[badboy25]

In the installation manual for the SPA-2100 there is the following warning:

"Do not connect the SPA-2100 WAN Port to an Ethernet Hub"

I plan to use the SPA-2100 in my urban Intranet. In my location I do not have access to the WAN devices directly. I have to connect the SPA-2100 to an Ethernet Switch.

Is the posted warning apply only for a Hub or does it apply for a Switch too ? What is the impact of connecting not directly to the WAN device but to a Switch ?

I know I am sharing the bandwith with other devices and degradation could be expected, but I have to live with that. Besides, my connection is a 1mbps that is rarely used, but when it's used it's uses all the bandwith available (I might have to enable QOS on my routers).

Thanks for you help

[cayman]

Hubs and switches are very differnet in how they handle traffic on their ports. This warning, I believe, applies *only* to HUBS, however I personally have no idea why the warning exists.

That's one of the problems with "reading the manual"; I read the same thing, which has no supporting details about why etc etc. I could rant on and on about the horrible lack of proper documentation from Sipura, but I have in the past and it didn't do me any good. <sigh>

After worrying some and then asking questions several places that never got answered, I just went ahead and did it and connected my 2100 WAN port to a hub. That hub is then connected to my DSL bridge/modem. Also plugged into that hub is my firewall behind which lives my LAN. My 2100 is on one IP# and my firewall is on another. I have seen *NO* problems with this setup.

BTW: IMO the router part of the 2100 is not ready for prime time so there's nothing currently behind the 2100 on its LAN port. Yes, I do know that I'm missing the use of the QOS feature -- but the only thing I know for sure about Sipura'as QOS feature is how to spell it, and I need a bit more than that to work with.

Good luck,
- Don

ps: about bandwidht, you probably have a lot less on the upload side so keep that in mind while watching your resources. VOIP needs the same bandwidth on both up and down.

[badboy25]

Yeah I do agree that sometimes the manual lacks the reasoning behind the recommendations they offer. If they said something like " Do not connect to a Hub because other traffic in the hub might degrade performance" then one would make a more intelligent decision to do it or not and know the consequences. However as it is right now it could well mean that the SPA would blow up if you hook it up to a Hub ... LOL. BTW I also don't plan to use the LAN port. Other Pc's connected to our network do have more priority than trying to save ports on a switch or hub. I don't want to ruin what is working right now by testing router functions that I don't really need.

About the bandwith, i do have the same both ways. It's not an internet access. It's a private network, installed for our company's use only. I've been trying to put together a cheap VoIp solution using SPA-2000 and 3000 for our 20 remote sites (all with private connections of 128 up to 1024 kbps clear channel bandwith ) and our central site. However waiting a bit has made me realize that I can do it better with the SPA-2100 and get the benefit of 2 simultaneous G729 calls on each device and i can either plug phones on each device or hook them up as trunk lines to our main PBX here and at some pbx's at the remote sites , or a combination (phone in one port, pbx trunk line in the other).

To some it may look like i'm all talk and no action since i've been asking a lot of stuff for a long time and haven't purchased anything yet, but trying to get this proyect squeezed into my company's budget and making it sound reasonable is hard, because the benefits are mostly intangible ones since the phone bills are not that high now anyway, it's mostly being able to avoid the busy tones we so often get when calling those places that have few phone lines available.

Ok, enough talking, Thanks for you info.

[irit100]

The SPA-2100 doesn't support G.729 on the two ports. I belive. the only product that is doing it today in the market is the Access211.
BTW, do you have a copy of the manual? I lost mine and can't find it on the web

[philquinney]

Originally Posted by irit100

The SPA-2100 doesn't support G.729 on the two ports. I belive. the only product that is doing it today in the market is the Access211.

I don't think this is the case: some time ago there was a firmware update which enabled G.729 on both Ports 1 and 2 simultaneously. I'm sure I've tested this and verified it. Unfortunately Sipura don't have an incremental changelog on their site but I think it was one of the early 2.0.5 releases.

Phil.