Brian's Brain

Even though bandwidth testing reports that my baseline SBC Yahoo ADSL connection has 1.3 Mbps downstream (and, more importantly for purposes of this discussion, 300+ kbps upstream) speed, folks on the other end of the line still sometimes experience glitches when I'm talking to them over my BroadVoice VoIP line. Part of the problem is that BroadVoice employs the G.711 codec, which delivers pretty good quality but also consumes nearly 100 kbps of bandwidth. But in the absence of other LAN-to-WAN traffic, that wouldn't be a problem given the bandwidth capability of my upstream link.

I could suppress my Internet access activities while I'm on the phone; not checking email or web surfing (don't forget about the upstream ACK traffic, and the upstream bandwidth required to send email), and not doing FTP transfers or BitTorrent sessions (or, alternatively, explicitly limiting or negating 'sharing' BitTorrent upstream bandwidth until my phone call is over). But I'd prefer not to (and most users won't even think or know how to do so), and even if I did it wouldn't address what WAN-related stuff my wife might be doing on her computer or another 'Net-connected device elsewhere in the home.

Enter Hawking Technologies' HBB1 Broadband Booster, which I've seen for as low as $52.99 after rebate (right now at Buy.com). The HBB1, a QoS management device, sits in-between your broadband modem and your router (which can be problematic if they're integrated within the same box!), auto-configures itself and adaptively prioritizes latency-critical traffic such as real-time audio and video conferencing and online gaming. Up-front qualifiers: the HBB1 does NOT tackle downstream bandwidth (which, in my case, pretty much is a non-issue, at least until SBC starts offering IPTV, but may be desireable for those with lower-speed broadband connections) and it cannot be configured on a per-LAN client basis.

In my setup, with the HBB1 sitting in-between an Alcatel model 1000 ADSL modem and a Netopia R9100 router, Hawking's QoS traffic shaper seems to work as advertised (at least in my minimal testing so far), prioritizing my VoIP calls with little-to-no discernible impact on other Internet-based accesses. By default, the HBB1 assumes a dynamic WAN IP address, and it auto-detects connection type, rate and other parameters. I have a static IP connection, so I manually configured the HBB1 (via a web browser-based setup screen suite) with my WAN address. The HBB1 also auto-detected my connection as 'cable or other broadband' so I overrode this setting to 'xDSL'.

See Tom's Networking for another review of the HBB1. I'm working with Hawking and Ubicom's technical support to understand why auto-configuration of connection type seemingly failed and to make sure that I have the HBB1 otherwise optimally configured before I continue with my testing; I'll report back any additional findings via future blog entries. By the way, the TestYourVoIP.com website is excellent for assessing the quality capabilities of your VoIP link, both in a best-case setting and as you incrementally burden your LAN and WAN links with other traffic. It'll give you statistics (both upstream and downstream) on the codec your VoIP provider uses, the round-trip latency and amount of packet loss, the loss periods and jitter, the signaling quality (post-dial delay, call setup time and media delay) and an overall measure of your media quality (known as MOS).