ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

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ggilman
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Re: ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

Post by ggilman » Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:22 pm

Interesting info on the speeds, Wayne. Makes me want to get a router capable of running Tomato. As it is, i have no way of measuring any bandwidth from ooma, just from individual PCs.

By chance, Have you tested your MTU to see what it should be? If by chance your MTU is supposed to be 1492 like mine then our bandwidths should match. Even if not though, doubling your numbers wouldn't be too terrible for bandwidth.

Actually, if you have the desire, you could help me test our fragmentation concerns. Even if your MTU is supposed to be 1500, set it to 1492 on your router & grab another snapshot. If the bandwidth doesn't go up measurably, then the MTU really isn't a concern. Anyway, if you could find the time to do this, it would be appreciated.

As for when I mentioned bandwidth issues, I have a 2Mbps upload stream (theoretical of course). When testing, I get numbers over 2Mbps most of the time, with about 1.5 being the lowest I've seen. There have been a couple of times where every computer in the house was off and yet the upload stream had problems with the ooma call, causing it to break up. I've adjusted my QoS multiple times since then but if it is only using 50kbps and it was the only thing transmitting, there should be no issue whatsoever. My system seems to be becoming more stable lately but I'm waiting for my wife to start complaining about another call again.

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scottlindner
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Re: ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

Post by scottlindner » Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:26 pm

ggilman wrote:
scottlindner wrote: I'm using a static IP address and do not have the ability to set the MTU, and it is set at 1500 rather than 1492. Which means it's using almost twice the bandwidth as compared to other users. This could explain why I sometimes have QoS problems while doing something on the Internet. It's already nearly saturating my upsteam.
Scott
A couple of times I have had upload speed issues when I was well aware of what traffic should have been on my network and should not have had problems with the amount of bandwidth ooma is reported to take. This is one of the reasons I started investigating the MTU.

I've been trying to figure out how to test if MTU path is happening automatically & just not reporting any difference in the interface. The only way I know to measure this is to have a packet-sniffer on the outside of my router. With a packet-sniffer, I should be able to analyze the packet sizes from the ooma to see if fragmentation is occurring. I haven't taken the time to set up my network to perform such tests yet but if I do, I'll report back.

With respect to your QoS issue, are you certain you have QoS set up properly on your router? I had issues from time to time and had to keep reducing my upload speed on my router until my ooma performed decently but it seems ok now. I'm just interested in the MTU because it's possible I'm transmitting more data than necessary, but the ooma still performs decently within my QoS cap. Assuming ooma doesn't take up over 100% of your bandwidth, you should be able to adjust your settings to have decent performance from your ooma, at the cost of your other uploads of course.
Agreed. I have been toying around with reducing my upload/download speeds for that very reason. What router are you using? I'm using a WRT54GL with DD-WRT firmware. I'm going to try a different firmware version soon. It seems to be performing very well and I'm in more of the tweaking stage to optimize both Ooma and my internet performance. After this MTU thing I'm starting to suspect using Ooma as your router with DSL might be a bad call. Which is why I'd much prefer to get my own router working perfectly so I have more explicit control.

I'll let you know what I find. I wonder if there is a website you can hit that will tell you your packet size? That won't tell you what's going on inside your network, but it'll at least tell you what's going out of your modem.

Scott

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scottlindner
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Re: ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

Post by scottlindner » Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:29 pm

WayneDsr wrote:For what it's worth:
I've measured ooma on both upload and download bandwidth with Tomato firmware. On a single call the upload and download bandwidth is never more than 50k.
Hardly a bandwitdh hog.

Below:
After the first little peaks there is a short plateau, this is call one. Call one hangs up (short call) and call 2 comes in for the balance of the graph.
Notice upload (red) and download (blue) are about equal.
Wayne. I agree the bandwidth isn't all that bad, but when you unnecessarily double it you are susceptible to exacerbating other problems related to QoS.

Scott

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Colanth
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Re: ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

Post by Colanth » Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:54 pm

Wayne, considering that a single voice channel on POTS is capped at 48k, that 50k number (and the granularity of the graph) seems to be dead on where it should be.

Al

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scottlindner
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Re: ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

Post by scottlindner » Mon Jun 01, 2009 2:22 pm

Colanth wrote:Wayne, considering that a single voice channel on POTS is capped at 48k, that 50k number (and the granularity of the graph) seems to be dead on where it should be.

Al
POTS is analog, not digital. Are you referring to the frequency range? I was under the impression that POTS was something like 300Hz to 3500Hz.

Scott

WayneDsr
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Re: ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

Post by WayneDsr » Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:26 pm

ggilman:
My MTU in Tomato is set to 1492. I have ooma behind my router giving my router full control.

Wayne

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scottlindner
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Re: ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

Post by scottlindner » Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:31 pm

WayneDsr wrote:ggilman:
My MTU in Tomato is set to 1492. I have ooma behind my router giving my router full control.

Wayne
If I recall from another post you are using a WRT54GL like I am, right? I see in lots of posts you mention Tomato firmware and I keep wondering what that is. Is that firmware for you router or is it a test tool?

Scott

WayneDsr
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Re: ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

Post by WayneDsr » Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:37 pm

I'm using a Linksys WRT54GS and Tomato Firmware. It beats the heck out of Linksys firmware. Tomato has a real time bandwidth graph and nice QOS control along with live pie charts showing traffic managment as it happens.

Wayne

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scottlindner
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Re: ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

Post by scottlindner » Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:43 pm

WayneDsr wrote:I'm using a Linksys WRT54GS and Tomato Firmware. It beats the heck out of Linksys firmware. Tomato has a real time bandwidth graph and nice QOS control along with live pie charts showing traffic managment as it happens.

Wayne
That's cool. Some of what you said is in DD-WRT. What made you choose Tomato over OpenWRT or DD-WRT? I already understand why you chose it over the Linksys firmware. :)

Scott

WayneDsr
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Re: ooma and MTU settings -- Internet speed

Post by WayneDsr » Mon Jun 01, 2009 4:33 pm

Kradoom in a past post many months ago mentioned Tomato firmware and I was inticed by his experience with it.
I looked Tomato up on the web and I was sold. On the Tomato web page I also heard about the others, but Tomato was what I was sold on and installed it.

Wayne

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