Networking Help Please

[jrara]

Hello All,

I have a T1 (1.5 Mbps up and down) with Five IP addresses.

1 IP for VPN Tunnel
1 IP for Squid/OWA
1 IP for VOIP (PFsense Box installed)

I currently have the T1 router then it splits off with a Switch to distribute the connections to the above.

Issue is that People are complaining that VOIP Quality is sucky at times.

I did up the QOS but I realized that that Switch After the T1 router might be distributing the bandwidth equally among devices so QOS is going to do Squat for me.

I know everybody will tell me go to get a Managed Switch or get another Connection for the VPN Tunnel/OWA traffic.

Are my assumptions correct? Also any advice.

Company does not want to fork money for a new connection because they are not so sure that leaving the T1 dedicated to VOIP will help.

Thanks in Advance.

[Scorcher]

It is most likely your T1 that is the bottleneck here. So to start you can probably ignore QoS on the switch or any other local network devices, you really need QoS on your T1.

However, the problem with QoS is that it doesn't do much for you if you only have it on one end of the connection.

To get the best quality you really need the ISP to prioritize the voice traffic on their end as well. Right now they are not likely doing this and everything coming down the pipe to your office is a free for all. Some ISPs will not provide this type of QoS, in that case your best bet is to get a separate connection for voice only. (BTW you could try out a cheap DSL or Cable connection first before committing to another T1 circuit)

I'm curious, what are your users complaining about? It is not being able to hear incoming callers? Or are incoming callers complaining that they cannot hear your users? or Both?

[ExtremeX]

What type of firewall or traffic shaper do you run? How advanced are the QOS settings?

T1 these days isn’t much bandwidth anymore for today’s IP traffic even in some small business applications. I’ve been stuck with a junk DSL line until 9 months ago. We had a lot of VPN issues, and EVERYTHING cleared up after getting a 35/35 Fios business plan with static IPs.

Look at products like Packeteer, its traffic shaping on a very granular level. I use a Fortigate firewall product which is aware of VOIP type traffic and has some policy and user based traffic shaping as well.

Chances are if your line is over saturated from your own traffic you need to get something better for QOS, it may not have anything to do with the ISP.

In the days of our DSL line, I was lucky enough to have a Dual WAN firewall to work with, and used a second connection for active/active balancing.

[jrara]

What type of firewall or traffic shaper do you run? How advanced are the QOS settings?

Thank Guys.


I am using PFsense Traffic Shaper.

I have prioritized VOIP traffic.


Users are complaining about Chopping Incoming calls.
Time to time both incoming and outgoing are choppy.

I barge on the calls but sometimes don't hear the issue.

We are using a VPN Tunnel for VOIP also to connect our 10.9.0.0 network to the 10.9.0.1 network.

Our PBX sits at the 10.9.0.0 network.

I am using PFsense Boxes to establish the connection.

Also the 10.9.0.0 network is on a 3Mbps Line while the 10.9.1.0 is on a 1.5 Mbps.

[ExtremeX]

Is the PFsense box a virtual machine or dedicated hardware? Just make sure you don’t have any i/o issues first.

It may not apply to you... but check the cabling too. I once had a really bad issue that took me days to figure out, turned out it was packet loss problems from a bad cat 5e cable. Stupid but it happens. If you don’t own a quality cable tester, you should.

Chances are it’s the lines bandwidth. How many users on the network?

You said you were using QoS… where was the QoS being applied, on the gateway device?

[jrara]

PFsense has dedicated hardware. The machine is new and we had it tested for a week before its deployment.

I'll try the cabling though I tested all the cables when I did the install.

We have 10 people on the 10.9.1.0 network (this is the network everybody is complaining about call quality).

QOS is applied but would the gateway device be the T1 router itself?

[Scorcher]

Wait so you have two internal networks or are these networks at different sites? (Nevermind I think you are saying you have two different sites with a VPN tunnel between them and only one PBX)

Anyway, What I am saying is that the PFsense prioritization is doing nothing for you incoming data. It is only prioritizing outgoing traffic. So if Bob is streaming youtube, Suzy is downloading an itunes movie, and George is receiving a call they all will get the same priority coming IN to your network. Traffic going OUT will be prioritized only.

[jrara]

Wait so you have two internal networks or are these networks at different sites? (Nevermind I think you are saying you have two different sites with a VPN tunnel between them and only one PBX)

Anyway, What I am saying is that the PFsense prioritization is doing nothing for you incoming data. It is only prioritizing outgoing traffic. So if Bob is streaming youtube, Suzy is downloading an itunes movie, and George is receiving a call they all will get the same priority coming IN to your network. Traffic going OUT will be prioritized only.

Both Networks are in two different geographic regions
10.9.0.0 in SFO and 10.9.1.0 in LAX both connected via VPN.
The PBX is sitting on the 10.9.0.0 network.

[Scorcher]

Another question, Is your PBX attached to the PSTN with POTS lines or are you using some kind of VOIP provider?

[jrara]

Another question, Is your PBX attached to the PSTN with POTS lines or are you using some kind of VOIP provider?

We are using a VOIP Provider with SIP trunking.

No POTS or connection to the PSTN.

Someone Mentioned VLANs to me in another forum, would this help?

[Scorcher]

Ok here is the problem I see at your LAX location:

ISP sends traffic to you (download / incoming voice) = No QoS applied
You send traffic to ISP (upload / outgoing voice)= QoS applied by PFsense

Therefore your INCOMING VOIP traffic is being delayed because your bandwidth is being fully utilized.

So there are a few ways to fix this.

1. Have your ISP apply correct QoS, prioritizing incoming VOIP traffic. (this may be tricky because your VOIP traffic is encrypted via VPN tunnel also many ISPs do not want to bother with this)
2. Have a separate internet connection installed for Voice only.
3. Increase bandwidth at LAX until you are no longer fully saturating the line. (Slippery slope...)

[Scorcher]

We are using a VOIP Provider with SIP trunking.

No POTS or connection to the PSTN.

Someone Mentioned VLANs to me in another forum, would this help?

Not likely, your site is so small (10 desktops) that i cant imagine your local network is to blame for any quality issues. Your problem is going to stem from that 1.5 mbps pipe. VLANs might be useful to segregate your local VOIP traffic for security reasons, but that is about it.

[hcbr]

What i would do is check the metrics, see what your utilization is on your router etc. and see what's going on. If you're pushing over 60% then yes, you're definitely hosing the pipe to have the VOIP come in. You'll need to either up the bandwidth , and Scorcher is right, VLAN's won't help unless you have a multi dept structure with a bunch of people that need to be segregated into separate functional networks.

Otherwise, like ExtremeX said, check your firewall settings. I've seen some firewalls really do hose some connections.

[bigmike82]

I tentatively concur with the sense that the T1 is your bottleneck...though it *should* be able to handle several different calls concurrently. That said, you will definitely want to check on your bandwidth utilization, and test to see how much your calls are actually taking up.

Yeah, certain codecs are supposed to run within a certain size, but you'll want to verify this.

A final option is installing a secondary internet service. DSL is great for this ... it's cheap, installed quickly, and provides a great way to provide good connectivity to a location. Then just route traffic for 10.9/16 through the T1, and everything else through the DSL.

[den888]

You said that the VOIP quality is sucky "at times". That tells me that it's intermittent.

It could be that when there are several VOIP calls simultaneously, the calls are occupying the entire bandwidth of the T-1 and you are getting dropped packets. Codecs use between 32 kbps to 96 kbps of bandwidth, with the average at 64 kbps (23 calls to a DS1).