Recommendations for good-value router with VOIP functionality (or separate router+ATA?)

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jonathan18

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Topic # 193517 14-Mar-2016 09:41

I'm wanting to purchase a router as my current one (a Fritzbox 7390) is giving me rubbish speeds on my new Bigpipe UFB connection and I've not been able to sort this out. I've also looked at using a Huawei HG659, but while I got the UFB working I wasn't able to confirm whether my inability to get the VOIP working was due to the unit having its VOIP settings hard-coded for Vodafone (I've changed to the Spark firmware - not sure if this would resolve this problem?) or just my general incompetence.

Given I currently use the 7390 for VOIP, I either need to ensure the new modem supports VOIP or, presumably, buy an external ATA as well as a router. The most-commonly recommended ATA (SPA112) appears to be about $85, and I'd rather avoid yet another product to be plugged in and managed, so would prefer a single box solution.

I'm needing one with gigabit Ethernet, and thought it would make sense to get AC as well: Pricespy shows two affordable models featuring both - the Edimax BR-6478AC (from $130) and the D-Link DIR-880L (from $198); there's a bit more choice if I settle for N rather than AC. (EDIT: looking more closely at these two products, neither actually feature actual VOIP management - the absence of telephone jacks on the back would indicate this! Possibly poor coding by Pricespy?)

Ones that actually do support VOIP appear to include the Netcomm NF8AC (from $220) or Netcomm NF4V (from $186).

Can anyone advise on the quality/suitability (or otherwise) of either of these products, or recommend a different but affordable router (or router/ATA combo) suitable for using with VOIP?

Many thanks

grant_k

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Reply # 1512796 14-Mar-2016 10:19

Having been down the path of using one router for everything with VoIP included vs. the separate box idea, I now prefer the latter as it gives greater flexibility.

2Talk have auto-provisioning for various Cisco and Linksys devices which makes things so easy. If you go for an up-to-date router including VoIP, you probably won't be able to use 2Talk's auto-provisioning. I've also had good success with one of Grandstream's ATA devices after I worked out the settings for Kiwi dial tone, ringing tones etc. The Grandstream devices have many less settings than Cisco or Linksys, so it wasn't too difficult. The single port Grandstream ATA is a very small box which I have installed at a neighbour's place to provide a simple phone service and it is extremely reliable and inexpensive.

jonathan18

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Reply # 1512804 14-Mar-2016 10:31

grant_k:

Having been down the path of using one router for everything with VoIP included vs. the separate box idea, I now prefer the latter as it gives greater flexibility.

2Talk have auto-provisioning for various Cisco and Linksys devices which makes things so easy. If you go for an up-to-date router including VoIP, you probably won't be able to use 2Talk's auto-provisioning. I've also had good success with one of Grandstream's ATA devices after I worked out the settings for Kiwi dial tone, ringing tones etc. The Grandstream devices have many less settings than Cisco or Linksys, so it wasn't too difficult. The single port Grandstream ATA is a very small box which I have installed at a neighbour's place to provide a simple phone service and it is extremely reliable and inexpensive.

Some good points there.

I see they have the Cisco SPA122 listed for auto-provisioning, but don't mention the SPA112 - given that, according to another GZ post I read, the only difference between the two is the 122 features routing, would the 112 also work via auto-provisioning?

Thanks.

robjg63

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Reply # 1512821 14-Mar-2016 10:57

I was in the same situation as you - ie Moved to bigppe UFB and moved the landline number to 2talk.

(Actually not sure if you mentioned 2 talk - perhaps I assumed that).

Anyway - went with a TP-Link Archer C7 and a Cisco SPA112.

The router was around $195 and the version 2 which is sold here has 3 inbuilt 2.5Ghz radios and 3 x external 5Ghz aerials. Seems to give pretty decent coverage in our 2 story house. I gather there is a version 53 of this in the USA only which has just the 3 external aerials (and still dual band) - but coverage is supposed to be the same.

Agree that it would be nice to have one box and not 2 - but it was too hard to find a really good router that had dual band wifi and built in VOIP. The Cisco SPA 112 (or 122) seem to be regarded as fairly reliable.

I read a few threads (on GZ) that suggested the autoprovisioning for these devices is broken - never read anything to suggest it got fixed so I set it all up manually - This takes a while and its pretty much just copying and pasting a bunch of strings from the 2talk setup guide into the webadmin page of the Cisco ATA. Boring but not difficult. Got it all set up and it seems to be working fine.

One tip that is really worth mentioning is to disable STUN (you will see mention of setting this up in the setup instructions and also mention that you may not need it). I set up up initially with it enabled. I found it could take something like 10 seconds for an outgoing call to start ringing, and inwards calls seemed to take a while to start the phone ringing as well. With STUN disabled, the calling out and in are just as instantaneous as the old POTS line.

PS Some retailers are now listing the router as the "Archer C7 VLAN 10" - While bigpipe dont need VLAN tagging, I found a few queries from people asking if this router worked with VLAN tagging. It seems there was a beta firmware you could request from TP-Link support that enabled that. Maybe there is a more official release of the firmware for NZ now. I think the issue was that the router does support VLAN tagging - but only allowed the tag size down as low as 16 - whereas we need it to be 10 here in NZ. So on the off chance you change ISPs it may be flexible enough....

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

grant_k

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Reply # 1512865 14-Mar-2016 11:16

jonathan18:

...

I see they have the Cisco SPA122 listed for auto-provisioning, but don't mention the SPA112 - given that, according to another GZ post I read, the only difference between the two is the 122 features routing, would the 112 also work via auto-provisioning?

Thanks.

From my experience, it probably would. I used the auto-provisioning profile for a Cisco SPA1xx on my SRP521W, and it worked fine. Both are routers and when you get into the actual 'Device Auto-Provisioning' screen, the profile is listed as '1xx' so I expect it would also work on your 112.

jonathan18

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Reply # 1513023 14-Mar-2016 13:32

Thanks for the further feedback.

I guess that flexibility of having a separate ATA means that, even if I can't get the phone working on the Huawei (and, yep, it's with 2Talk), I can use that as the router, at least as an interim solution. (Thus far I've not been able to get consistently close-to full-speed download even with the Huawei - maxes out closer to 85 than 100, whereas a direct connection to the ONT was around 95.)

I had originally been thinking of an Archer C2 as the router, before I recalled the VOIP requirements; will I get substantive benefits of going for the C7 over the C2, given the C7 is nearly twice the price of the C2? I note the significantly faster potential wifi speeds, but in reality I don't do a hell of a lot of transfer of data between devices on the network (and my internet speeds will be no more than 100, if I can ever get it up to there!).

An Archer C2 and a Cisco SPA112 total about $200, which is affordable at the moment - would ideally like to keep the whole solution at this kind of price if possible!

Thanks, robjg63, for all the tips on the SPA112; they'll certainly come in handy when it comes to setting this up.

I'll have one last go on setting up the Huawei for 2Talk (unless someone can confirm that it's still useless trying to set up an alternative VOIP provider on a Vodafone-supplied HG659, even with the Spark firmware?), and if no luck will order a SPA112, and then possibly a new router if I can't sort the speed issue out with the Huawei.

Thanks again.

robjg63

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Reply # 1513037 14-Mar-2016 13:50

I looked pretty hard at the c2 and it reviews really well - great value for money. Its a gigabit router anyway - so should be heaps fast enough and to get the quoted super high wifi speeds you have to have exactly the right sort of wifi in your devices (ie you will never realistically get the claimed maximum speeds). I reckon the c2 is a sound choice. Every review I found said it was excellent performance for a low(ish) price.

You can even try the web admin emulator here: http://www.tp-link.com/resources/simulator/Archer_C2/index.htm

I think I had an idea that maybe if I changed ISPs at least I could (potentially) use the c7 on an ISP that uses VLAN tagging. But to be honest this is extremely unlikely to happen anyway - so maybe I just got a bit carried away.

The SPA112 seems to be one of the most common/supported ATAs - so I figured it was a safe option.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

dolsen

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Reply # 1513047 14-Mar-2016 14:03

I haven't tried this, but, I'm pretty sure you can use the fritzbox as an ata behind another router, so, you may not need a separate ata at all.

Having said that, I also have a 7390 as well, when I moved from snap to bigpipe and 2talk and decided to use an cisco 112 ata for phone as I always disliked the built in ata of the fritzbox. Advantages the cisco ata have over the built in ata of the fritzboxes for me were,

proper tone generation - you could set the ata up to sound like a pots line. The fritzbox always seemed wrong.

proper caller id - the fritzbox id would frequently result in "incomplete data transmission' on our uniden phones.

Correct message waiting indicator (MWI) - our phones now flash a red light when there is a voicemail waiting, and clear it once we have listened to it.

For my router, I'm using an old linksys E3200 with third party firmware on it. Supports vlan, dns masq, has great logging, vpn and comfortably supports 100/20.

grant_k

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Reply # 1513051 14-Mar-2016 14:11

jonathan18:

I'll have one last go on setting up the Huawei for 2Talk (unless someone can confirm that it's still useless trying to set up an alternative VOIP provider on a Vodafone-supplied HG659, even with the Spark firmware?), and if no luck will order a SPA112, and then possibly a new router if I can't sort the speed issue out with the Huawei.

Thanks again.

Almost a year ago now the ISP I was with at the time tried to get the ATA inside a Huawei RBI router to work with 2Talk. He is a 2Talk reseller so he knows his stuff. However, try as he might, we could only make outgoing calls with incoming calls never coming through. His comment was that the ATA inside the Huawei router was extremely basic compared to a Cisco/Linksys, and didn't have the required functions to get everything working reliably. Maybe the ATA inside your Huawei router is better, or maybe it's much the same. If I was in your situation I would just go for the SPA112 and not bother trying any further with the Huawei's ATA.

jonathan18

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Reply # 1513270 14-Mar-2016 19:54

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grant_k:

Almost a year ago now the ISP I was with at the time tried to get the ATA inside a Huawei RBI router to work with 2Talk. He is a 2Talk reseller so he knows his stuff. However, try as he might, we could only make outgoing calls with incoming calls never coming through. His comment was that the ATA inside the Huawei router was extremely basic compared to a Cisco/Linksys, and didn't have the required functions to get everything working reliably. Maybe the ATA inside your Huawei router is better, or maybe it's much the same. If I was in your situation I would just go for the SPA112 and not bother trying any further with the Huawei's ATA.

To my great surprise, I've managed to get 2Talk working on the Huawei HG659 without any hassle, first time! I've still got a speed issue, which isn't sustainable, but at least I have working (slow) internet and a working phone line. Have posted on the other thread (here) for ideas as to the slow internet speed. I don't see this as a permanent solution, especially given my speed is slower than when I had 30/10, but equally I don't want to fork out money for a new ATA and router only to find the problem's still there! Would really appreciate any tips as to what could be behind the slow speed.

mdf

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Reply # 1513277 14-Mar-2016 20:17

Depending on how many phones you've currently got in your house, you could also consider a VOIP phone/handset. We've got a Siemens Gigaset and it works great. Much higher WAF (both ease of use and call quality) than the old Grandstream ATA box.

darylblake

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Reply # 1515301 18-Mar-2016 08:13

I had sooooooo many problems with my fritz box 7340 with regards to the phone, one way voice and phone not ringing sometimes. Registrations failing it was an absolute disaster. People don't call me on my number anymore just call my mobile mainly because I cbf fixing it. Anyway I couldn't use a seperate ATA with it, it just made it worse. I owned a Linksys PAP2T its about 5 years old now but it works like a champ. Got rid of my fritz box an got a Mikrotik RB2011iL-IN and have been super impressed. The linkys works perfectly with it. It didn't have Wifi but I bought a seperate AP, also found that since I can mount the PoE AP wherever I want, I get better wifi throughout the property.

To be honest i really don't rate the fritz box's after my experiences.

jonathan18

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Reply # 1515357 18-Mar-2016 09:11

darylblake:

I had sooooooo many problems with my fritz box 7340 with regards to the phone, one way voice and phone not ringing sometimes. Registrations failing it was an absolute disaster. People don't call me on my number anymore just call my mobile mainly because I cbf fixing it. Anyway I couldn't use a seperate ATA with it, it just made it worse. I owned a Linksys PAP2T its about 5 years old now but it works like a champ. Got rid of my fritz box an got a Mikrotik RB2011iL-IN and have been super impressed. The linkys works perfectly with it. It didn't have Wifi but I bought a seperate AP, also found that since I can mount the PoE AP wherever I want, I get better wifi throughout the property.

To be honest i really don't rate the fritz box's after my experiences.

While I was with Snap/2 Degrees I'll be honest that my phone line was rock-solid, other than the back door they left open to allow my "friends" to use my line to call all number of countries (and not once, but twice!). But I agree with you regarding the overall quality, as I've now given up using my Fritz Box as still only gives me half-speed internet and I couldn't even repurpose it as an AP!

muppet

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Reply # 1515373 18-Mar-2016 09:28

I have a Cisco SRP527

I've never found anything better than it yet. Yea, it doesn't do Gige blah blah but I'm not using that, it's only 54G too, but that's plenty for me. I'd like something better than it, but I haven't yet found it. I just can't be bothered with a two box solution, it's more hassle and grief.

Fingers crossed someone has the answer... I've been searching for it!