HowTo: Tweaking Gizmo for Better Service w/ ViaTalk

I had the opportunity to do some research, as well as speak with Collin, a technical support rep from ViaTalk, to get a little bit better grasp on how to tweak my gizmo (Linksys SPA-2102) to get better performance.

He is a summary of my research:

• Make sure you have the most recent firmware. For the Linksys SPA-2102 from SunRocket, you can get the latest firmware on Linksys' support site.
• Setup your UDP SIP Port to some other port than 5060. Pick 5080, or 5085, or etc... The reasoning, is by default, all gizmos are configured to transmit on 5060. When the call hits the ViaTalk servers, it is competing with other calls on that port. By picking a different port you reduce the amount of congestion that your gizmo may experience.
• Make sure that if you have a broadband router, that it has the most up to date firmware. If your broadband router is old (2+ years), you may want to consider upgrading to a broadband router that boasts high performance for "VOIP", "Gaming", or "Broadband Booster". These routers are designed to adjust bandwidth settings based on critical application use, such as digital phone traffic from ViaTalk or another service provider.
• Verify that the server you are connecting to your VOIP service provider is the closest possible server to your location. This is ideal, because the closer to you the server is, the less "hops" your voice packets have to travel through to get to the destination. For every "hop" your phone call needs to travel, will decrease the quality significantly.

Hopefully these tips will help some of you out there. If anyone has other tips to improve call quality, please do not hesitate to share by leaving a comment.

Chris