qos and voip questions

[kanasta]

Hello!

I have 15/1 mbps internet connection.
I'm complete newbie as for Qos settings. From what I know standard settings don't prioize Voip at all.

Can someone guide me how to setup and what to put to optimise Voip?
I'll be using ooma and nettalk as backup on dual line phone.

I have ACK SYN FIN RST ICMP and other fields that I have no clue what to put


Thanks

 

[RMerlin]

Hello!

I have 15/1 mbps internet connection.
I'm complete newbie as for Qos settings. From what I know standard settings don't prioize Voip at all.

Can someone guide me how to setup and what to put to optimise Voip?
I'll be using ooma and nettalk as backup on dual line phone.

I have ACK SYN FIN RST ICMP and other fields that I have no clue what to put


Thanks

First, set your upload speed to about 80% of your max speed (so, 800 KBits or 0.8 Mbits in your case).

If you are using a hardware ATA to plug your phones (I use a Cisco SP112 myself), create a user rule with either High or Highest priority, set to the MAC address of your ATA, and leave all other fields blank. If you are using a software phone, then check which port it's using for communicating (SIP is usually UDP 5060), and set the rule to your computer running the softphone, and port 5060 UDP.

 

[kanasta]

Thanks Merlin!

I'll do that.

And what are the boxes: ACK SYN FIN RST ICMP in the middle of the page?

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks Merlin!

I'll do that.

And what are the boxes: ACK SYN FIN RST ICMP in the middle of the page?

They are types of control packets used for establishing new connections, for example. You shouldn't need to worry about these, it's for advanced network tweaking.

 

[Ancaster]

First, set your upload speed to about 80% of your max speed (so, 800 KBits or 0.8 Mbits in your case).

If you are using a hardware ATA to plug your phones (I use a Cisco SP112 myself), create a user rule with either High or Highest priority, set to the MAC address of your ATA, and leave all other fields blank. If you are using a software phone, then check which port it's using for communicating (SIP is usually UDP 5060), and set the rule to your computer running the softphone, and port 5060 UDP.

I'm going to try the Costco Ooma wifiUSB or if that doesn't work well, plug it into one of the LANs. My third option is to put the Ooma between the modem and N66.

I have a 20/1.5 cable line.
I'm confused how to setup the QoS. Do the above?

 

[Ancaster]

Correct in my case?...

20/1.5

QoS = ON
Upload BW = 1200 Kb/s
Download BW = (blank)

>User-defined QoS
MAC address of my Ooma Telo, Highest Priority
(everything else blank?)

 

[got_milk]

20/1.5

QoS = ON
Upload BW = 1200 Kb/s
Download BW = (blank)

>User-defined QoS
MAC address of my Ooma Telo, Highest Priority
(everything else blank?)

I suggest reserving highest priority for the DNS/NTP rule. I believe Asus ships with a web surf rule as highest as well. You'll want a ruleset that follows these steps:

Highest - DNS/NTP only.
High - VoIP, games
Normal - Web surf traffic
Low/Lowest - Web download traffic/BitTorrent/other P2P

You should find that VoIP will work well with a ruleset like this.

 

[moogoo88]

I can't seem to leave the download blank. Is there something I can enter that has the same value as blank?

 

[Ancaster]

I suggest reserving highest priority for the DNS/NTP rule. I believe Asus ships with a web surf rule as highest as well. You'll want a ruleset that follows these steps:

Highest - DNS/NTP only.
High - VoIP, games
Normal - Web surf traffic
Low/Lowest - Web download traffic/BitTorrent/other P2P

You should find that VoIP will work well with a ruleset like this.

Ok, so enter the QoS settings I posted AND what you said above?

This is what's currently set:

The selectable "Service Names" are:
DNS, Time, NTP, RSVP
FaceTime(TCP)
FaceTime(UDP)
FTP,SFTP,WLM,File/WebCam
HTTP, SSL, File transfers
Netmeeting(TCP)
PPTV
SMTP, POP3, IMAP, NNTP
Windows Live
WWW, SSL, HTTP Proxy


Do I type verbatim your Service Names list?
What do I put for "Destination Port" and "Transferred"?
Thanks

 

[Ancaster]

I can't seem to leave the download blank. Is there something I can enter that has the same value as blank?

Which FW are you using?
I haven't even started yet as I'm waiting for my Ooma to arrive.

It won't let you save an empty entry?

 

[moogoo88]

3.0.0.4.260.

This is on the automatic settings page where you actually turn it "on" and then it asks for a UL, DL setting. You cannot leave it blank or 0.

 

[Ancaster]

Ok, so enter the QoS settings I posted AND what you said above?

This is what's currently set:

The selectable "Service Names" are:
DNS, Time, NTP, RSVP
FaceTime(TCP)
FaceTime(UDP)
FTP,SFTP,WLM,File/WebCam
HTTP, SSL, File transfers
Netmeeting(TCP)
PPTV
SMTP, POP3, IMAP, NNTP
Windows Live
WWW, SSL, HTTP Proxy


Do I type verbatim your Service Names list?
What do I put for "Destination Port" and "Transferred"?
Thanks

Up, anyone?

And as moogoo88 says, what do we put in the blank?
Thx!

 

[got_milk]

Up, anyone?

And as moogoo88 says, what do we put in the blank?
Thx!

You'll need to measure your upload and download speeds using a site such as Speedtest.net and enter those values in as upload and download, respectively.

QoS needs to be set for YOUR configuration. Others' rules, while they work for them, may not work for you for a variety of reasons. My suggestion wasn't even a ruleset, just a set of guidelines to follow when making new rules.

I'll give you a more concrete example, however. (I always delete the default Asus ruleset and create my own, so I'll assume that you're starting off with no QoS rules defined).

• Create a DNS, Time, NTP and RSVP entry. This is in the drop down as a Service Name, so simply select it and ensure it has highest priority.
• Create an entry for your Ooma device. Use a suitable name (like Ooma) as a Service Name. Under "Source IP or MAC", enter the MAC address of the Ooma device. Select ANY protocol and give it high priority.
• Create a web surf rule. Asus provides one but I like to combine the two that Asus uses into one. Call it "Web Surf", destination port "80,443", TCP protocol, 0~512KB transferred, medium priority.
• Create a file transfer rule. Again, Asus provides one but I like to combine the two that Asus uses into one. Call it "File Transfer", destination port "80,443", TCP protocol, 512KB~ transferred, low priority.

If you have other devices or services needing QoS (Xbox Live or PlayStation Network, other VoIP services, etc), you should be creating rules for those as well.

Please do not just copy/paste the rules I've defined above. These are meant to show you how to set up QoS - you should be adapting for your own configuration.

 

[Ancaster]

Thank you gm

The default list actually looks good for us.

I just need to set the Ooma VoIP as the highest priority.

On second thought, is there a way to put online video streaming as a higher priority than downloading torrents? Or perhaps put torrents in the lowest category, how? (related to utorrent port?)

 

[got_milk]

If you're using the default ruleset, I would strongly recommend setting the web surf rule to a normal priority. Leaving it on highest would let it compete with VoIP and you'd risk call quality whenever someone was browsing the internet.

It's difficult to prioritize BitTorrent traffic as it will always use different ports. It's best to prioritize services that need to come ahead of BitTorrent (I believe unprioritized traffic will use the normal priority).

I don't know about online streaming - it'll depend on the source as to what ports they're using.

 

[Ancaster]

Finally got around to doing this yesterday and thanks g_m. Your example made a lot of sense once I looked more closely at the QoS UI. A few things left unanswered.

1. The default does not list this rule:
"Create a DNS, Time, NTP and RSVP entry. This is in the drop down as a Service Name, so simply select it and ensure it has highest priority."

I did it but how does it help?

2. Re: upload entry, I read in another thread Eric mentioning to have upload at 70%, I noticed the FW also does an adjustment so I'm unsure what fraction, if any, of my actual average upload speed I should input.

3. The other services list 0-10, 0-512, 512-.... My VoIP entry is blank there?

Btw, your rule set looked cleaner, I also combined Asus' defaults in those 2 examples.
Thanks!

 

[got_milk]

1. The default does not list this rule:
"Create a DNS, Time, NTP and RSVP entry. This is in the drop down as a Service Name, so simply select it and ensure it has highest priority."

I did it but how does it help?

DNS is the service that resolves URLs and such to IP addresses. It's good to have DNS as the highest priority as if DNS lookups are buried in a QoS queue, losing out to other services, it'll have a huge impact on the network (everything that uses DNS for lookups will suffer performance deterioration).

2. Re: upload entry, I read in another thread Eric mentioning to have upload at 70%, I noticed the FW also does an adjustment so I'm unsure what fraction, if any, of my actual average upload speed I should input.

In my experience, limiting upload to 70% for most residential connections is a bit overkill. It is a good idea to reserve some upload bandwidth so that even during times of uplink saturation (general uploads, P2P usage, etc) there will still be leftover bandwidth to handle maximum priority requests (like DNS, as I explained above). I limit to 90% of my upload speed (which is 1Mbps, so I'm always guaranteeing 10KB/s of throughput). This way, I can still upload without adding significant amounts of upload time (which, on a 1Mbps connection, is pretty high anyway) but ensure essential requests aren't being choked somewhere along the line.

Obviously, however, feel free to play around with this value. 90% might not be enough for your particular connection and needs, so you may have to drop it down to about 70% like Eric suggests.

3. The other services list 0-10, 0-512, 512-.... My VoIP entry is blank there?

Those values are just bandwidth categorizations. For example, for the web surf rule, if 512KB or less is transferred, the router will prioritize it as a web page since not much data has been transferred. However, if over 512KB of data has been transferred so far, then the router will treat it as a file transfer and prioritize it according to the file transfer rule. You don't need a value here for VoIP as every packet is valuable (regardless of amount transferred).

Hope this answers all your questions.

 

[Ancaster]

Yes, it does!
Thanks a mill to contributing to my knowledge base.
I'll be sure to pay it forward here or other forums.

Cheers

 

[got_milk]

Yes, it does!
Thanks a mill to contributing to my knowledge base.
I'll be sure to pay it forward here or other forums.

Cheers

You're welcome! Glad I could help.

 

[cwhiz]

QOS apple airplay settings help

Hi there,

could you maybe help me with the QOS traffic settings for apple airplay (I have 3 devices running) in order to prevent interruptions of the music?
Do I have to establish a rule for the specific mac address or is there a certain protocol?
I ask Asus and they could not help me...
thanks in advance,
cwhiz