Question Making wired IP Phone wireless with router extender mode receive voice worse than wifi phone

[teukuridho]

I have wired IP Phone Yealink SIP T-20 and want to connect it to a VOIP server via Wifi. So I connected the wired ip phone to wireless router (tp link wr840n) and enabled range extender mode on the router and selected the desired SSID. It works and I can make calls but it doesn't sound as good as wifi ip phone. I expected the wired ip phone connected to a router would sound as good as wifi ip phone, but it doesn't. My questions are

1. Did I do something wrong that made the wired ip phone wireless sounds worse than wifi ip phone?
2. Will a wifi repeater (like TPLINK TL-WA855RE) perform better?
3. Is there any other way to make ethernet Device wireless?

 

[kanewolf]

I have wired IP Phone Yealink SIP T-20 and want to connect it to a VOIP server via Wifi. So I connected the wired ip phone to wireless router (tp link wr840n) and enabled range extender mode on the router and selected the desired SSID. It works and I can make calls but it doesn't sound as good as wifi ip phone. I expected the wired ip phone connected to a router would sound as good as wifi ip phone, but it doesn't. My questions are

1. Did I do something wrong that made the wired ip phone wireless sounds worse than wifi ip phone?
2. Will a wifi repeater (like TPLINK TL-WA855RE) perform better?
3. Is there any other way to make ethernet Device wireless?

You picked the wrong device to use as a repeater. You have the slowest WIFI possible with that WR840N. It is 2.4Ghz only. You are probably getting interference from other WIFI and low bandwidth. The WA855RE is not any better. You need a device that is 5Ghz capable. I recommend used Asus routers. The N56U has been selling on E-Bay for around $10. It has WIFI repeater mode built-in and is 5Ghz compatible.

 

[teukuridho]

You picked the wrong device to use as a repeater. You have the slowest WIFI possible with that WR840N. It is 2.4Ghz only. You are probably getting interference from other WIFI and low bandwidth. The WA855RE is not any better. You need a device that is 5Ghz capable. I recommend used Asus routers. The N56U has been selling on E-Bay for around $10. It has WIFI repeater mode built-in and is 5Ghz compatible.

thank you for you reply. i will try it tomorrow and will let you know if it works

 

[teukuridho]

so I have bought Asus N56U and tried to connect it to my second router via Wifi, but seems it has to be via WDS which needs the second router to be configured (add the N56U mac addr to the WDS list) I thought it would be just select the wifi SSID and password and connect. Or will a custom firmware (like Padavan) able to connect to second router without configuring the router?

 

[bill001g]

The reason access to the main router is required is for security reasons. Part of the way they prevent spoofing attacks against the main router is to use the mac address as part of the encryption keys. This would mean when you run any kind of repeater it uses the repeaters mac address and no other devices mac would pass.

WDS is a hack around this that uses a special field to carry the mac address. Because it is a security exposure many router require special configuration to use it. This feature is almost as bad as just giving out your SSID and password to anyone so you really want to control which devices can connected by keying in the list of repeaters allowed to connect.

There are other hacks to do this that do not require access but the most common implementation runs the second device kinda like a router that has a wifi for a WAN port. It requires dedication of the wifi chip to this function which for most routers mean you have to use the slower 2.4 to talk to the end clients or the master router. This also creates a completely different subnet which causes file sharing issues.

 

[bill001g]

looking back you don't need to use repeater or wds mode.

You want to use what is called client-bridge but I think asus sometimes call it media-bridge. This in effect makes the router act as wifi nic card that you connect with ethernet.

Now this might be the first step depending on how the phone works. If it is actually using SIP you need a special feature on the main router to make this work which again might require access to turn it on. I forget, SIP is no longer used on the internet because it is not secure and encrypted SIP stuff is a pain so everyone just runs SIP over some kind of VPN if they use SIP.

 

[teukuridho]

looking back you don't need to use repeater or wds mode.

You want to use what is called client-bridge but I think asus sometimes call it media-bridge. This in effect makes the router act as wifi nic card that you connect with ethernet.

Now this might be the first step depending on how the phone works. If it is actually using SIP you need a special feature on the main router to make this work which again might require access to turn it on. I forget, SIP is no longer used on the internet because it is not secure and encrypted SIP stuff is a pain so everyone just runs SIP over some kind of VPN if they use SIP.

I have managed to connect fromthe Asus router to the main router via Wifi with SSID and password with custom firmware, but it turns out the main router (where the VOIP server resides) doesn't have 5ghz feature. Also my Asus router won't list any 5ghz SSID, probably because it has different 5ghz channels than any of the 5ghz wifi.

But I haven't connected the asus router to the ip phone and try calling and if voice quality still bad I think connecting the main router to additional 5ghz router would be my last option. Or are there any other options?

 

[bill001g]

It is hard to say why the quality would be bad. My guess is it is interference from other peoples wifi.

In general 2.4g has more ability to penetrate walls so you should have a stronger signal. The downside is interfering signals also can penetrate walls better. Now "maybe" you get less interference on 5g but there are so many people using it you still get a lot of unwanted radio energy coming in.

The speed of the connection really doesn't matter. The most common codec used for VoIP calls is called G.711 and uses 64kbits plus some overhead. The key reason 5g is faster is it allows up to 80mhz of bandwidth to be used if you drop it to 20mhz or 40mhz the speed is the same on 5g and 2.4 assuming you are using 802.11n. Things like 802.11ac and 802.11ax that use very dense data encoding only on 5g.

What might help is if you can force it to use only 20mhz channels. This might reduce the interference because you are trying to use less bandwidth. You might also try to only use 1 feed ie 1x1 mimo for the same reasons. It still would have a encoding rate of 72mbps which you would get real world rates of maybe 30mbps but it is still far more than a VoIP call needs. Now the tricky part here is most times this is set on the main router and not the remote device so it will affect all devices. You likely can not choose the channels you use but if your device pretends it does not support more than 20mhz and only 1 channel the main router should negotiate down to that speed. Some routers have disabled some of this, like forcing 40mhz channels.

Changing the actual channels you use in the main router tends to be the best thing to try in case you have certain channels that have stronger interfering signals. This does not work so good anymore when all your neighbors are trying to use every bit of radio bandwidth by setting the highest rates and then using silly mesh systems.

Now SIP has a similar concept. Nobody really uses anything less than g.711 anymore, in the old days when you had a 1.5mbit t1 circuit using g.729 which is only 9k allowed for more calls. The quality of a G.729 call is much less quality because of the data compression. I guess you could check the codec you are using the phone should tell you. If it is using anything other than g.711 I would change it to g.711. The difference is very large...well if your hearing is good.

So if you still get poor results how much control do you have. Can you use powerline network device. These are not going to be as fast as most wifi but again you are talking about 64k. Powerline get very little interference compared to wifi so the signal is not damaged. Also unlike wifi it does not attempt to resend the data. Wifi delays the data when it is resend which greatly affects the quality of a VoIP. powerline and even ethernet will just drop damaged data and unless it is excessive you will not hear the small dropped sound.

 

[teukuridho]

I just connected the ip phone to 5ghz router (Dir-809), the sound quality were not very bad, better than 2.4ghz router (wr840n) but still worse than wifi ip phone. I want it atleast close to the quality of wifi ip phone.I haven't tried with asus 5ghz router (N56U), will do it soon.

I think connecting additional 5ghz router to the main router would be good because there aren't any 5ghz wifi here yet.

About using powerline adapter, they're pretty expensive and I don't know if the socket close to the main router and the socket close to the ip phone are on same circuit. So if all else fails, I think I would get another wifi Iphone or just connect them with ethernet

 

[bill001g]

If you can use ethernet even if it is a pain to get installed I would do it. Once it is in you likely will never have any issues with it. All other electronic equipment will likely at some time fail.

You do not have to be on the same circuit breakers but the cheaper units have more issues with this and run slower. The newer technology you find that have numbers like 1000 or 2000 work better but they are more expensive than things like av500.