Ooma Placement Question

[scottlindner]

If you have a soft copy of the manual for the modem, would you care to forward it to me. This will allow me to take a look at what exactly are the capabilities of this modem, some friends did tell me that this thing has a router built into it but I could not find a way to access it.

You can't access it because you have two routers in play creating two LANs. Try connecting a computer directly to it, or put a hub between the DSL modem and Buffalo router so you can sneak another computer on your first LAN without taking down your network. Then you should be able to access the DSL modem's configuration page. A note, if you have your DSL modem cofigured in a fully bridges mode, there is no way to access the modem's configuration page since there is no IP address for the port since it is providing a PPPoE interface only.

On your Buffalo router running Tomato, what does the status page say your WAN IP address is? Does it match your real internet IP address? Use http://www.whatismyip.com to confirm your Internet IP.

This is the document for your DSL modem I was looking at: http://help.stargate.net/download/docs/ ... erence.pdf

I was thinking more about this. I would try lowering your Tomato QoS max outbound and inbound rates to 80% of max first before tackling the dueling router thing.

Scott

[thalaivar]

If you have a soft copy of the manual for the modem, would you care to forward it to me. This will allow me to take a look at what exactly are the capabilities of this modem, some friends did tell me that this thing has a router built into it but I could not find a way to access it.

You can't access it because you have two routers in play creating two LANs. Try connecting a computer directly to it, or put a hub between the DSL modem and Buffalo router so you can sneak another computer on your first LAN without taking down your network. Then you should be able to access the DSL modem's configuration page. A note, if you have your DSL modem cofigured in a fully bridges mode, there is no way to access the modem's configuration page since there is no IP address for the port since it is providing a PPPoE interface only.

Scott,

It appears that the modem is setup only for fully bridged mode, hence there is no IP address. I took out my modem and connected it directly to pc through a PPPoE connection.

The WAN address as shown in Tomato matches the real IP address.

On your Buffalo router running Tomato, what does the status page say your WAN IP address is? Does it match your real internet IP address? Use http://www.whatismyip.com to confirm your Internet IP.

This is the document for your DSL modem I was looking at: http://help.stargate.net/download/docs/ ... erence.pdf

I was thinking more about this. I would try lowering your Tomato QoS max outbound and inbound rates to 80% of max first before tackling the dueling router thing.

If you look at my post I already have my inbound and outbound limits set to values far lesser than what I can get. Not sure if they are 80% of the maximum achieved rate or not.

The only thing I want to check is if disabling QoS completely makes any improvements or not. I would think that it should actually make things worse especially if there is inbound and outbound traffic already on the network.

Scott

[scottlindner]

Good. If you have the DSL modem set for fully bridged, and you are setting PPPoE in your Buffalo router running Tomato, you have fully bypassed everything in that DSL modem other than the ATM to Ethernet stuff that is in it.

I didn't realize your numbers were less than max. Typically 768kbps is the max outbound for DSL. I'm curious, what is your max outbound for your DSL?

Scott

[thalaivar]

Good. If you have the DSL modem set for fully bridged, and you are setting PPPoE in your Buffalo router running Tomato, you have fully bypassed everything in that DSL modem other than the ATM to Ethernet stuff that is in it.

I didn't realize your numbers were less than max. Typically 768kbps is the max outbound for DSL. I'm curious, what is your max outbound for your DSL?

Scott

Well, I made some more changes to the QoS settings. Now my maximum outbound is only 576Kb and the maximum inbound is 2304Kb. This is approximately 80% of what I usually see through speedtest.net.

The only concern I have here is this throttles the inbound down to about 1631Kb and the outbound down to 560Kb.

I did not realize that I had put my outbound to 768Kb. That is probably the maximum upload I get.

One question I have about the QoS setting is that if I increase the inbound limit to the maximum available then there is no repercussion on the outbound packets.

This will allow me to use the full inbound bandwidth without causing issues in the network.

[scottlindner]

Good. If you have the DSL modem set for fully bridged, and you are setting PPPoE in your Buffalo router running Tomato, you have fully bypassed everything in that DSL modem other than the ATM to Ethernet stuff that is in it.

I didn't realize your numbers were less than max. Typically 768kbps is the max outbound for DSL. I'm curious, what is your max outbound for your DSL?

Scott

Well, I made some more changes to the QoS settings. Now my maximum outbound is only 576Kb and the maximum inbound is 2304Kb. This is approximately 80% of what I usually see through speedtest.net.

The only concern I have here is this throttles the inbound down to about 1631Kb and the outbound down to 560Kb.

I did not realize that I had put my outbound to 768Kb. That is probably the maximum upload I get.

One question I have about the QoS setting is that if I increase the inbound limit to the maximum available then there is no repercussion on the outbound packets.

This will allow me to use the full inbound bandwidth without causing issues in the network.

My understanding of QoS is not that good, but I do not believe it works that way. I believe it is more about giving your QoS algorithm wiggle room to give you quality of service first, bandwidth second. Only you can decide what is more important to you. High scores on Speedtest.net, or an operational VOIP solution. Even when I set my max to less than true max, I still get very good scores on Speedtest.net. I have my outbound set to 650kbps and inbound set to 4800kbps. I still get over 6Mbps for inbound. So it isn't throttling. I think it's reserving which is different. Here's my test score I just ran so you can see for youself it isn't throttling:


I have never achieved much higher upload rates. Maybe I should lower my outbound max...

One day last week my wife and I were hammering on our internet connection while using two lines of Ooma at the same time. We were using several work related applications remotely including two remote desktops (RDP), two collaborative sessions, two lines of Ooma, one heavy handed client server application, and both surfing the Net researching at the same time. We never had a problem with Ooma even though I have my QoS set to less than maximum to roughly 80% of max. I watched the Tomato real time bandwidth monitor the entire time. The only time we ever got close to using our full bandwidth was when loading Yahoo and MSN sites and that was only for a brief moment. After seeing it was only the fluff Flash sites that use our full bandwidth potential, I really do not care much for bandwidth high scores anymore. Quality of service is far more important to me because I want Ooma to be rock solid.

Scott

[pl1]

http://www.speedtest.net

Woo Hoo! I just tested my connection for the heck of it and as it turns out, Comcast just doubled our speed and this was the first I knew of it. It was 6M/1M with a speedboost of 12M/2M.
I just tested at 18.68 Mb/s 6.01 Mb/s !!! Nice speedboost there. I had to do a doubletake!

[scottlindner]

http://www.speedtest.net

Woo Hoo! I just tested my connection for the heck of it and as it turns out, Comcast just doubled our speed and this was the first I knew of it. It was 6M/1M with a speedboost of 12M/2M.
I just tested at 18.68 Mb/s 6.01 Mb/s !!! Nice speedboost there. I had to do a doubletake!

Awesome. If you did a http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/speed_test/ppspeed.html prior to the change I am curious if any of your QoS has changed as well.

Scott

[pl1]

http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/speed_test/ppspeed.html prior to the change I am curious if any of your QoS has changed as well. Scott

I don't have my prior results, but they were fine before the increase. Here are my current results:

Code: Select all

VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 1.0 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 3.5 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Estimated MOS score: 4.0

[scottlindner]

http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/speed_test/ppspeed.html prior to the change I am curious if any of your QoS has changed as well. Scott

I don't have my prior results, but they were fine before the increase. Here are my current results:

Code: Select all

VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 1.0 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 3.5 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Estimated MOS score: 4.0

Certainly good enough for Ooma. Excellent that you got a speed boost without a hit on QoS!

Scott

[B4tm4n]

I have a silly question. you have a cat5e run from you router to you PC correct? why not plug that into the ooma then plug your pc into the ooma? supposedly it is a switch, granted it may be base 100 instead of a gig connection, but atleast it will get you by till you get the house wired. just an idea.