 03, 2005 Posts: 40

During a call to a very competent Vonage tech (well, actually it was to a very incompetent Vonage tech, who gave me some flat out wrong information, but did eventually transfer me to what must certainly have been a Level 2 tech), I mentioned my QoS issues when uploading. Although he thought it probably wouldn't help, he did say that a new firmware was just released yesterday. Unlike the 1.00.18 to 1.00.29 upgrade, which I had to do manually, he was able to just push this one out to the router from their end. So hopefully the upgrade will automatically take for most customers.

If you don't get it in the near future, or are having problems and don't want to wait, you should probably call up Customer Service and request it. The file I got was:

wrt-11.1.0-r016-1.00.37-r050624.img

Unfortunately Linksys/Vonage doesn't give their Vonage Tech Support people any kind of release notes, so he was unable to say what issues this version resolved or other improvements were made. One would hope it's strictly better than 1.00.29 and doesn't introduce any new bugs.

Edited to add: After testing I can say that 1.00.37 still doesn't fix the outgoing voice quality degrades significantly when simultaneously uploading a file issue.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2005 8:15 pm Post subject:

and if someone wants to download it manually and see if the wrtp allows manual firmware upgrades (unlike the rt31p2, etc), here's the file:

tftp tftp.vonage.net get wrt-11.1.0-r016-1.00.37-r050624.img

Transfer successful: 3866632 bytes in 381 seconds, 10148 bytes/s

Posts: 40 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jul 03, 2005 Posts: 40

reebok wrote:

see if the wrtp allows manual firmware upgrades

I can verify that it does; I had to manually upgrade from 1.00.18 to 1.00.29. Assuming that the newer firmware didn't change the Vonage admin password, the following steps should work (though follow them at your own risk) after saving the 1.00.37 firmware on your computer:

1. Copy down any customized router settings you wish to save (e.g. MAC filters, WEP keys, etc.)
2. Reset the router to factory settings (Use a pen/pencil to depress the reset pin in the back for 20 seconds.
3. Browse to http://192.168.15.1/update.html (I'd recommend using IE for this, as Firefox will work but will have issues in step 5. I'd also recommend using a wired connection to the router).
4. Login as user/password: "user" / "tivonpw" (leave out the quotes)
5. Browse to the saved firmware file, make sure your computer and router's power aren't about to go out, etc., and then click the Upgrade button.
6. If you're using IE it should upload the firmware almost instantly. Firefox will show the progress bar slowly moving up to 75%, then going back to 0 and starting upward again, then before it gets to 100% (maybe around 50%?) you'll get a JavaScript Application pop-up error that says "Upgrade are failed!" (It's always possible they corrected this Engrish in version 1.00.29; I'm recounting the upgrade process when the router had 1.00.18 on it.)
7. The router's power light (left-most/bottom-most) should be blinking while it's upgrading/installing the new firmware.
8. Once the router has rebooted on its own, and the lights are back to normal (for example, check that you can get a dial tone), go to http://192.168.15.1 and log in as admin/admin. You should see "Firmware Version: 1.00.37" in the upper right.

Posts: 11 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 14, 2005 Posts: 11

Anyone know where the image is posted? I tried the location listed above but could not connect. Is there another location? I tried Linksys.org to no avail.

Thanks!

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 16, 2005 Posts: 12

I just checked and my router pulled the updated firmware down without any intervention on my part. I was running 1.00.29 from a manual update

Firmware Version: 1.00.37

Posts: 1389 · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 6:47 am Post subject:

Mpod, what are your caps on the Comcast cable? the reason I ask is because Vonage uses a pretty good amount of upstream bandwidth when on a call, and if you are on the phone, uploading a large file, then there could be part of your voice quality issues...

Posts: 40 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jul 03, 2005 Posts: 40

I have 384 Kbps upload cap, and I can reliably get that. My modem is a Motorola SB4100. So there's plenty of upload speed to support 1 (or even 3) Vonage lines. The problem is simply when there's a TCP connection from a computer behind the router that's uploading... I can see the TCP sawtooth on the Network monitor as the connection hunts for the maximum available outgoing bandwidth (and the limiting factor on the outgoing bandwidth is not somewhere in the middle of the internet but the very first (or maybe second) hop--the 384 Kbps upload restriction is the limiter). If the TCP connection is active when there's no phone call, it will average exactly around the 384 kbps maximum, sawtoothing slightly above and below. And when I place a call it will sure back off and drop down to an average of around 270-280 kbps... which would seem right in line with what you'd expect when it competes with a constant stream of one-way ~100kbps UDP RTP traffic that has no congestion control.

This is just theorizing on my part, but my guess is that the very periodic dropouts the call recipient will hear are due to the peaks of the TCP connection as it exceeds its average rate and goes up to about 330 kbps before backing off--this extra traffic either causes packet loss or excessive queuing delay for the Vonage RTP traffic. I personally don't know how the router's QoS functions and how it integrates, if at all, with the cable modem's and/or Comcast's handling of prioritized packets. My instinct is that the WRTP54G is unaware of the maximum upload bandwidth limit, and so it's QoS simply amounts to making sure the Voice traffic Queue has priority over the data traffic queues, but because the router sees a 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps ethernet connection to the Cable modem, it's more than happy to allow more than 384 Kbps (the combination of the Vonage traffic and the TCP connection's periodic peaks of its sawtooth congestion control) pass on to that. And at the Cable modem (or perhaps one hop down at the cable office, wherever rate limits are enforced) it either ignores or doesn't optimally handle QoS headers, and that's where the outgoing call quality degrades.

So that's my conjecture; summed up, it's basically that the only reason the TCP file upload connection backs off at all is due to its end-to-end congestion control algorithm and not any router QoS handling, since the router is unaware of the actual bandwidth limit it's ineffective. There's a more than excellent chance that I'm way off, so I'd love if someone who knows can explain how this QoS is supposed to work. My guess is I'd have no problem if I could just configure the router to rate limit all outgoing non-Voice traffic to a maximum of 384-110= 274 Kbps whenever a call is active. But without a BSD or Linux box sitting between the router and the cable modem, I'm not sure that's ever going to be possible.

Posts: 58 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 28, 2005 Posts: 58

Before you all rush to run an update, you might want to first check your status. Mine updated automatically.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 21, 2005 Posts: 2

Hi I manualy downloaded the latest firmware from the Vonage website as detailed above and upgraded my router to V 1.0.0.37

it says Provisioning succeeded now.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 18, 2005 Posts: 4

Mine upgraded to 1.00.37 on its own. I don't know what it fixed but I didn't have a problem with 1.00.29.