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Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 1:46 pm
by kenhenningsen
I've been using my Telo as my main phone service for only a few days now, but so far I've had three QoS issues:

1. On a long-distance call to a landline, my wife started hearing her own voice being echoed back to her.
2. On a call to an 800 landline, immediately after a CSR picked up (after a several-minute wait on hold) I got dumped to the Ooma dialtone.
3. On a first call from a newly Telo-equipped friend, the same thing happened after a couple of minutes.

While granting that one or more of these problems could have been at the other end (though #3 would still be an Ooma problem), I'm wondering if my "stock" Ooma configuration behind my router might not be the culprit.

Configuration: I have a cable modem (12 megabit down/1 up nominal; 6 down/1 up typical) feeding a wired/wireless router—both in a central wiring closet. From there I have Cat 5 ethernet going to each room in the house, either directly or through a 10/100 or gigabit switch. My Telo is plugged into a dining-room RJ-45 jack that's downstream of the router and a 10/100 switch, and I have an ethernet-equipped BluRay player plugged into the Telo for access to streaming video like Netflix (this works fine, and there was no streaming going on during any of the above problems). On the phone side, the Telo is plugged into my house wiring (now disconnected from my telco at the NIB) via an RJ-11 jack, and it's feeding four hardwired phones plus the base of a Uniden cordless system. (BTW, I hear a bit of static through all these phones that's not present when I use my Telo Handset; I'm guessing that is noise induced by my 35-year-old house wiring.) I would like to keep the Telo physically where it is for convenience and access to its speaker and front-panel functions, but logically place it ahead of the router so it can control QoS (particularly in light of the occasional video streaming overhead).

I've been wading through configuration topics until my brain hurts, but remain unclear about an optimal solution to QoS control. In an earlier correspondence with an Ooma person (dealing mainly with a phone number porting—he didn't profess to be an expert on configuration), I was told that I could simply place the Telo in the router's DMZ to accomplish this, but I remain skeptical, as I think this just puts the Telo outside the router's firewall but doesn't do anything about letting it prioritize VOIP traffic.

Some of the posts I just read seem to indicate that by plugging directly into the Telo's Home port and accessing its configuration page I can set it up to control QoS no matter where it physically resides. If so, I'd like to see a "cookbook" approach to doing this; a link to a previous post would be fine. Assuming that Ooma techs actively participate in this forum, I'd also suggest that such instructions be included with each Telo and posted in the installation pages and FAQs on the main Ooma site. I'd be willing to bet that most Ooma users will want to locate their Telos downstream of a router like I do, and if there's a way to configure it for QoS control from there, these instructions should be more readily available.

If the complete QoS solution I seek isn't possible, I need to know that so I can make a decision about placing it ahead of my router. If a partial solution is available, I need to know how to optimize the Telo setup where it is to the extent possible.

Ken

Re: Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 3:20 pm
by thunderbird
kenhenningsen:
First:
To help with dropped calls:
Turn off MAC address Spoofing, spoofing may cause problems because of conflict between modem or router and Ooma device, by accessing your Ooma device's Home port with a network cable connected to a computer. After restarting the computer, to make sure you get a proper connection, type in http://172.27.35.1 to access you Ooma Setup pages. The Ooma Setup pages open. Click on Internet Settings at the Left side of the page. Go down to INTERNET port MAC Address: and click on the Use Built-In button. Click on Update. Reboot your Ooma device.

Second:
The echo problem:
Turning off MAC address spoofing may help, but probably won't. See if there is echo when using the Ooma Telo handset. Many times echo is not present when using the Ooma Telo handset, but will be when using your other phones. If that is the case you probably have to try placing your cordless phone base, if you are using a cordless phone(s), more then three or four feet from you Ooma device, or you may have to get different phones. If you want to test phones and your house phone wiring, do it with the cordless phone base phone line disconnected and the phone base unpowered. The cordless phone base has to be unpowered. Leave the Ooma device connected to the house wiring, but disconnect all other phones and devices connected to your house wiring before testing, this includes devices like the Dish Network box. It's best to test with only one corded phone for this test. Go to the first house phone outlet and test, than to next phone outlet and test, for static and echo at each outlet. If there is no static or echo, reconnect one phone at a time and test again until you have tested everything that you normally have connected to your house wiring.

My echo problem was a GE 5.8 cordless phone system. DECT 6 Plus phones corrected the problem for me.

I and many others use their Ooma Telo behind my router with no problems at all. For Quality of Service settings with the Ooma device connected behind the Router, I set my downstream and upstream Quality of Service settings in the Ooma Setup pages to zero, as Ooma suggests. Some people, because of a "Bug" have to set their QoS settings to double the measured Download and Upload speeds as measured by http://www.speedtest.net/. If you make QoS changes, reboot your Ooma device after making changes.

Because the BluRay is connected behind the Ooma, you may have to set the QoS settings to 80 % of the measured http://www.speedtest.net/ readings. But try the other configurations first.

The things that I listed, help most people.

If the changes help or don't help, post your results. If they don't help or you are still having a problem on one or more areas, post that problem(s), and someone will give more suggestions.

Note: I had to upate this information serveral times because my China to the Ooma Forum IP connection was very bad this morning. Next week I expect to be back in the US.

Re: Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 3:23 pm
by I_Ooma_2
While I'm pretty familiar with home networking stuff, I will leave the bigger answers to people here with much more experience with the Telo.

But, I'll offer up a couple things:

1) The only way to have the Telo's QOS functions work is to put the Telo in between your modem and router (Telo in front of the router). If the Telo is behind your router, then you need to do QOS in your router (if it supports it). You may already know this, but figured I'd mention it.

2) Since you have a single network jack in the wall, have access to the other end in your media closet, and would like to keep your Telo where it is, this could pose a bit of a problem if you want to place the Telo in between your modem & router. Assuming your modem & router are both in the media closet, there is a simple solution (which again, you may already know of). You can buy two network cable splitters, put one at each end of the network cable going from the media closet to the wall jack feeding your Telo, and add a couple of short patch cables at each end. This will allow you to use the single CAT5 cable running between your media closet & wall jack as if it were two separate ethernet cables. One to go from your modem up to the Telo, and the other to go back down from the Telo to your router. http://www.amazon.com/Intellinet-Modula ... 921&sr=8-8

Ignore the negative reviews on it.... they do not understand how it works. I have two of them myself and they work perfectly fine. Note that they will limit the connection to 100 Mb each way, but that shouldn't be an issue.

I hope this is helpful in some way, and I am certain others will chime in with more specific answers.

Re: Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 4:40 pm
by EA PA
I_Ooma_2 wrote:While I'm pretty familiar with home networking stuff, I will leave the bigger answers to people here with much more experience with the Telo.

But, I'll offer up a couple things:

1) The only way to have the Telo's QOS functions work is to put the Telo in between your modem and router (Telo in front of the router). If the Telo is behind your router, then you need to do QOS in your router (if it supports it). You may already know this, but figured I'd mention it.

2) Since you have a single network jack in the wall, have access to the other end in your media closet, and would like to keep your Telo where it is, this could pose a bit of a problem if you want to place the Telo in between your modem & router. Assuming your modem & router are both in the media closet, there is a simple solution (which again, you may already know of). You can buy two network cable splitters, put one at each end of the network cable going from the media closet to the wall jack feeding your Telo, and add a couple of short patch cables at each end. This will allow you to use the single CAT5 cable running between your media closet & wall jack as if it were two separate ethernet cables. One to go from your modem up to the Telo, and the other to go back down from the Telo to your router. http://www.amazon.com/Intellinet-Modula ... 921&sr=8-8

Ignore the negative reviews on it.... they do not understand how it works. I have two of them myself and they work perfectly fine. Note that they will limit the connection to 100 Mb each way, but that shouldn't be an issue.

I hope this is helpful in some way, and I am certain others will chime in with more specific answers.
Wow this is great! I had not heard of this splitter before. I could use this arrangement myself to move my OOMA to a preferred location. Thanks for the info!

Re: Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 4:58 pm
by I_Ooma_2
EA PA wrote:Wow this is great! I had not heard of this splitter before. I could use this arrangement myself to move my OOMA to a preferred location. Thanks for the info!
Yeah, they are pretty handy, and especially for something like this. Also keep in mind that if all you have are male connections (ethernet cable only, no "wall jacks" involved), then you will also need two RJ-45 couplers in order to connect each end of the ethernet cable to each splitter.

http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-01937-M ... 482&sr=8-2

Edit to say that if you have no wall jacks and only ethernet cable, then this other splitter type might be better (no couplers would be needed in this case): http://www.amazon.com/RJ45-Ethernet-Spl ... pd_sim_e_3

Re: Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:00 pm
by tomcat
I_Ooma_2 wrote:http://www.amazon.com/Intellinet-Modula ... 921&sr=8-8

Ignore the negative reviews on it.... they do not understand how it works. I have two of them myself and they work perfectly fine. Note that they will limit the connection to 100 Mb each way, but that shouldn't be an issue.
Thanks for the link. I couldn't help but laugh at some of the reviews. They obviously didn't know what they were buying. :D

Re: Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:05 pm
by EA PA
I_Ooma_2 wrote:
EA PA wrote:Wow this is great! I had not heard of this splitter before. I could use this arrangement myself to move my OOMA to a preferred location. Thanks for the info!
Yeah, they are pretty handy, and especially for something like this. Also keep in mind that if all you have are male connections (ethernet cable only, no "wall jacks" involved), then you will also need two RJ-45 couplers in order to connect each end of the ethernet cable to each splitter.

http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-01937-M ... 482&sr=8-2
Yep - got it thanks. Man the gizmos are coming so fast I cant keep up. Yesterday it was TTL and now its new tech per day it seems. Not enough hours in a day.

You havent seen any degradation in QoS at all while sharing the cat 5e?

Re: Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:21 pm
by I_Ooma_2
EA PA wrote:You havent seen any degradation in QoS at all while sharing the cat 5e?
I don't use this with my Ooma (I'm behind the router and using my router's QoS) so I can't comment on that. However, I had been using it to split a single cable run to connect a PC and WAP to my router and I never noticed any problems. 10/100 ethernet only uses half of the connectors in the cable, so all the splitter does is 'rewires' it at the ends to give you two separate connections.

Re: Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:27 pm
by EA PA
I_Ooma_2 wrote:
EA PA wrote:You havent seen any degradation in QoS at all while sharing the cat 5e?
I don't use this with my Ooma (I'm behind the router and using my router's QoS) so I can't comment on that. However, I had been using it to split a single cable run to connect a PC and WAP to my router and I never noticed any problems. 10/100 ethernet only uses half of the connectors in the cable, so all the splitter does is 'rewires' it at the ends to give you two separate connections.
Got it thanks - question was more about crosstalk. I struggle enough with QoS as it is. I hope the Cat 5E can handle - should have run Cat 6. the Cat 6 has really nice twisted pairs. Worth the 20 bucks for a try though - Thanks

Re: Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:31 pm
by I_Ooma_2
I was using it on CAT5e and never noticed any problems. I would assume crosstalk might cause speed issues or dropped packets, but I never saw anything like that. CAT6 is higher quality than CAT5e but I don't expect you would have any problems.