recommend cheap router with QOS

[psflynn]

Hi,

can anybody recommend a cheap(ish) wireless broadband router with QOS?

I cant find one other than the drayteks - at around £170ish - eek!

Thanks
P.

[psflynn]

ok, just found the linksys wrt54gp2 which seems to do what i want for £75ish.

Anyone with any experience of this router?

Cheers

P

[dejongj]

I use a Linksys WRT54GS, didn't look in your post before as most people find the £65 I paid for mine too much for a router
Works absolutely fine with QoS, you can even update the firmware to run a special linux distribution with the VoIP Asterisk PABX on it!!!!
I like it so much and it is so well support that I actually have two!

[psflynn]

thank you very much for the advice.

Have you actually tried running asterisk on it?

[dejongj]

Oh yes....Works fine, but I prefer the normal linux version for my prototyping projects due to voice recordings, database retrievals etc....

[mucca_D]

I use draytek and did not pay that much!!!!

EBay £128 vigor 2800

ps i know it has not got a VOIP port but does do QOS

2600 has and they are on there for less than £120

[RekalinSimms]

I use the Linksys WRT54GS with SunRocket and have had great success. It's definitely a good router.

[madasahat]

there is no poit in having a qos router as there is no qos in the internet at the moment therare only a few isp that offer qos and its exspensive qos is only any good on a lan or on a fixed link

[dejongj]

Originally Posted by madasahat

there is no poit in having a qos router as there is no qos in the internet at the moment therare only a few isp that offer qos and its exspensive qos is only any good on a lan or on a fixed link

Go back to your training class Ofcourse there is a point in having it....True you don't have it across the whole of the Internet...But if you didn't have it on your entry point your telephone connection would start to stutter when you retrieve that big e-mail, or are downloading all you stuff, or just during general browsing......

What a load of nonsense....

[madasahat]

Originally Posted by dejongj

Go back to your training class Ofcourse there is a point in having it....True you don't have it across the whole of the Internet...But if you didn't have it on your entry point your telephone connection would start to stutter when you retrieve that big e-mail, or are downloading all you stuff, or just during general browsing......

What a load of nonsense....

lol you are talking bull you dont need a qos router to do that lol 95% of routers let you do rout prioritisation you just setit to rout calles from ip phone to have priority all qos does is tag a voice call as soon as it leaves your router and enters the www thats not worth bugger all

[dejongj]

Sure, fine....suit yourself...

[Cable Monkey]

madasahat,
There are benefits to using a QOS router, and it is certainly simpler to provide one of these than talk many customers through what may be a complex configuration process assuming they can do it on their kit. I would certainly question your assertion that the routers only 'tag' at the exit of the router, and your generous use of smileys only serves to make you less credible.

[mucca_D]

Originally Posted by some random website

QoS (Quality-of-Service)
QoS is a general term that incorporates bandwidth, latency, and jitter to describe a network's ability to customize the treatment of specific classes of data. For example, QoS can be used to prioritize video transmissions over Web-browsing traffic. Advanced networks can offer greater control over how data traffic is classified into classes and greater flexibility as to how the treatment of that traffic is differentiated from other traffic.

But to clarify QOS for adsl routers is mostly based on differentiated services. (DIffserv)





Most routers allow you to set an amount of bandwith you reserve for a specific service.

At the minimum it will allow you reserve bandwith for UDP traffic either by an amount or a percentage.

To put a TAG on an IP packet means you are supporting VLAN Q tags.

This is were you add a VLAN tag to a type of packet or on a port.

You can then restrict the bandwith for that tag in your lan or on the exit to web port.

However, and I think this is your confussion is that if you use 802.q tags on external traffic is may be ignored or even taken off by your ISP. but if you are running a VPN then none of your IP packets will be touched by your ISP.

blah blah got to go
D

[dejongj]

@Mucca_D...I admire you patience, I quality I don't have

[Shocks]

Let's see if I can clear this up, there is a lot of half truths being positioned here. Firstly, lets deal with QoS from the user-side, specifically if your using VoIP both dejongj and Mucca are saying the right things, you need to prioritise the voice traffic locally. Lets say you have this scenario :

VoIP handset --- router --- isp
/
PC ---------------

In this scenario you need to specify that the connecting port for the VoIP device has priority - if you use the linksys this is easily done. Then identify the UDP port range the VoIP traffic is being transmitted it on it should be tagged to IP Predence 5 (if not already tagged by the VoIP device) or diffserv code point EF. This will ensure that the VoIP traffic is prioritised "OUT" from the router over and above lower priority traffic.

Most if not all ISP will not touch the markings, this includes doing nothing when they receive the packets. This is because when it comes to data plane (user/customer traffic) they just pass this as FIFO (first in first out) traffic.

The second scenario would be a PC VoIP device i.e.

PC w/VoIP ---- Router --- ISP

In this scenario you want to mark and prioritise locally from the PC through 802.1q. Assuming also that the PC is using some form of QoS scheduling then this will ensure that the other scenarios discussed by Dejongj are going to work i.e. a local app such as email does not swamp the connection when in the middle of a call, there are other factors such as CPU and memory/app threading that can affect the call but lets not open that can of worms just now.

The bottom line is this. If you mark your traffic it's about local prioritisation to ensure that in your LAN and on the egress (your port to the ISP) that traffic that has a higher class of service, such as voice, is put on the wire ahead of lower class traffic. I've not dealt with bandwidth reservation as this is a pointless topic for many reasons, adsl in the UK for example is rate adaptive shaped and can mean less than 12kb/s is available upstream which will kill most voice calls, but mainly because it is dependent on the voice codec being used and compression the codec delivers....

The ISPs may not being listening to those markings right now, at least very few of them, but in future they will be. Though when this happens it will be with their policy and at their discretion, most are looking to deploy subscriber management tools to identify and even downgrade VoIP traffic that is not using their service as it is not making them revenue..... and then preserve or guarantee the marking/bandwidth allocation for their own service offerings.

-s