VoIP Routers for the SMB...Suggestions?

[JBinSanD]

I am looking for input on business class routers that play well with VoIP. I am experiencing unacceptable packet loss and some jitter on calls. There are about 40 users (PC/Cisco Phones)each using a single Cat5e cable. We are running an on-premise Asterisk box.

Any Ideas/Recommendations?

 

[Sympology]

First I'd look at whats causing the packet loss. It may not be related at all to your router, but some other issue (bad cabling is often over looked)
Most routers these day are fine with VoIP unless heavily burdened (firewalls can be another matter).



Most people spend their time on the "urgent" rather than on the "important."

 

[JBinSanD]

Thanks Symp. Good Idea.
I know that they have re-used the cable from the previous tenant.

 

[VinceWhirlwind]

Try increasing the jitter-buffer setting - see if that makes a difference.

It depends on which traffic is losing packets, too - perhaps your WAN link has slightly more latency than expected?

Make sure you have QoS prioritising your voice traffic through the WAN link. Does your WAN provider provide CoS on your traffic?

 

[cknipe]

Is your asterisk box just a white box pc running asterisk? Maybe its not your network but rather the processor, memory (or lack of ) on that box. Newer voip systems have DSP's builtin which are almost like processors built especially for voice transcoding. a normal P4 or celeron wasnt necessarily built for that ....but with extra resources, it can still do the same thing...in short my experience with asterisk is that you always needed a "big Mama" server in order to run anything in a production environment.

 

[JBinSanD]

Vince-
Thanks, I'll check that out.

cknipe-

I'm running "The Big Momma" PBXtra Dell 1U server w/ 3MB of RAM. All resources are running at an idle. This points me to the network- h/w or cable runs.

A Friend recommended the Linksys RV082. Anyone have thoughts on this router?

 

[cknipe]

That linksys looks 100% more stable/reliable when they wrap it in cisco colors, huh?

On a side note...is everyone in the same building or do you have a few remote IP phones anywhere.

Do you have call quality issues from station to station or inbound/outbound calls? or both? Is it the same users reporting issue or different users each time experiencing the issue?

Are your voice devices on thier own vlan? 40 devices is kinda pushing it for running voip on a flat network...especially if you have any IP camera's.

I cant see this being a router issue unless the traffic is needing to leave your LAN (i.e for a remote phone or office)

 

[JBinSanD]

K-
Not a big Cisco fan...but will use if have to.
Yes, all on-site users. No remote users
I see degradation on in/outbound calls. Complaints come from multiple users...no rhyme or reason to them. No reports of issues on interoffice calls
They are not VLAN'ed and no IP cameras.
My money is on the cable. I will send a guy out to re-cable one repeated complainer and see if clears the issue- Thnks.

 

[VinceWhirlwind]

If in/outbound have problems and internal calls don't, then that tells you where to look: your gateway.

In my experience, this means you should be looking at cknipe's first suggestion, unless there's an actual IP bottleneck somewhere between your "core" and the IP PABX.

 

[JBinSanD]

Vince-

Think UR right. Pulliing off the cable guy and sending the IT guy. Any ideas on decent hardware?

Thanks All. More to come...