Switched from Vonage and my troubles started

[tritch]

I would definitely put the HT502 in bridge mode if you're going to use it ahead of your network router. (Just to get rid of the double-NAT). Even then, I'm not sure if you can get your bandwidth back. The HT502 specs says it has a 10mb/100mb ethernet port on it. But my experience is that it works at or defaults at 10mb. That could definitely stop your bandwidth. But you do have a lot of other options. It sounds like you know enough about networks, put the adapter behind your router and just use it for voip. If you do port range forwarding, you can set up all the ports you need in your network in less than 15 minutes.

christcorp makes some good points.....

Some ATA's with built-in routers are known for choking speeds with the router function enabled, most notably the Linksys SPA2102 which chokes around 7.5 Mbs. ATA's are engineered towards their primary function of voip not as a router. Unfortunately, this leaves a dilemma for those who have extremely fast speeds from their ISP. Do I put the ATA in front or behind the router? You ultimately will have to make your own choice between reliability and speed based on your network expertise. There's nothing Voipo can do about the engineering /software limits of the ATA.

Putting the ATA in front of the router and bridging it will likely eliminate the speed bottleneck, but there are some caveats. Here are 4 options to think about…..

Option 1: Modem (bridged) -> ATA (bridged) -> Router (DHCP enabled)
This is an ideal option, but most users don't have this ability. ISP’s generally allow only 1 public IP address to your account. In this case, the ATA will pull the public IP address to itself and will leave no IP address for your router to pull. This will leave you with no Internet for those devices connected to your router. If your ISP allows you to pull 2 public IP addresses, then both your ATA and router will be able pull its own IP's and things will work beautifully. There’s no NAT to the ATA and no port forwarding needed to the ATA. The router and ATA basically work independently of each other and can be configured separately. This is my current setup and it works great. (CenturyLink provides me 2 public DHCP addresses for free)

Option 2: Modem (unbridged w/ built-in router) -> ATA (bridged) -> Router (DHCP disabled)
In this example, the modem pulls the public IP from your ISP and provides a single NAT for your ATA and those devices attached to the router. I’m assuming the modem’s built-in router can provide an adequate number of private IP’s from its DHCP pool. You'll still need to forward ports to the ATA within the modem’s built-in router. I don’t particularly care for this option because the modem’s built-in router probably lacks the configuration ability of a full-fledged router.

Option 3: Modem (unbridged w/ built-in router) -> ATA (bridged) -> Router (DHCP enabled)
This option is for those who don’t mind double NAT’ing your network. This gives you more flexibility to control the devices behind your router.

Option 4: Modem (unbridged w/ built-in router) -> ATA (unbridged) -> Router (DHCP enabled)
The least desirable......what's surprising is how many people are unknowingly triple NAT'ing their attached router devices with this type of configuration.

If you must put the ATA behind the router, it's always a good idea to bridge the modem to avoid double NAT. Just let the router handle everything. Cable modems are usually bridged already but DSL modems are usually not, then forward the ports to the ATA.