Flawless UMA / voice settings -- perfect results for me...
I never appreciated the potential value of UMA until I actually started using it when I picked up my Blackberry 8900 the week it was released in T-Mobile stores. My T-Mobile signal is incredible weak at home, and I'm lucky to connect at GPRS speeds. With UMA, I get spectacular speed, great web browsing, and the ability to use the phone anywhere in my house. The problem is that, while UMA has great potential, I've found that it's been less than perfectly stable. For the most part over the last several months, I can be connected over UMA for hours, send and receive email and text, watch my weather updates come in, and make calls. But...it seems that voice calls always created problems in the system, as the calls would abruptly drop typically after the first few minutes. I would also see the connection in the phone mysteriously drift from UMA to uma to GPRS to gprs when I was having trouble -- and this was when I was sitting in the same room as the WiFi router. Well...it appears that the changes I made last night have finally got this working beautifully...
I picked up the info on various other sites (I must have read hundreds of posts before finally settling on these choices). Some credit Linksys with having shared this info, some T-Mobile, and some claim to have discovered the settings themselves. I'm not sure about the origin, but I can report exceedingly good results. With the settings described below, I've been able to do everything over UMA that I normally do -- email, SMS, MMS, fast web browsing, weather updates, Viigo, etc. -- and now I can also make phone calls without fear of them cutting out suddenly after a few minutes. Today, I made a few calls, including one for 35 minutes and one for 42 minutes. Sound quality was like a corded phone, and the connection was rock solid.
My setup:
Verizon FIOS fiber ---> ONT (fiber to copper) --> Actiontec Router (FIOS support) --> Linksys WRTU54G-TM router (T-Mobile@Home support)
The Actiontec has a couple of layer 2 switches plugged into it and 5 PC's hung off the switches. I have turned OFF the WiFi section of this router.
The Linksys WRTU54G-TM supports my T-Mobile@Home VoIP (UMA actually) service, replacing my old corded phones. I also have WiFi turned on in this device. This is what I use to support WiFi connection to my laptops and my Blackberry 8900.
Linksys WRTU54G-TM settings:
Setup pages -- pretty much vanilla, except that I restrict the DHCP auto-assignment range to leave a few available for static IP's for my printer, NAS drive and a couple of other devices. Nothing special here.
Wireless Page -
- Basic Wireless Settings:
--- Wireless network mode -- G only
--- Wireless Channel -- 6 (although this shouldn't matter -- choose one with least interference in the vicinity)
--- Wireless SSID broadcast -- enabled
- Wireless Security
--- Security Mode -- WPA2 Personal
--- WPA Algorithms -- TKIP/AES
- Advanced Wireless Settings
..[only listing non-default settings here]..
--- Beacon Interval -- 50 (default is 100)
--- Fragmentation Threshold -- 2304 (default is 2346)
--- RTS Threshold -- 2304 (default is 2307)
- Applications & Gaming
-- QoS tab
--- Wireless QoS section
---- WMM Support -- Enabled
Actiontec settings: only thing unique here is that I set up QoS rules to prioritize traffic to the Linksys WRTU54G-TM (priority level 6).
That's it. With these settings, UMA has for the first time become totally solid and dependable. I have the routers in my basement office, and have a strong signal throughout the entire house on my 8900. I can stroll all around the house and have crystal clear phone calls that do NOT disconnect.