Will something like a Linksys SRW2016 do me any good?

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

I've been using Vonage for a couple of years now.

I have two ATAs -- a Cisco ATA-186, with both a voice and fax line, and
a Motorola VT1000, with a single voice line.

My network is configured so that I cannot use the Motorola as my
router.

The basic blue print looks like this:

Internet <--> Router <--> Unmanaged Switch
| | | | |...|
ATA1 ATA2 PC1 PC2 PCn

Historically, call quality has been fine, and faxes, for the most part,
make it through. But, as my bandwidth needs from the PCs have
increased, as have my simultaneous phone calls (it's common for both
voice lines to be in use), call quality has suffered. In particular,
people can hear us fine, but we have a hard time hearing them -- lots
of stuttering. I believe we have enough bandwidth (768/256, soon to be
increased); it's just not being allocated appropriately.

So, we are thinkng about replacing the old, unmanaged switch with a
QoS-aware managed switch. The Linksys SRW2016 has caught my eye.

So, can such a device help us? If so, do we need to do anything
'special'?

I have no idea if these old ATAs tag the VoIP traffic for QoS. Anyone
know?

If they do, will the SRW2016 'do the right thing' out of the box, or
will we have to configure it to react to those tagged packets?

And, if one or both ATAs is NOT tagging the packets, can we solve the
problem with this switch anyway? From where I sit, the needs are
simple -- I just want to two switch ports which have the ATAs connected
to get priority over all other traffic. That should be easy to
acomplish, no?

Or, is the fact that the stuttering is only heard on our end indicative
of a problem which cannot be solved within our internal network, and
must be solved by our ISP?

ANY suggestions/recommendations greatly appreciated! (Even a
recommendation for a different switch -- we are looking for 16 ports,
and we like managed devices.)