need help

[sharrpie]

I have been trying to better my service but tech support has been somewhat limited in helping me. I am currently using dsl thru AT&T I have a dsl modem with built in router for wireless network and I have a 2nd pc running on the wireless part of it. I have ask about setting up a static ip but they do not seem to want to do it sometimes telling me that the modem/router combo that I have might work well to do that. I have a bit torrent set up for peer to peer sharing and I can not be downloading anything or uploading anything to anyone cause it really messes my voip up. my service is in the DMZ also. As long as I am not downloading or uploading then my service is decent at best. My internet speed is great usually pushing 5 megs and around 600 kb on upload. is this as good as it gets or is this normal. Is there some some way of tweaking my service to get the maximum out of it. my adapter is a
linksys pap2t. if anyone can help. thank you very much in advance!!

[sbradshaw]

I recommend that you get a separate DSL modem and router (no combos). That way, you can get a decent router that has QOS built-in. The QOS will allow you to dedicate some bandwidth for VOIP traffic so that your peer-to-peer sharing does not interfere with it. That is what I would do.

[sharrpie]

so just get rid of the combo i have and replace it with separate modem and router. What do you recomend as in types of modems and routers.... and how do you allocate bandwith and how much would you allocate

[GregM]

What is the make and model of your dsl modem/router?

[DracoFelis]

II have a bit torrent set up for peer to peer sharing and I can not be downloading anything or uploading anything to anyone cause it really messes my voip up.
That's likely your issue right there.

VoIP requires it's bandwidth (in the case of VaiTalk's service, that's about 100k for the "phone" required in each direction, download AND upload) to be reasonably steady, or your voice can really suffer. And pretty much all the P2P file sharing protocols can be so hungry for bandwidth, that they can prevent everything else on your LAN from being able to get steady internet bandwidth.

In such situations, you are pretty much SOL, because your P2P program really is ruining your internet for everything else (including your phone) on your network. Setting a static IP address won't help, because the problem isn't your DHCP. A router with full QoS ("Quality of Service", or the ability to prioritize various internet traffic) can help, but sometimes a QoS router might not help enough, as the P2P protocols can often overwhelm the ability of a QoS router to prioritize your phone over the P2P traffic. About your only options IMHO are to:

1) Stop using the P2P protocols, to get your internet back. NOTE: Even turning off the P2P file sharing while you are on the phone might not be "good enough" (even though it would clearly help), as you may still have other P2P clients trying to connect to your computer (and therefore still ruining your phone service some) due to your recent history of using a P2P program!

2) Give up your VoIP service, if you must have your P2P file sharing. In my experience ViaTalk phone service works well if you have the bandwidth for it. And most of us on broadband should have the bandwidth for it. But by using up your bandwidth with P2P programs, you have personally chosen to be in a situation where you don't have enough bandwidth, because you are letting the P2P programs hog your bandwidth.

or 3) Find some way to limit the P2P bandwidth used, so that you leave at least 100k upload and 100k download free for your phone. Depending upon your P2P client, and what router you have, this may or may not be feasible to do. Some P2P clients do allow you to "throttle" (control how much bandwidth the P2P client is allowed to use), and some don't. If your P2P client allows this feature, than you would want to carefully limit how much upload/download your P2P uses, so that your VT service has enough left over for its usage! And likewise some routers (for example ones that can use the open source http://www.dd-wrt.com firmware) can be setup to partially limit the bandwidth used by P2P (and thereby "reserve" bandwidth for use by your phone). But how effective these techniques are, is clearly a YMMV thing (i.e. these approaches help, but they may or may not help enough in your situation).

NOTE:
I don't have a lot of personal experience with the P2P protocols, as I mostly don't use them myself. However, I have used legal P2P (for example, AOL's "In2TV" P2P service, for watching old TV shows owned by AOL) just enough to have first hand experience on just how nasty (from a network bandwidth standpoint) P2P programs can be to your LAN. For example, even with my QoS enabled router (and it doesn't sound like your router has QoS abilities) set to throttle the speed of P2P protocols (and also set to try to give my VoIP adapter all the bandwidth it needs), my VT line still starts to have sound problems when I've AOL's TV app up and running (because AOL's app is a P2P program)!

Simply put, P2P is a death sentence for any "time critical" internet application (and VoIP is very time critical). And while there are some things you can do to help that problem (if you really want to run P2P programs), even the things you can do to "help" have limits. Therefore the best solution is to just not run P2P on an internet connection you want to use VoIP (internet phone service) on...

[sharrpie]

thank you all for your help I will take all of your info into consideration. To the person that ask what kind of modem I have, I have a 2wire modem/router combo from at&t. If there is anymore info someone can help me with I will greatly appreciate it. thankyou very much in advance.

[connervt]

Shareaza is a good P2P client that handles several networks, as well as torrents. You can limit both UL and DL bandwidth across all the different networks, as well as partial and complete files. I've used it while on my phone, and combined with a router that handles QoS, have had few call quality problems.

Another thing to consider -- You may also need to limit the number of connections you allow your P2P client to have open. Most home routers are pretty underpowered, processor-wise. When they are trying to handle hundreds of connection requests at one time, they will sometimes 'drop the ball' when the VOIP requests arrive, just because it has such a large queue of requests to sift through before it finds your voice packets. To your router, it almost looks like a mini DOS (Denial of Service) attack...

[GregM]

thank you all for your help I will take all of your info into consideration. To the person that ask what kind of modem I have, I have a 2wire modem/router combo from at&t. I was hoping that you could get the model number from the device. Your 2wire modem may already have the features folks here are referring to. Some of them also have VoIP capability built-in and/or optimization features. These could be conflicting with the equipment that you're installing. Letting us know which specific model you have will let us know the specific conditions of your situation.