VOIP and the D-Link DFL-210 router

After 3 weeks of waiting, I received my D-Link DFL-210 SOHO router from costcentral.com. I paid $298 + shipping which I consider high for a home office router, however the list of features was impressive and I wanted bandwidth management to place my Innomedia VOIP router behind it. My two initial impressions are: WOW and this is not a consumer grade device.

First WOW: I never knew I could get this kind of speed out my Comcast broadband connection. I connected my IBM X41 tablet directly into the DFL-210 which is connected to my Motorola cable modem. Here are some results:

speakeasy.net's test 15340Kbps down and 349Kbps up.

dslreports.com test 13769Kpbs down and 349 up.

visualware.com VOIP test 16016Kbps down and 360Kbps up. It showed QOS test of 25% which is not good for VOIP, I am not sure this value is accurate since I am not having any problems with my SunRocket VOIP connection.

Second, this is clearly not a consumer grade device. It did not come with a configuration wizard. You must have some knowledge of firewalls and routers to be able to configure it. After a bit of initial struggle, upgrading the firmware and resetting to the factory defaults I was able to get a basic configuration with DHCP implemented. I will discuss this configuration tomorrow. There is a lot more I need to learn to fully utilize the DFL-210's capabilities...

Comments

[Voip providers]

There are several advantages using VoIP including the availability of advanced features that standard telephone systems are not capable of and the ability to have a phone number usually associated with a particular local area anywhere in the world. Using VoIP can significantly reduce your phone costs.

[polycom ip 550]

What makes the D-Link hardware potent is the built-in firmware that is easy to use and makes it easier to configure VoIP ports.