DD-WRT - fixing my VOIP and WiFi problems

[rbelk]

Here's my setup.

- DD-WRT running on a LinkSys WTR54G WiFi router
- Dell Laptop using wireless
- my magicJack plugged into my Dell Laptop
- A 2.4 GHz cordless phone

I have tried numerous times to fix my magicJack cordless phone static/popping issues and my Laaptop WiFi dropping conections, until tonight! I read all the Help files on all the configuration pages I finally found my issues. It was just a couple of settings that needed changed.

1. Wireless Page - Basic Settings page
Wireless Network Mode --- set to "G-Only"
Wireless Channel --- 11 , 2,562 GHz (This is the channel to set for the least interference, see note below)
>> then save settings, your router will restart

2. Wireless Page - Advanced Settings
CTS Protection Mode --- Disable (With this disabled, my problems were fixed, see note below!)
Frame Burst --- Enable
TX Antenna --- Auto
RX Antenna --- Auto
>> then save settings, your router will restart

3. Applications & Gaming page - QoS
Start QoS --- Enable
Port --- WAN
Packet Scheduler --- HTB
QoS Settings --- go to http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and run
use 80% of your upload speed for the uplink
use 80% of your download speed for your downlink
Services Priority --- add "sip" with a priority of "Premium"
MAC Priority --- add my mac "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" with a priority of "Premium"
>> then save settings, your router will restart

>>The "Wireless Channel" was my first problem. It was set on auto, but after googling I set it to "Channel 11 - 2,562 GHz"

If you use a Wi-Fi 802.11G router, which works on both 2.4ghz and 5ghz, and Wi-Fi G cards for your computers, you can usually tell the router to
just use the 5ghz band, which will avoid interference with 2.4ghz phones and RFID equipment. Older W-Fi B wireless cards in laptops won't work
in that situation (the 2.4ghz band was included in the G routers to make them compatible with the older, slower B cards), but if there are no
guests on the wireless network, this is a good way to go.

Channel 11 have the least amount of of interference, so I changed it.

>>The "CTS Protection Mode" was my second problem. I only use G but with "CTS Protection Mode" enabled the router will still let B devices to connect.

CTS Protection Mode
The default value is Auto. When set to Auto, a protection mechanism will ensure that your Wireless-B devices will connect to the
Wireless-G router when many Wireless-G devices are present. However, performance of your Wireless-G devices may be decreased.

I disabled "CTS Protection Mode" and no static or popping!
The issue was my 2.4 GHz cordless phone was causing WiFi/magicJack issues!

I hone this information might help others...

[gooney]

Here's my setup.

- DD-WRT running on a LinkSys WTR54G WiFi router
- Dell Laptop using wireless
- my magicJack plugged into my Dell Laptop
- A 2.4 GHz cordless phone

I have tried numerous times to fix my magicJack cordless phone static/popping issues and my Laaptop WiFi dropping conections, until tonight! I read all the Help files on all the configuration pages I finally found my issues. It was just a couple of settings that needed changed.

1. Wireless Page - Basic Settings page
Wireless Network Mode --- set to "G-Only"
Wireless Channel --- 11 , 2,562 GHz (This is the channel to set for the least interference, see note below)
>> then save settings, your router will restart

2. Wireless Page - Advanced Settings
CTS Protection Mode --- Disable (With this disabled, my problems were fixed, see note below!)
Frame Burst --- Enable
TX Antenna --- Auto
RX Antenna --- Auto
>> then save settings, your router will restart

3. Applications & Gaming page - QoS
Start QoS --- Enable
Port --- WAN
Packet Scheduler --- HTB
QoS Settings --- go to http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and run
use 80% of your upload speed for the uplink
use 80% of your download speed for your downlink
Services Priority --- add "sip" with a priority of "Premium"
MAC Priority --- add my mac "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" with a priority of "Premium"
>> then save settings, your router will restart

>>The "Wireless Channel" was my first problem. It was set on auto, but after googling I set it to "Channel 11 - 2,562 GHz"

If you use a Wi-Fi 802.11G router, which works on both 2.4ghz and 5ghz, and Wi-Fi G cards for your computers, you can usually tell the router to
just use the 5ghz band, which will avoid interference with 2.4ghz phones and RFID equipment. Older W-Fi B wireless cards in laptops won't work
in that situation (the 2.4ghz band was included in the G routers to make them compatible with the older, slower B cards), but if there are no
guests on the wireless network, this is a good way to go.

Channel 11 have the least amount of of interference, so I changed it.

>>The "CTS Protection Mode" was my second problem. I only use G but with "CTS Protection Mode" enabled the router will still let B devices to connect.

CTS Protection Mode
The default value is Auto. When set to Auto, a protection mechanism will ensure that your Wireless-B devices will connect to the
Wireless-G router when many Wireless-G devices are present. However, performance of your Wireless-G devices may be decreased.

I disabled "CTS Protection Mode" and no static or popping!
The issue was my 2.4 GHz cordless phone was causing WiFi/magicJack issues!

I hone this information might help others...

DECT 6 Cordless phones

[LikeMagic]

It's a very helpful post to help nubbies ... thanks for posting


You may want to double check your source on wireless-G using 5Ghz band.

According to this wiki page

- 802.11b (wireless-B) and 802.11g (wireless-G) are both using 2.4Ghz
- 802.11a (wireless-A) is using 5Ghz
- 802.11n (wireless-N) is using 5Ghz and/or 2.4Ghz
- 802.11y (wireless-Y) is using 3.7 Ghz (available ~ June 2008)

If you use a Wi-Fi 802.11G router, which works on both 2.4ghz and 5ghz, and Wi-Fi G cards for your computers, you can usually tell the router to
just use the 5ghz band, which will avoid interference with 2.4ghz phones and RFID equipment. Older W-Fi B wireless cards in laptops won't work
in that situation (the 2.4ghz band was included in the G routers to make them compatible with the older, slower B cards), but if there are no
guests on the wireless network, this is a good way to go.

I believe I know where you got confused. Most B/G routers have
- selectable G-mode only (max 54Mbps) which uses OFDM (Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing)
- selectable B-mode only which uses DSSS (direct sequence spread spectrum)
- selectable G-mode (OFDM) & B-mode (DSSS)
- G-mode (OFDM) is not compatible with B-mode wireless cards (which use only DSSS for communication).

- Bottom line: wireless-B/G router uses 2.4Ghz band, B-mode uses DSSS for communication (1-11Mbps), G-mode uses OFDM for communication (11-54Mbps).

[VaHam]

Here's my setup.

- DD-WRT running on a LinkSys WTR54G WiFi router
- Dell Laptop using wireless
- my magicJack plugged into my Dell Laptop
- A 2.4 GHz cordless phone

Which version and SP of DD-WRT are you running?

I have tried numerous times to fix my magicJack cordless phone static/popping issues and my Laaptop WiFi dropping conections, until tonight! I read all the Help files on all the configuration pages I finally found my issues. It was just a couple of settings that needed changed.

1. Wireless Page - Basic Settings page
Wireless Network Mode --- set to "G-Only"
Wireless Channel --- 11 , 2,562 GHz (This is the channel to set for the least interference, see note below)
>> then save settings, your router will restart

The G-only is of coarse only for folks who run G adapters only. I don't use G at all and have mine set to run B-Only which works fine also. I am not really sure if there is an advantage in not having the router have to accept both if your not using both B and G adapters in your network or not. But if your only using one or the other then it may be the safe thing to do.

The Wireless channel 11 setting does seem to provide the best isolation from problems with 2.4ghz phones.

2. Wireless Page - Advanced Settings
CTS Protection Mode --- Disable (With this disabled, my problems were fixed, see note below!)
Frame Burst --- Enable
TX Antenna --- Auto
RX Antenna --- Auto
>> then save settings, your router will restart

The CTS setting depends on whether your network must support B or not. If not then disabling this may as it did in your case improve the performance. But if your network has a mix of B and G devices then you should leave this enabled.

Frame burst can improve transmissions but only when up to about three wireless devices are used on your LAN any more than that and it can actually slow things down.

Leaving your antenna settings on auto is best for normal users (i.e. those without outside antennas) since even routers which appear to have only one antenna, actually do have a second one inside which is used to provide spacial diversity and can improve it's reception. The router is smart enough to know which antenna to actually transmit from.

3. Applications & Gaming page - QoS
Start QoS --- Enable
Port --- WAN
Packet Scheduler --- HTB
QoS Settings --- go to http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and run
use 80% of your upload speed for the uplink
use 80% of your download speed for your downlink
Services Priority --- add "sip" with a priority of "Premium"
MAC Priority --- add my mac "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" with a priority of "Premium"
>> then save settings, your router will restart

Qos will help to solve a lot of the intermittent transmission problems, whether or not to apply it only to the WAN or to both the WAN and LAN depends on the nature and number of devices on your LAN. I have several servers, a couple of Tivo's, and a 802 USB port hub serving the network here. I use QoS on both the WAN and LAN which seems to works fine.

Yes speakeasy is great for testing your uplink and downlink speeds. I assume you mean just to realize that your actual uplink/downlink speeds are about 80% of the values shown by speakeasy.

HTB is superior to HSFC for voip packet prioritizing. I believe this is the type of service the Hawkings Device I have seen mentioned here provides for those who do not have routers capable of doing this.

I am not sure about simply selecting "sip" from the list of services and choosing Premium for it really does anything good. If you edit the drop down "sip" and look at it's settings it shows the ports as being 0 to 0 and protocol L7 which is exactly the same as all the other ones in the drop down list; at least in my version of DD-WRT (v2.3 SP2). Perhaps some of the v2.4 release candidates have different options here.

What I do is to define three services of my own as I saw someone else suggest on this site (sorry I don't remmber who right now). The first I call mj5060-5061 and set it to UDP and ports 5060 to 5061. The second I call mj5070 and set it to UDP and port 5070 to 5070. The third I call voip_rtp and set it to UDP&TCP and for now give it a range of port 10,000 to port 20,000. I then add all three of these as service priorities and give them Premium priority. I am not really sure if the first two are really all that necessary in handling voip traffic. I think the normal voip traffic on 5060 and 5061 (and for MJ 5070) are just used for connecting with a voip proxy to establish the call. The real audio data where the snap crackle pop is heard actually goes on in the RTP data which is conducted by MJ as far as I can tell in the port 10,000-20,000 range. There is no real standard for the ports to use for RTP but most generally use the 16384-32767. I have seen MJ using ports lower than this however (mostly around 15,000+-) so that is why I picked the range 10,000-20,000. You can use Wire Shark or a similar program to see the actual ports MJ is using for RTP (and they could be subject to change with different releases of MJ). I wish MJ would publish the range they use; it would make setting QoS much easier.

I also have a Linksys SPA-3102 serving voip thru the same router and I get priority for it's traffic by using the MAC priority technique you use. Giving a MAC priority is much easier than having to setup the services method I described above. If your using a separate computer (like an old laptop or a thin client) who's primary task is to host MJ then you can give MJ priority by just granting Premium service to the MAC address of that computer.

Giving a MAC priority actually gives priority to all types of packets flowing to and from that MAC (in this case your laptop) and thus doesn't give voip (magicJack) traffic any higher priority than any other packet traffic to and from your laptop. It will give priority over traffic to and from other devices on your LAN however. This when used in combination with giving priority to MJ software on your laptop it can work fine.

I don't run Vista yet but I understand there are QoS settings in Vista which can be set to give priority to magicJack.exe . In XP you can go to the task manager processes tab and scroll down to magicJack.exe right click on it and elevate it's priority. I just set it to above normal since most normal processes use "normal" priority and critical processes use much higher priority. Setting MJ to above normal gives it priority over most things but leaves XP critical process the priority they may need.

When the priority is set in this manner it only remains as long as the current user session is active. Following a reboot the magicJack.exe priority would return to "normal". If you want to make this change permanent then take a look at installing Prio which adds the ability to remember these priority changes after a reboot.

Giving MJ "above normal" process priority made all the difference in the world for me. My network (cox cable) has plenty of bandwidth and I don't have that much traffic coming and going thru the router gateway to the internet to clog that up.

[rbelk]

The version I of DD-WRT I use is v23 SP3 (01/05/07) std. I also gave MJ High priority through the Task Manager. I wish I could set the priority at startup than having to do it manually or a free utility do that for me.

[testing123]

Here's my setup.

- DD-WRT running on a LinkSys WTR54G WiFi router
- Dell Laptop using wireless
- my magicJack plugged into my Dell Laptop
- A 2.4 GHz cordless phone

...

DECT 6 Cordless phones

x2, aside from ensuring that you have a some form of QoS on your router, DECT 6.0 phones will prove to be THE most interference-free cordless phones currently available.

Some basic references:
1. http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/313/C9698/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dect

I don't normally go recommending you "buy" rather than fix an issue like this, but I must say these phones are now very cheap and VERY good.

[VaHam]

The version I of DD-WRT I use is v23 SP3 (01/05/07) std. I also gave MJ High priority through the Task Manager. I wish I could set the priority at startup than having to do it manually or a free utility do that for me.

I have been holding off upgrading DD-WRT till the final release of v24. Are there really services defined in SP3? Maybe I should go ahead and upgrade instead of waiting. Yeah it would be nice if permanent priority assignments could be made in XP natively but hey Prio is free and it works well.

[zhotster]

[I am not sure about simply selecting "sip" from the list of services and choosing Premium for it really does anything good. If you edit the drop down "sip" and look at it's settings it shows the ports as being 0 to 0 and protocol L7 which is exactly the same as all the other ones in the drop down list; at least in my version of DD-WRT (v2.3 SP2). Perhaps some of the v2.4 release candidates have different options here.

What I do is to define three services of my own as I saw someone else suggest on this site (sorry I don't remmber who right now). The first I call mj5060-5061 and set it to UDP and ports 5060 to 5061. The second I call mj5070 and set it to UDP and port 5070 to 5070. The third I call voip_rtp and set it to UDP&TCP and for now give it a range of port 10,000 to port 20,000. I then add all three of these as service priorities and give them Premium priority. I am not really sure if the first two are really all that necessary in handling voip traffic. I think the normal voip traffic on 5060 and 5061 (and for MJ 5070) are just used for connecting with a voip proxy to establish the call. The real audio data where the snap crackle pop is heard actually goes on in the RTP data which is conducted by MJ as far as I can tell in the port 10,000-20,000 range. There is no real standard for the ports to use for RTP but most generally use the 16384-32767. I have seen MJ using ports lower than this however (mostly around 15,000+-) so that is why I picked the range 10,000-20,000. You can use Wire Shark or a similar program to see the actual ports MJ is using for RTP (and they could be subject to change with different releases of MJ). I wish MJ would publish the range they use; it would make setting QoS much easier.

Giving a MAC priority actually gives priority to all types of packets flowing to and from that MAC (in this case your laptop) and thus doesn't give voip (magicJack) traffic any higher priority than any other packet traffic to and from your laptop. It will give priority over traffic to and from other devices on your LAN however. This when used in combination with giving priority to MJ software on your laptop it can work fine.

VaHam, thanks for the well written explanation of QOS and the related settings. I just applied DD-WRT to my Linksys router and I used these QOS settings. I do have a dedicated machine that's running the MJ right now, but it still makes sense to try and lock the traffic down as much as possible. I haven't used Wire Shark, but if this doesn't seem to smooth things out I will so I can see the ports.

I have two MJ setups. I'd like to knock this out since I have phones and faxes at both locations.

[GreenMonkey]

VaHam

Thanks for the great post. I've been struggling with getting QoS settings on DD-WRT to play nice with magicjack. My "dumb" QoS device I was using before DD-WRT (Hawking HBB1 Broadband booster) was doing a better job. I will try some of your tweaks.