[asterisk-users] Best inexpensive home office router for VoIP (QoS with maybe PoE)

[Julio Arruda]

Darrick Hartman wrote:
> Kenneth Padgett wrote:
>>> I'm looking for opinions on the "best value" router to use for home 
>>> offices.
>>>  It should work for a scenario in which there are 3 computers and 2 SIP
>>> phones, handling QoS so that the phones always have higher priority 
>>> traffic
>>> than the PCs. (and not rely on the phones to do the QoS because some 
>>> PCs may
>>> not be connected to the phones).
>>
>> I'm using a Linksys WRTSL54GS and 3rd party firmware with great
>> results! You won't find QoS features in the default Linksys firmware
>> though, so if you want something out of the box, this isn't much help.
>>
>> My main reasons for picking it over the older WRT54G's where:
>>
>> 1) It was (still is?) available in retail stores, whereas the WRT54G's
>> that run Linux are generally only on ebay these days, they have to be
>> older versions.
> 
> Linksys listened to demand and released a version that still has the 
> Linux firmware.  The model is WRT54GL with the L for Linux.
> 
> Newegg has them for $57 after MIR.

Note, seems like the 'current' WRT54GL has less flash/memory than older 
releases of WRT54GS, sadly :-)
http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware?action=show&redirect=toh  may 
help on this case.
Another point is, he mentioned some WRTSL54GS, that seems to be a Linux 
version of the WRT54GS (and seems to keep the same memory/flash as the 
old WRT54GS). Bottom-line, homework is required :-)
I've migrated a pair of these to openwrt (from Talisman) recently, and 
still need to move the home Internet link into one, but it seems quite 
flexible (even some asterisk and openser/related packages are available).
Regarding QoS, as many mentioned, most of your problems will be in the 
upstream (and as a matter of fact, in a residential broadband, is how 
far you can go regarding 'control').
 From my experience, one big deal is shaping, you need to configure your 
'QoS border' box to shape the upstream traffic, then I would be 
concerned with priority being given to the VOIP traffic.
Doesn't seems like many used a plain approach of using DSCP for QoS in 
these kind of setups, but many VOIP devices seem to use these just fine 
to tag the packets by default, so I guess this would be a nice way of 
being 'vendor/configuration agnostic', not depending in UDP port ranges 
and etc for classification. When I finish the migration (need to 
schedule some maintenance windows still with wife and mother-in-law), I 
will start to play with distinct devices and etc.
PoE of course is not an option seems in this range of devices 
(price-wise), but..guess is a matter of time :-)