On 8/16/2006 8:52 PM, JP Vossen wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Walter PC <walterpc at mchsi dot com> asked some stuff about VoIP, 
> and Don Munyak wrote:
>> IMHO...VOIP sucks, atleast with Vonage on a Comcast broadband
>> connection. Then again maybe it was all the kids in my neighborhood. I
>> could never get a good connection. Too many symptons to list. I tried
>> different cable modems, firewall appliances and even tweaked the
>> settings from the Vonage account manager. Then again maybe it's just
>> me. So I dropped them . No regrets :)
> 
> For whatever it's worth, my Vonage over Comcast in SE PA has worked 
> fine, except when I was running P2P crap.  When I had the Vonage adapter 
> *outside* the M0n0wall, it was fine, since it could do its own traffic 
> shaping.  However, that was unacceptable because every time they update 
> the box they nuke the config, which then deletes my incoming rules and 
> cuts off my network so I can't get in from the outside.  Not cool.
> 

I've had great results with M0n0wall and Vonage. In fact that's the 
reason I moved from IPCop to M0n0wall in the first place, as IPCop's 
QOS/traffic shaping didn't work very well. I don't prioritize ports in 
m0n0, but instead use a fixed lease on the Vonage device and prioritize 
the IP address. Very clean.

First I ran the traffic shaping wizard, then added a VOIP entry for 
upload and one for download, below all the small packet stuff.

As for devices, after my Linksys Vonage adapter/router died after less 
than a year I got one of the new D-Link Vonage adapters. The Linksys 
worked fine behind the M0n0wall, and I had nothing but the phones and 
M0n0wall plugged into it. The advantage of the new D-Link adapters is 
they are only $49 and they don't have routers, etc built in. Its just a 
VOIP adapter, nothing else. Perfect for putting behind a M0n0wall. They 
seem higher quality than the other D-Link networking junk I've seen. 
Made in Taiwan rather than China could be why, not sure.

My experience using the Vonage routers' QOS is that it didn't work very 
well. M0n0wall does this pretty well in my experience. Your VOIP calls 
sound better! Its critical to get your pipe speeds set right however 
(not too high).