Configuring Telo for QoS Control Behind Router
Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 1:46 pm
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
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