Half the time can't answer incoming calls to Obi110 phone [-RESOLVED-]

[obiJuanKanobi]

Hello,

Switched to GV on OBi110 about 4 months ago, configured with the GV wizard on ObiTalk and mostly it has worked well... but it has had a recurring problem that I can't seem to fix.

About half the time, incoming calls that we try to answer on the phone connected to the Obi110, can't be answered, that is, they ring until they go to GV voice mail even if we pick up the receiver and say 'hello' (and we hear nothing but silence). Occasionally, we do hear the incoming party but they can't hear us.

Read posts here with similar problems, so on our router (Linksys WRT54GL, with latest stock firmware) I forwarded ports 16600-16998 and 5060-5061.

Unfortunately, that seemed to introduce an additional problem, outgoing calls are now dropping, usually after 5 min or  so, but sometimes sooner.

Since the port forwarding didn't seem to have any effect other than possibly causing outgoing calls to drop, I've turned off the port forwarding for now.

I suspect knowledgeable folks will say 'ahh, that's usually a router problem', and it might be, but same router worked fine with PAP2 and before that Sipura 1001 ATAs with Broadvoice.

Anyone have any possible solutions?

Thanks for any tips or advice.

[RonR]

The ultimate test to determine whether your router is the source of problems is to temporarily bypass it.  Connect the OBi directly to your broadband modem and power cycle both units.  If the problem doesn't go away, your router is exonerated.  If the problem does go away, you have your answer.

[obiJuanKanobi]

Thanks for your reply Ron.

I did a brief test, connecting the Obi110 directly to the Comcast modem, and I didn't have any problems. Will have to wait a few more days to test further, as it isn't always convenient to disconnect our net connection at home.

Assuming it is my router, which I'm guessing it is (but will test further) what are my choices?

Are there known issues with certain routers? (And isn't the Linksys WRT54GL a fairly well respected and common router?)  Might switching to Tomato firmware fix my problems, or rather, give me more options/settings that might fix my problems?

Are Obi devices known to work better with some routers rather than others? Anyone know?

[RonR]

Are there known issues with certain routers? (And isn't the Linksys WRT54GL a fairly well respected and common router?)  Might switching to Tomato firmware fix my problems, or rather, give me more options/settings that might fix my problems?

When routers have issues, it's almost always with the firmtware they're running.  The WRT54GL is a very popular and solid router, but the stock firmware from Linksys is not.  I've used several WRT54GL's over the years with Tomato firmware installed and they've always performed very well with VoIP.  If you upgrade yours to v1.28, there's an excellent chance your problems will go away.

[obiJuanKanobi]

Great, I'll give that a try and report back on how it goes.

Thanks!

[obiJuanKanobi]

Finally had a chance to upgrade my WRT54GL router with Tomato firmware. Before I did this I was having the following problems:

• Half the time I called Obi home from my Obion cell phone, I couldn't hear answering party.
• Incoming calls to GV Obi home sometimes did not answer when receiver picked up and  go to voice mail.
• Obi reboots itself about once a day

After upgrading to Tomato, these problems have all gone away. The installation was easy, and once I cloned the PC's MAC, it came to life. Didn't change much from defaults, enabled NAT-PMP and forwarded SIP and RTP ports.

Now I feel like I have a real phone and my friends and family don't joke about my phone anymore. Thanks for the suggestion Ron

[earthtoobi]

Obijuankanobi:
infact you dont even need NAT-PMP and port forwarding enabled.
everything should work fine without that.( unless you have multiple Obis/Xbox etc that connect to same router)


the thing that tomato is popular for is its Qos. you can enable it especially if you have a smaller bandwidth for upload/heavy internet activity.

if you are interested in Qos settings, there is a separate thread on that.

[QBZappy]

Here is one thread discussing QOS on Tomato firmware
Tomato firmware setup on a router
http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=1102.msg6952#msg6952

[RonR]

infact you dont even need NAT-PMP and port forwarding enabled.
everything should work fine without that.( unless you have multiple Obis/Xbox etc that connect to same router)

I would argue that these are beneficial and should be enabled even with a single OBi.  Port forwarding is essential for things like reliable reception of incoming SIP URI's.  It's such a simple insurance against problems that it doesn't make sense to me not to include it as part of any VoIP installation.

[earthtoobi]

Ronr, i think people need to make the call based on their network configuration and paranoia levels.
1. some might not like ports managed  on the router by applications in LAN unless mandated ...like online gaming.(Upnp/NAT-PMP types).
2. if devices in LAN are working seamlessly in correlation with WAN/internet connection, then there is no need for port forward.
3. people might not want to set aside multiple ranges of ports to specific devices/services on LAN. we never know if the same ports would be used by any other application/device in the network. for example, you never know what specific port range that google voice will open on your device(as it is not configurable) or when you want to use a SIp client on a laptop in the LAN on an Adhoc basis.

in summary, based on some of these factors each can make the call.what you mention is true if people are seeing issues.its a question of using brute force vs intelligence of your router.

when things are working either ways, it becomes a matter of taste.

[RonR]

earthtoobi,

The problem is with the SIP protocol being designed with absolutely no regard or support for NAT routers.  With no port forwarding, a router has no idea where to send unsolicited UDP packets.  Yes, ATA's can send keep-alive packets in an attempt to keep ports routed to the right place, but there's still many ways for RTP packets to miss their mark due to the way SIP spawns RTP streams.  The bottom line is it's very very difficult (maybe impossible?) to build a NAT router that's 100% bullet-proof the way the SIP/RTP protocol is designed.  Some routers are better others.

There's usually multiple ways to solve a problem, but in this case, I prefer to forward SIP/RTP ports right from the beginning before any problems arise.