Going Skype Fail, Going T-Mobile @Home Success!

So originaly I was going to go full on Skype to save some money.  You can read “Going full SKYPE at Home Part 1” for more information on that.  Well I found out that T-Mobile my cell phone provider offers an Voip service also.  It only cost $10 a month on my plan and that is for unlimited calls local and long distance.

This service is costing $10 a month that is $120 a year.  I also had to purchase the HiPort Adapter.  It cost me $39.99 so I’m down to $159.99 for the year.  I could have got the Linksys Router but I already have a router, don’t need two of them.  The adapter plugs directly into my router via an ethernet connection.  Its default address is 192.168.2. something. You can access it via a web browser.  The default username is blank and password is Admin.  Once you login you can configure this.

I first turned it on dhcp, turned off dhcp server on the device since I’m not going to be plugging anything into it.  I also turned off all services it had enabled.  So all it does is phone.  Oh yea did I mention you have to put a SIM card into this thing.

Next on my trusty old WRT54G, I am of course running Tomato Firmware.  I gave the HiPort device a Static DHCP address.

I then setup QOS “Quality of Service”.  Now it doesn’t matter the speed coming in, I can’t control how fast I’m recieving data.  What I’m setting QOS for is the speed going out.  So I figure up my outgoing speed, set that in QOS.  I then set the Mac Address of the HiPort as Highest Priority.  I have Prioritize small packets with these control flags ACK.  Default Class is Low.  Max bandwidth (Outbound) figure up max kbit/s.  Then I set Highest at %90-%100, High at %85-%95, Medium %60-80, Low %45-65, and Lowest %40-%50.  Then on Classifications I set the HiPort Mac Address for incoming/outgoing to Highest.  I set DNS port 53 0-2kb Highest (normal DNS queries).  I also have Web Ports 80/443 at High 0-512kb, and large dns and webports at medium both +2 and +512 kb.  I can go into more detail on QoS but what it ends up doing is making sure that my phone call gets highest priority going out.

So far no problems at all, the call quality is great.   Total Cost first year $159.99 saving me $600.00 a year on phone service.   Oh yea forgot to mention I have E911 and got to port my number.  Something Skype was not going to allow me to do.

• Going full SKYPE at Home Part 1 (4)