NetComm V300 Manual

QoS VolP routers
Stephen Withers checks out six routers that should
improve your VolP performance
First-generationVolP
adaptors
brought simple and affordable
Internet-based
calling
to the
consumer
and small office markets
All you needed to do was hook up
the adaptor to the network switch
or router a phone to the adaptor
and connect the power pack You
could
be enjoying your first cheap
call within
seconds
But therewas a snag
Depending
on the codec VolP
can use a fair percentage of the
upstream bandwidth of low-end
broadband
connections That
means it’s liableto be interrupted
by simultaneous traffic If a packet
of data going from your email client
to a servertakes a little
longerthan
usual nobody will
detectthe
differenceVoice traffic however
is extremely
time-sensitiveand if
a packet of voicedata is delayed the
listener
will immediately
notice
The answer is to apply Quality
of Service(QoS rules so the voice
traffictakes priority All but one
of
the devicestestedhere have
built-in
VolP
adaptors making the
job relativelyeasy if a packet from
the adaptor is waiting it forwards it
and only looks at the other ports if
there are no voice packets
waiting
This works well as long as two
conditionsare met Firstly the link
to the ISP must be sufficient for the
voice traffic with enough left over
to give data trafficthe throughput
you need It’s not that two
simultaneous
conversations
will
flood a 128Kbit link (apart from
D-Link’sDI-102
the products tested
here all have two phone ports
as therewill still be room for data
packetsto be transmitted
between
the voice packets but prioritising
voice means everything
else will be
delayed This is especially
noticeablewhen uploading a large
file to an FTP serverfor example
A QoS router helpsdeliver
better audio
quality when other
bandwidth-intensiveapplications
are running simultaneously but at
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the expense of those
other
applications’
performance
The device
applying
QoS should
be the last
thing on your
network
before
the modem If not QoS will
not be applied to the packets
introduced
by the devices
connected upstream So if your
modem has a built-in router and
switch
don’t connect anything
otherthan the QoS router to it
Although QoS in your routerwill
prioritiseVolP on the link to the ISP
you shouldn’texpect
voice packets
to get priority
in your provider’s
network or on the Internetas a
whole In practicethis doesn’t
seem
to be a major problem as we found
QoS-enabled
VolP calls came close
to the quality of PSTN calls
Curiously
we found QoS
improved the audio
quality even
when the network activity
was
otherwise
very light (eg only two
active computers neither
doing
anything
other than
background
operations
such
as checking
for
email or time
synchronisation
The devices
here were tested
on
an OptusNet cable
connection
with
256Kbit upstream bandwidth
EASE OF INSTALLATION
If you already
have
a router the
hardware installation is easy
unplug the Ethernetcables
from
the old one plug
them into
the new
one and then connect the power
supply The manufacturers’
instructions
usually recommend
switchingeverything
off beforeyou
begin powering up the modem
first waiting
for
it to initialisethen
the router (anotherwait and finally
the computers We concur as this
ensuresthe modem collects the
DHCP settings
from the ISP the
router gets them from the modem
and then the computers get their
settings
from the router
Given
that these
devices
are
often installed under desks
or in
cupboards clear labelling of the
various
ports can be very helpful
In good light it doesn’tmake much
differencebut we had
problems
with some The Linksys
WRT54GP2
has labels moulded into the case
which makes them very difficult
to
read but
layoutmeans that isn’ta
big deal The Netgear TA612V has a
printed
label on the base
Ù the
print is on the small side and the
ports are
strangely
numbered
from
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right to left In addition the phone
sockets are upside down compared
to the Ethernet sockets The
LinksysSipura
SPA-2100 has small
low-contrast labels beneath the
colour-coded ports Its activity
lights are also on the back panel
The very
compact D-Link
DI-102
also uses colour
coding and the
contrastis reasonable (though the
text is smaller
than we’d like Its
stablemate the DVG-G1402S
has
larger and clearer
labelling
and all
the connectors are aligned the
same way It’s
just a shame the
ports are numbered from right to
left The NetComm
V300 gets our
vote for the clearestlabels
consistently
aligned connectors
and left-to-rightport
numbering
Plugpack size can also be an
issue in clutteredenvironments
The LinksysWRT54GP2 Netgear
TA612V and D-Link
DVG-G1402S
use traditional
designs that take
up more than
one space on a
powerboard while the D-Link
DI-102 LinksysSipura
SPA-2100
and NetComm V300 have
more
modern slimline
plugpacks
Once the hardware is set up
configuration is
carriedout via
a Web browser How closely
the
defaults
match your
needs depends
mainly on whether
you’reon cable
or ADSL and whether
you are using
the VolP
account bundled with the
hardware VolP
setup is reasonably
straightforward
if you work
methodically but variations
in terminology used by different
companiescan be confusing
Ù buying a device with a bundled
VolP account gets around this
Whateverelse you do set a new
password on the router
to prevent
unauthorised tampering
The NetgearTA612V
comes
with
QoS disabled
According to
a Netgear spokesperson
this is
because differentcustomers
have varying
needs It can be
auto-provisioned by the major
VolP providers although none
of them do so at present
The D-Link
DVG-G1402S’swizard
steps you quickly
through the
network setup process and QoS
is enabled by default
The Linksys
WRT54GP2 has a
Windows-only
wizard on the
CD-ROM insteadof it being built-in
to the Web browser but its use is
optional The double-tabbedWeb
interface
initially
seems busy but
we quickly became used to it and
found it easy
to navigate Some
advanced
settingsare accessible
only
through a "hidden page
Voice QoS is on by default and QoS
can be set (high or low for FTP
HTTP Telnet SMTP POP3 and for
up to three specific TCP ports to
cater for other
applications
Traffic
on the three Ethernet ports can be
categorised as low or high with
optional
rate limiting to ensure one
computer (or
group of computers
if you attach
a switch to a router
port doesn’t grab more than its fair
share of the bandwidth
We ran into a problem
trying
to configure the LinksysSipura
SPA-2100 as attempts to change
the settings
generated "403
Forbidden messages
Changing
the browser from Internet
Explorer
to Firefoxsolved that one
The Sipura interfacepresents
the
settingsin larger chunks than most
which can be overwhelming
QoS
was disabled
by default a particular
problem as there’s nothing in the
documentationabout enabling
QoS and
the alternativesare CBQ
or TBF According to a Linksys
engineer TBF (Token
Bucket Filter
is the go
NetComm’s V300 has a wellorganised
organised Web interfaceThere’s no
wizard but if you work through the
firstfour sectionsyou won’t go far
wrong QoS is not enabled but the
fourth item on the navigation bar is
VOIP QoS so it’s not hard to find
The D-Link DI-102
is the odd
man out in this collectionof
products as it is neithera router
nor a VolP adaptor Instead it
installs
between a routerand a
modem to prioritise voice
packets
We tested it with a DI-824VUP
routerand an engin Voice Box
(SipuraSPA-2000 By default
the DI-102
is
self-configuring
automaticallydetermining the
speed and type of Internet
service
A simple
Web interface
provides
access
to the limited
number of settings
VOICE QUALITY
Voice
quality
was consistent
across
all the routers with
built-in VolP
adaptors With QoS enabled it’s
betterthan mobile-to-landline
but not quite as good as landlineto-landline
to-landline
Without QoS the
perception was of slightly
lower
quality
(on a quiet network
but dropouts were a real problem
when we loaded it with
traffic
The D-Link Dl-102’s
automatic
configuration
overestimated the
upstream bandwidthof ourcable
connection and therefore
did not
provide sufficientthroughputfor
the VolP
traffic This resultedin
dropouts during file uploads
When we manually set the
upstream bandwidthto
reflect the actualbandwidth
the dropouts disappeared
DATA THROUGHPUT
We tested data throughput
by
uploading a 900KB file to the ISP’s
FTP server With QoS disabled
and
no voice traffic the times were
all very
similar
Turning on QoS made a big
differenceto some devices’
performancesThe LinksysSipura
SPA-2100 took about twice
as long
once QoS was activated
but adding
voice
traffic
only
slowed it slightly
after that
QoS initially
made no difference
to the LinksysWRT54GP2’s
throughput
(without voice traffic
provided the MTU setting
was left
at the default1500 However the
transfertook almost twice as long
while
a call was in progress
Linksys’s
recommended MTU of 580
slowed the transfer
significantly
The D-Link
DVG-G1402S was
problematic Without voice
traffic
the file transferwas as fast as the
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QUALITY OF SERVICE (QoS RULi
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other routers Yet when an FTP
transfer
started while a call
was in
progress it was the slowest by a big
margin and the slow
speed
continuedafter the call was
terminatedThis seemed
anomalous so we checked with
D-Link The company confirmed
our resultsand put the finger on
the pre-release firmware in the
review sample assuring us it
would be fixed before units
ship
to customers
We previously mentioned
that
we had to manually
set the
upstream
bandwidth
on the D-Link
DI-102 but
this resulted in the file
transfer
taking
eighteen times
longer than with the default
setting The default gave
throughputequivalent to the
router
alone but
at the cost of
voice
quality
The NetComm V300 was a
strong performer
The QoS penalty
was just 20 with no voice
traffic
and around 35 while a call
was
in progress
The NetgearTA612Vwasthe
pick of the bunch when we used
an MTU of 1 500 as recommended
by a Netgear engineer (ratherthan
580 as specified in the help text
Activating
QoS had no noticeable
effecton throughput a voice call
imposed a penalty of less than 10
Our conclusion is that
while QoS
results
in clearly
improved voice
quality it often comes at a cost
It’s obvious that prioritising
VolP
traffic means that other packet
types may be delayed but there
are wide variationsin how well the
differentdevices handle the task
OTHER FEATURES
With two exceptions all the devices
tested have two phone ports As
previously
mentioned the D-Link
DI-102
is intended for use with
external
VolP adaptors While the
NetComm V300 has one phone
port it is unique among these
products for the provision
of a
phone line connection This means
VolP and landline
calls can be made
or received using a single
handset
and it also allows
outgoing
calls
when the Internet
connectionor
VolP provider are down 000 calls
are automatically routed through
the landline
The D-Link
DVG-G1402S and
the Linksys
WRT54GP2 are both
802 routers the
others are Ethernet only The
NetComm V300 and Linksys
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WRT54GP2 have three Ethernet
ports the D-Link DVG-G1402S has
four and the Netgear TA612V
and
Linksys Sipura SPA-2100 are singleport
port
devices that would normally
be used with a switch
As this
is primarily a test of VolP
and QoS features we won’t
catalogue all the router features
such as firewalls
and filtering
If that sort of thing is important
to you check
the manufacturers’
specificationsheets
THE VERDICT
We’d preferto reserve
judgment
on the D-Link DVG-G1402S until the
firmwareis
finalised
The company
was brave enough to provide
a pre-release sample but the
performancejust wasn’t there
Wireless
capability
and four
Ethernet ports make it the
connectivity leader
It’s hard to see a niche for the
D-Link DI-102 If it was about half
the price it could be worthwhile
for those who already own a VolP
adaptor and an Ethernet router (but
want to add QoS for improved
voice
quality As it is you might as well
buy the LinksysSipuraSPA-2100
and get a two-line VolP adaptor and
better
throughputfor less money
Indeed the SPA-2100is almost as
cheap
as some single-port VolP
ATAs (analogue
telephone
adaptors while delivering
good
voice
quality
and reasonable
data performance
The Linksys WRT54GP2
has a
useful
feature
set if you want Wi-Fi
(including
support for WPA Radius
in addition to PSK good filtering
and flexible
non-VolPQoS
Netgear’s TA61 2V is a good
performer
and well priced and
therefore takes our Best Value
award The
single Ethernet port is
its main shortcoming
Ù an external
switch
just adds to the clutter
Our Editor’s Choice goes to the
NetComm V300 It’s reasonably
priced delivers
good voice
quality
and data
throughput and is easy
to set up EOTE
Baby
got back ifyou
already
have a router hardware
installation is
easy
(justremember
to power up your modem first
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