Looking for a 'bad' router

[cobaltit]

Can anyone give me the make/model of a known bad router from a 3CX perspective? Specifically looking for a home/consumer type router (Linksys/Netgear/TP-Link) type that doesn't play nice with 3CX (one-way audio, etc). Basically want to setup a lab environment to test ways to get 3CX to work with otherwise incompatible or otherwise wonky routers.

Thanks!

 

[AWS2P]

You search problems to fix if we were in same country i could have given to you some good candidate like boxes all in one (including modem/ router/ firewall) from French isp providers for your mind torture tests

 

[cobaltit]

Yeah a bunch of the provider modem/router combos are bad for sure, but that would require me to have their internet service. And COVID aside, I don't think I can convince the bean counters to fly me out to France for a month to work on this

 

[ltctech]

ISP routers are evil. CenturyLink and AT&T DSL routers tend to run ancient firmware which messes up VOIP and IPSEC NAT traversal. ActionTec FIOS routers have paranoid firewalls which randomly block stuff. I had an ActionTec that would block RTSP video streams; this was before DASH/HLS became popular.

Newer Linksys and Netgear routers tend to be OK, assuming SIP ALG is turned off. Older ones can often be fixed by installing DD-WRT on them.

You're looking for a needle in a haystack. When you find it, it'll surely prick you.

 

[cobaltit]

Yeah I think I might have some old WNR3500L's that I used to run Tomato on somewhere. I might have to dig one up and flash it back to the original Netgear firmware so.

 

[Evolute IT]

Yeah I think I might have some old WNR3500L's that I used to run Tomato on somewhere. I might have to dig one up and flash it back to the original Netgear firmware so.

Where are you from? I got a bad TP-Link Safecrap laying around.

Even got a Meraki unused lol

 

[cobaltit]

Oh I don't need you to ship it to me. Just wanted a model/firmware combo so I could pick one up.

 

[Evolute IT]

Oh I don't need you to ship it to me. Just wanted a model/firmware combo so I could pick one up.

TP-Link TL-ER6020. Latest firmware (which is from 2017 anyway).

This thing doesn't even have QoS.

 

[eddv123]

As already suggested (and I am sure it is the same for you guys across the pond) anything provider related can be problematic - mostly the issues we experience from a home user perspective (and apologies for going off-topic in some of these points):

* Locked down provider router configured with SIP ALG and no way to access to turn it off. In some cases you can contact the provider to do this- but this can be proven via a SIP ALG checker from the local machine (there are several free downloads if you do a Google search).

* Provider core network issues, (UK specific but you may have providers who do this also) - Virgin broadband use traffic shaping on their core network which we know cause issues, and Sky have this: https://www.sky.com/shop/broadband-talk/broadband-shield/ if I recall it was some sort of DNS filtering service - we had to call them to turn this off.

* User-setup: setting up home user STUN phones for clients during the pandemic has proven too time consuming (either they dont have the infrastructure to support or the techical-know-how to setup) so web client has been the "phone" of choice - however clients have been connecting web client (and using this for just presence) alongside IOS/Android app (both being separate entities behind the same router/public IP) in some cases this has worked fine however in a small majority this setup has caused a lot of call routing or no audio issues.

If you want a router recommendation, I did read somewhere that Netgear routers use both a problematic NAT and SPI (stateful packet inspection) which can cause issues for VoIP.