[WXC/VFX] VFX Question

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grant_k

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#60602 12-Feb-2007 23:58

sidney: ...I've read that some DSL modems have a "half-bridge" mode just for this type of situation in which the modem handles the PPoE or PPoA login, then hands everything over to the next device. If your modem could do that you could plug it in to the WAN (Internet) port of the SPA-2102 and run the LAN (ethernet) port out to the rest of your local network.

I think this was where my plan came unstuck. My router doesn't support Half-bridge, only Full-bridge with or without NAT.

sidney: There are two points to this. One is to have all traffic go through the SPA2102, connected to the Internet via the Internet port and to the rest of your local network through the LAN (ethernet) port of the SPA2102. That gives the SPA2102 complete control so it can limit traffic on the LAN when it needs to keep the bandwidth clear for a phone call.

That's exactly how I connected it up, but I think the lack of Half-bridge support was what stuffed it up.

sidney: The other, more minor point, is to avoid having two NATs in series in your system by having the WAN port on the SPA2102 be assigned a public ip address using whatever method you can. If you can't do that, you can try a double-NAT setup anyway and see if anything breaks. You won't be able to forward any ports to the public from any of your computers, but if you don't want to run a server that might make no practical difference.

Unfortunately I can't live with double-NAT because I have VNC servers and an H323 VoIP box which need to be accessible from the internet. I figured that double-NAT was best avoided if possible.

sidney: Oh, I just looked up information about the LinkSys Wag54gp2 that maverick suggested and I see that it includes a PPPoA capable DSL modem as well as two line voip ATA and four port router and wireless access point all in one box. So it would do everything for you including QOS. You could sell your existing boxes on Trademe.

Yeah, I realised at the outset I could have gone for the WAG54GP2 but it was quite a bit more expensive than the SPA2102. For other reasons I need a Full-speed/Full-speed ADSL connection anyway, and the lack of QoS isn't causing us any problems at all. Compared to the approx. 35kbps down/up that VFX uses, we have around 5.5Mbps down and 500kbps up i.e. bandwidth to burn, so I think I'll stick with the existing setup unless any problems arise.

Thanks for posting such a detailed explanation which is better than I have seen anywhere else. Please let me know whether your proposed setup with the SPA2102 actually works in practice, I will be interested to know. And I'll also look forward to your comments on the effects of satellite latency on the VFX call quality.

Cheers,
Grant.

sidney

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#60611 13-Feb-2007 01:53

Grant17: I have VNC servers and an H323 VoIP box which need to be accessible from the internet [ ... ] we have around 5.5Mbps down and 500kbps up

With all that in your system and that high speed I wouldn't trust the little SPA-2102 to handle all the routing anyway. It sounds like you should get a DSL modem that supports half-bridge and feed it into a BSD or Linux box that can do the QOS and routing to the rest of your network. Or keep your existing modem, using it in full bridge mode if you can find a Linux or BSD solution for handling the PPPoA with it, again using that box for the QOS and routing.

But it does sond like you have the bandwidth to spare so that you can just ignore the issue for now and assume that it will be rare for the rest of your system to gobble up all the bandwidth when someone is trying to use the phone.

-- sidney

sidney

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#60612 13-Feb-2007 04:31

wmoore: Trying to convince them to get sat broadband..wirelessnation looks the best...My father is update his computer soon, so it will be a good time to do it.

It's good that I lost the first reply I typed that had all my worries about WirelesNation as now I think perhaps they would be a good choice for a non-techie. They finally sent me a reply to my questions after a second email repeating my questions that had gone unanswered for four days. It still doesn't reassure me completely. I got a quick response at around 11pm in somewhat broken English, which makes me think that they are staffing support in some other time zone on the other side of the world. I wouldn't mind that if the support were timely and good, but it seemed to be neither. But I am now more inclined to say that they might be a better choice for the less tech oriented customer because 1) they charge half as much of a monthly fee 2) they retain ownership of the satellite dish, converter, and modem which means they retain responsibility for fixing them, and 3) they claim to provide a much higher speed. The ordinary user has no need to own the equipmement, which may be obsolete by the end of the contract term, pays less by not having to own it, and doesn't have to deal with paying to fix it after the end of a one year warranty period. I would worry about the quality of service from what I've seen so far, but that just means finding customers who will say what their experience has been. I also worry that they are going to overload their capacity and their customers will not be abe to get the high speeds thatthey expect. I've been told that IPStar sells a certain amount of bandwidth to an ISP, and then it is up to the ISP how that bandwidth is distributed among its customers. If WirelessNation oversells, none of their customers will get the speeds they expect. But if I encourage new customers to sign up with WirelessNation, that may mean fewer new ICONZ customers competing for my bandwidth

wmoore: I haven't done anything about QoS on my ASUS AAM6000EV

It doesn't support QoS at all. I think you need a DSL modem that does half-bridging or just ignore the problems that QoS addresses.

-- sidney

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