[phrider]

What are the preferred routers for use with UMA service, at least as of September 2009?

Well, the old T-Mobile Linksys WRT54G-TM is only available on eBay these days.

T-Mobile offers their @Home wire phone service with a couple of routers: the HiPoint and the Linksys WRTU54G. They're cheap ($40?) if you sign up for the @Home service, but $140-$160 if you don't.

T-Mobile also offers a D-Link TMG5240 wireless router. Anyone have any experience with this model? At $19.95, it certainly is priced well.

Or should I just find a way to enable QoS on my existing router? Although the Linksys models also supposedly did some power management tricks that helped UMA battery life.

Suggestions?

.

[Trimix]

I was always curious, do you need a special router in order to use UMA? Cause I have a generic D-link one and UMA works fine with it.

[NJBlackBerry]

You don't need a special router, but not all routers support UMA. I know that's a convaluted answer. Some routers just don't work properly. The older Linksys routers do work.

I have an WRT310N, running DD-WRT firmware and am very happy with it. I also have the T-Mobile WRTU54G, strictly for their vTech phones. The WRTU54G is great for a VoIP service, but it slows down data too much (IMHO) in order to provide good voice service. So the WRT310N is my wireless router, and wireless is disabled on the WRTU54G.

[phrider]

I have had good luck with older D-Link and Linksys WiFi G routers with UMA (and running separate VPN and VoIP connections). But sometimes I'd have VoIP and UMA problems while conducting a large download or big email files.

I've also used Linksys WiFi access points on a Edimax dual WAN router. Same issue with downloading and UMA, except you can force the UMA to the more lightly loaded WAN connections (via locking the Blackberry's MAC address to a specific IP and WAN port).

But for my location without dual WAN's, I'm looking for a router that handles UMA well, esp QoS and power management.

Should I get a newer D-Link from TMO? Or buy an old TMO/Linksys WRT54G-TM? Or???

[monkeypaw]

Originally Posted by phrider

...
Or should I just find a way to enable QoS on my existing router? ....

Try doing that first. It should help out with those big downloads that are causing problems.

If there's not a setting in the OS for that, you can see if other firmware will work on your router. One that many use is dd-wrt. The battery life comes from changing the beacon interval or one of the settings like that.

Supported Devices - DD-WRT Wiki

[phrider]

It doesn't look like my Edimax router is covered (but it would be great to have Open VPN and VoIP QoS). I may explore that.

[lop1]

T-Mobile Linksys WRT54G-TM is the way to go if you want QOS AND best power management for your device.
I have tried several different routers , even with DD-WRT , most of them can do a correct QOS and carry voice without problem, but only the T-Mobile Linksys WRT54G-TM implement the full APSD power save management and it really show at the end of the day on your battery.

[phrider]

Thanks.

[stev32k]

I have two routers in a repeater bridge configuration. One is a linksys WRT160N the other is WRT54G-tm. The WRT54G-tm has dd-wrt firmware and is setup as the repeater. I had a lot of trouble finding a dd-wrt version that would work in the repeater bridge mode. It took three tries before I finally settled on build 12784 mini.

I'm in an area that has almost zero T-Mobile coverage and UMA is the only way I can make or receive calls from home. My office is located in a far corner of the house and one router would not provide the coverage I need. I bought the WRT54G-tm off ebay added two 9 dBi antennas, installed the dd-wrt firmware and now I get excellent coverage inside and out.