Obi 200s ring on inbound, caller can hear me, I can't hear them

[erkme73]

Setup:

Two GV accounts (mine and wife's).
Each GV account has 1 x 200, and 2 x 202 boxes
All are running latest firmware

Problem:
Outbound calls from any of the boxes work 100%
Inbound calls to either GV account will make all boxes ring
When calls are received on the 200 boxes, caller will hear me/wife, but we cannot hear them.  This happens maybe 9/10 inbound calls.

Workaround:
Pressing the * feature will make my cell phone ring again, and I can transfer the caller at which point I can complete the call.  This only works sometimes.


The OBi boxes are located:

OBi200 = primary home
OBi202 = RV
OBi202 = vacation home

The RV OBi is unpowered/disconnected unless we are traveling.  The primary and vacation home OBi's are always connected to the OBi network/GV.  There is no phone connected to the vacation home OBi, so I cannot confirm whether this problem exists on that box as well.

Basically, I need to figure out why my home (OBi200) boxes won't allow me to hear callers when I pick up the incoming call.

[drgeoff]

Your problem may have nothing to do with using multiple boxes.  No audio in one direction is often caused by NAT issues.  First thing to try is to look if your home router has a 'SIP ALG' setting and if it does, turn it off.

[erkme73]

You may be right about it being unrelated to multiple boxes being logged in to the same account, but it's the only thing that has changed around the time this phenomenon has started.

As for the SIP ALG, I'm running DD-WRT on an Asus (RT-N66U) - which according to the DD-WRT forums, doesn't have an SIP helper (SIP ALG).   

Are there any other gotcha's with the NAT?  I've never had to open ports for any of my OBi boxes in the past, and they've always run behind my primary routers - which have been either Tomato or DD-WRT firmware.

[SteveInWA]

This issue has nothing to do with SIP ALG, because Google Voice doesn't use SIP.

Please clarify:  are you saying that every time you place an outbound call, from any of your OBi boxes, using either your wife's Google Voice number or yours, that two-way audio always works?  However, when the devices receive an inbound call, 90% of the time, you only have one-way audio?

IF you unplug all of your OBis from power, and instead, answer the inbound calls on a real telephone number (e.g. your mobile phones), do inbound calls always work with two-way audio?

[erkme73]

This issue has nothing to do with SIP ALG, because Google Voice doesn't use SIP.

Please clarify:  are you saying that every time you place an outbound call, from any of your OBi boxes, using either your wife's Google Voice number or yours, that two-way audio always works?  However, when the devices receive an inbound call, 90% of the time, you only have one-way audio?

IF you unplug all of your OBis from power, and instead, answer the inbound calls on a real telephone number (e.g. your mobile phones), do inbound calls always work with two-way audio?

Precisely, Steve.  Making calls from either OBi line works 100%. It is ONLY on incoming calls, that the audio only works in one direction - and it's always inbound audio that's missing.  The caller can always hear us.

This problem is only present on the phones connected to the OBi boxes.  The issue does not appear when GV calls are routed to the cell phones.  In fact, 100% of our inbound calls are to our GV numbers - we don't give out (or know) the actual cell phone numbers.  It has gotten so consistently bad, that, while I make outbound calls on my OBi, on incoming, I now just answer my cell phone every time.

[SteveInWA]

In that case, your router(s) are the most likely culprit, but just to eliminate the possibility of a setup issue on the OBis, I suggest removing one of them from your OBiTALK dashboard, then disconnect its Ethernet cable, dial ***8 on the attached phone, and then press 1 to factory reset the OBi.  Then, power it off, reconnect the Ethernet cable, power it back on, add it back to the OBiTALK dashboard, and re-do the Google Voice account setup, on just one of your two Google Voice accounts.  Test inbound calls.  Does it work now?  If so, add the other Google Voice account and re-test.  Be careful when adding Google Voice accounts, to observe the gmail address in the pop-up window, to ensure you are linking to the correct account.

[erkme73]

Between replies, I'd sent a ticket to OBi.  In the interim, they responded saying they'd updated the firmware on both OBi200 boxes.   Odd, since the dashboard showed they were current.  They said to try it and see if it didn't fix the issue - and if not, I should set my router's DMZ to the OBi box.   I didn't see their response before I went at your fix... So now I don't know whether it was their update, or the deletion and re-addition of the boxes to my account.  Either way, the first inbound call worked!    I'll play with it some more over the next few hours.

As for the DMZ, I am curious how OBi support thinks I can point my DMZ to TWO boxes at the same time... SMH...

[SteveInWA]

I suspect that you just needed to delete the Google Voice accounts off of your OBis, and re-create them from scratch.

[erkme73]

Regretfully either the problem never resolved completely, or it simply returned.  I'm once again back to having most of my inbound calls w/o caller audio - just as before. 

I've replied to the customer service email (that suggested I point my DMZ to BOTH of my OBi boxes) letting them know that their firmware upgrade did not solve the issue.

Nothing like hearing my wife mumble "nothing ever works around here"... when she misses an important call because she can't hear the caller... ugh.