QoS on a consumer router?

[Kelemvor]

Howdy,

I need to get a router that supports QoS because I'm switching to VoIP at home.

As of right now I'm looking towards the WRT54G router that I would put some different firmware on to support that. However I wouldn't be using this router as my wireless router so the wireless part isn't really needed.

Are there any other routers that also support decent QoS that might not offer wireless and might be cheaper than the Linksys WRT54G? Or is that router pretty much the cheapest one to get since it's only like $50 anyway.

 

[JackMDS]

Take a look at the Linksys BEFSR81 (it expensive).

Wired Routers are not cheaper than Wireless.

They actually make very few of them, most of what is available is quite old.

So save you time (cause money you probably would not save) and get a flashable WRT.

:sun:

 

[RT]

The WRT routers are great and I use them myself, but one caveat is that once your internet connection speed goes over about 6 megabit, the QoS doesn't work properly, no matter what firmware you use.

I was using Sveasoft alchemy on a 4 megabit connection and the QoS worked great. However, when I upgraded my 'net connection to 10megabit, any use of QoS would throttle the connection to around 6megabit. Turn off QoS and I was again able to max out my connection at 10mb. I tried a multitude of QoS settings in several firmware versions (Sveasoft, Linksys and DD-WRT) and the problem occurred with all of them.

I raised the issue at the linksysinfo forums and found I wasn't the only one having a problem using QoS on a high speed internet connection. The feeling seemed to be that the hardware wasn't really up to the task of processing and prioritising connections quickly enough to keep up with the throughput of data from the WAN once you went over around 6megabit.

Just something to be aware of if you have a high speed connection.

On the flip side, when I was running QoS on a 4 megabit connection, it worked superbly, so if your connection is below 6 megabits, the WRT54g(s) should work like a charm

Edit: Do NOT buy a V5 WRT54G, as these cannot use third party firmware. All versions prior to V5 can be loaded with 3rd party firmware. For more info about the WRT54g series of routers see http://www.linksysinfo.org/

 

[Kelemvor]

My connection is 5meg down from Roadrunner. So hopefully I won't have any problems. But I'm more concerned with the uploadp art of QoS anyway since I very rarely max out my download speed.

 

[kamper]

If performance got to be a problem, it would probably make sense to forget about buying a soho router and get an old pc and put some *nix routing-geared distro on it.

 

[Tazanator]

Well I use imagestream routers .. commercial grade (cisco level) but they got a new box comming out called an envoy that is supposed to be almost linksys cost with cisco performance. They are giving a release date of march 30th and so far the rumors from engineers working on it sound really good. www.imagestream.com is the web site (I have the older rebels and have nothing but praise for them from Dial-up to DS3.