I asked this question during the VoIP Beta Trial a couple of years ago and no-one responded so let's try again.

According to my router, my Sipura SPA-1001 averages around 240 bytes/second when quiescent (i.e. not in use). Now this is for two lines, Plusnet/Gradwell and Sipgate, but I'm still amazed the ATA and the remote SIP servers have that much to talk about    I can isolate the VoIP traffic because it is the only contributor to the EF (Expedited Forwarding) class traffic I have through the router which reports average traffic by class.

By my reckoning, that's nearly 20MB per day which is a fair slice of my PAYG 2GB/month allowance 

Anyone have any other data or info on this?

vof

We were away for a couple of days last week. Normally I'd switch my router off but this time I forgot. My usage was around 7Mb per day and I'd put most of that down to my Gigaset A580IP.

Bob

Hi,

My background traffic is about 70Kb/day with my C475IP running. However I dont use the OutBound proxy and I would guess that is where your increased usage is coming from, although 20Mb/day does sound a lot!!
An ATA using SIP protocol doesnt normally need to send much traffic to keep alive, it just needs to register with the registrar server every hour. The problem is what happens when you get an incoming call, the registrar sends an INVITE to the address that the registrar holds for you. The problem is that when your ATA is behind a NAT router ( and it almost always is in a home environment ) that the NAT firewall in the router blocks the incoming connection. So in order to allow SIP to work something must maintain a NAT forwarding rule to allow the incoming call to get to your ATA. That's where the Outbound proxy comes in, your ATA connects to that ( which then registers on your behalf ) and then the proxy  maintains your connection and NAT routing with 'keep alive' packets. I must admit I thought these were only every 20 seconds or so, so I'm a bit surprised that you are seeing 240 bytes/sec.
As I said in the beginning I don't use the OB proxy as my router has a fully implemented SIP ALG which automatically maintains a NAT routing just for the SIP protocol. Most routers have one but unfortunately many have a 'broken' implementation and so are useless.
Hope that helps to explain a little.
 

Which is why its not a good idea to try/receive voip calls or stayed registered via a moble company network on a voip capable mobile phone

puddy

Thanks everyone for the info.  Just checked again and router is currently reporting about 87 bytes/sec VoIP traffic over past 24 hours so the 240 bytes/sec may have been anomalous. Attached is the screenshot of ATA summary screen which seems to bear out that there is quite a lot of traffic... 77000 SIP messages sent in 3.7 days totalling 30MB - 400 byte average message size.

I will try experimenting with the outbound proxy settings to see if they are needed, and the effect on traffic volume.

@MisterW/bobboulby

Which routers do you use?  I presume your Gigaset phones plug into a router and are not ADSL self-contained?

vof

Yep , the gigaset phones plug into an ethernet port on your router. I use a 2wire 2700HGV ( aka BT Business Hub ), it actually has voip ports on the router but they never gave very good quality. The fact that it has integrated voip probably explains why its SIP ALG works so well though.

If you dont use the OB proxy, and dont have a working SIP ALG in your router, then you wont be able to receive incoming calls without some other configuration. Its possible, but tricky, to use port forwarding on the router and/or STUN to get incoming calls to work. It's going to be difficult in your case though since you have two lines on your ATA.

I realise that ~10MB/day is a fair chunk out of your PAYG package but have you considered changing to one of the current packages. If you're in a Market 3 area then the 'Value' package will give you 10GB/month for £5.99. Saving you cash and a lot more bandwidth to play with.
I changed to Value from PAYG about 6 months ago and am really pleased. However be careful of the traffic shaping on Value ( see here http://www.plus.net/suppo...ity_broadband/speed.shtml ), if you use PTP,Usenet etc then you WILL notice a slowdown since PAYG is not shaped at all. However if you use your BB for general browsing, Email,Voip and occasional VPN like me then you wont notice any difference, apart from more money in your pocket every month!!

I use a Netgear DG834G and as MisterW says, the Gigaset base station plugs straight in to one of the router's ethernet ports.

Bob

I use a speedtouch 716wl router its got 2 seperate voip ports on the back so I guess you could call it an all in one its wireless 4 ports adsl 2+ and 2 voip ports all for 99p plus £5.99 p&p

I also use a Grandstream GXV3005 & GXP2000  Siemens 460ip phone and a Nokia E65

You could use a Nokia E65 N95 and N95-8GB and have no extra wires at  all £50-£60  E65 model £90 N95 N95-8GB £150

Puddy