IAD devices - some general questions

I'm looking at all options for one of my rural clients who currently has VDSL2+ with BT giving 20Mbps/1.1Mbps which most of the time is fine but one of their tenants wants to use VOIP and that upstream just doesn't seem to be working for them. So we're looking at BTnet leased line (unlikely due to extreme cost), FTTPoD (possible depending on line install) and bonded FTTC (should work and not for too much).

But reading the post about 4G IAD has peaked my interest. They've said that 4G is a none starter and certainly my EE 4G even outside is useless but the EE transmitter is 3km away. There is an O2 transmitter 1.5km away and www.opensignal.com has a little bit of data from O2 at the site showing a strong signal.

I know it's all pie in the sky, but could that O2 transmitter be able to get 3Mbps upstream with an IAD? I know what a big difference being inside makes with mobile. Sat in my house, 0.8km from the EE transmitter and I get 20Mbps/2Mbps with big thick stone walls. Step outside and I get a very impressive 90Mbps/25Mps. One assumes if I had a better antennae as found in an IAD, that you might get even better speeds?

What kind of uplift in speeds do you see with IAD compared to a mobile phone? Or rather is their trick getting reasonable speeds at slightly longer distances.

The MikroTik RBwAPR-2nD&R11e-LTE ([censored] product name of the day award) seems good at <£100. The ZyXEL LTE7410-A214 is a heafty £331 from Broadbandbuyer (although out of stock). Am I comparing apples and oranges here?

Next question is whether both of them could be plugged into the 2nd WAN2 port on a Draytek 2860 router? I assume the answer is yes as it's seems to present just another ethernet connection.

Final hurdle might be a decent business contract with O2. One hasn't a clue how much bandwidth the tenants VOIP would use but we could dedicate a VLAN to just this.

How many voip calls at a single time are they looking to support?

Until you know that and how much data they use, you will find yourself keep bouncing the many tech avenues.

1.1 Mbps upload should support several VoIP calls at the same time if codes are setup right and you don't have other activity on a line.

Only two but the current 1Mbps link isn't coping. They are sales calls so have to be pretty good quality.

But might all be moot as fate may once be on my client's side as a Facebook post turned up vispa.net who offer FTTM and my client is in their (limited) service area.

£200/months business tariff gives them 40MBps/40Mbps uncontended and unlimited. Install cost £0-£600.

All in all, a good solution *if* they can get it.

Nope, they can't get it at the moment so back to 4G options as a stop-gap. I've put together a spreadsheet to calculate some rough guesses. If VOIP is using 1Mbps (which is half-way between min of 500kps & 2Mbps recommended), then 30GB is about 4 hours every working day. There are two of them so 2 hours each. That sounds like a lot of time on the phone every day but they are sales people... Of course, it carries over so if they don't use it for a day 'cos they are out, then they can have 4 hours the next day etc.

I might suggest we go for PAYG for a couple of weeks so we can get some statistics.

If VoIP is using 500 Kbps down and 500 Kbps per call, i.e. 1 Mbps then that is a better audio bit rate than most HD Stereo movies.

If you are going down the path of 4G and limited allowances you need to do some work with the client on bit rates ACTUALLY used, rather than going by what some FAQ somewhere recommends.

It may be someone has gone for a lossless type codec when in their situation they need to actually use one of the codecs that will produce excellent quality at the 128 Kbps to 192 Kbps range.

VoIP is NOT data intensive, but it is very sensitive to latency variations and dropped packets.

I know but my hands are tied in that I don't have direct access to my client's tenant to see how they are using it. I don't even know what they are using - mobile phone with a phone app or a wired VOIP phone or even a Wi-Fi phone. They are Cisco resellers so I'm guessing it's Cisco kit. 1Mbps is based upon their observation that it's not usable at the moment. Yes, I'd love more accurate stats.

Their connection is through a Draytek Vigor 2860 router where VoIP SIP/RTP is (I think) enabled:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cxqfgenbjxwev7p/vigor02.pn...

And when one looks at QoS status, you can see VOIP traffic is being picked up:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jty1iojgsymse0a/vigor03.pn...

Don't know whether they are using the phone right now because it's only showing <1kbps there - the link has a capacity of 1,100kbps upstream. The Vigor is good but getting (say) the amount of bandwidth used in a general 10 minute phone call isn't easy.

Yes it's frustrating when you can't get the low-down. I hope I can get to see the client's tenant on Monday during a site visit. It's all a bit sensitive.

I have pointed out to my client that we might using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It could be that they are routing VoIP through their VPN which won't be helping.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jty1iojgsymse0a/vigor03.pn...

950 bits per second? And 1.22 Kilo bits per second? That would be a sub telephone call quality if there is actually a VOIP call in progress Also the QoS seems to have four other categories with 25% of bandwidth allocated which would leave VoIP with nothing if that image is making sense.

You have totally confirmed that this is a VDSL2 service and not ADSL2+ since the speeds could be ADSL2+

You need someone to bash a few heads together to find out what people NEED, and whether what they are doing how is actually the right thing beyond spending lots of money on stuff that may not be needed.

I think all we got there was a snapshot of idle VoIP - yes, definitely not a call going through there. Definitely VDSL+ If you look top-left of the first screenshot, you'll see 17742.00Kbps/1129.00Kbps which is the bandwidth of the internet link as dynamically measured by the Vigor.

Edited by deleted (Thu 08-Mar-18 15:31:53)

I really don't see why you can't make two VOIP lines work with a 20/1 service.

Lets face it, each call only needs 128kbps up and down together with good latency and low packet loss.

I ran a VOIP line on 5/0.8 quite happily for several years but I did reserve some downstream bandwidth for VOIP and also prioritised its outbound traffic.

It just needs a will to make it work and a correctly configured network.

Me neither - for another client, I've got a Skype for Business audio conferencing license so I've just remotely installed this on a laptop at this site. I've just carried out a three-way conference call to my mobile and my landline. Watching the same VoIP status display as linked above showed a) the VoIP traffic was being prioritised and b) it was using about 80kbps which sounds about right.

Will know more after the site visit. VoIP 'ain't my speciality... the Vigor is just prioritising UDP traffic over port 5060. Haven't a clue if Skype for Business audio call even uses that port.