Vonage and Airport Extreme

On Jun 7, 2007, at 7:30 AM, Lea Galanter wrote:

> Does anyone out there who uses an Apple wireless router also
> subscribe to Vonage? I just started with Vonage and discovered that
> when I'm using my phone that my network goes down and I have no
> Internet access. That's NOT the way it's supposed to work. I'm
> having a horrible time dealing with Vonage customer service as well.
>
> Any other Mac experiences would be wonderful to know about!

My setup is not the same as yours, but I have no such problem.

Cable Modem --> Linksys WRT54GL-->(Linksys) Vonage box

The --> are ethernet connections. I also run one or two Macs via
wireless through the Linksys. I just experimented (not having
previously noted a problem) with a Vonage call while a wirelessly-
connected (or "connected") Mac was running a ping. No dropped packets.

You might get very different results with

Cable/DSL Modem-->Vonage box-->Airport

I've never had occasion to try the Vonage box as a router (although
mine is a capable Linksys router).

   --John

On 7-Jun-2007, at 08:30, Lea Galanter wrote:
> Does anyone out there who uses an Apple wireless router also
> subscribe to Vonage? I just started with Vonage and discovered that
> when I'm using my phone that my network goes down and I have no
> Internet access. That's NOT the way it's supposed to work. I'm
> having a horrible time dealing with Vonage customer service as well.

I've had terrible luck with Vonage and any other router on the LAN.
It seems to be very much an all or nothing proposition with the
vonage router.

This is, by the way, a change. I've had vonage since January of 2006
and it worked fine with a setup of

cable modem -> wifi router -> LAN
                            -> Vonage

This setup no longer works as of about September of 2006.

And yes, dealing with vonage tech support is a nightmare. Language
barriers are only the beginning of the issues.

I am seriously considering going from vonage+DirecTV to comcast voice
and cable (I already have comcast internet as its my only broadband
option) and the only thing that is really holding me back is DirecTiVo.

On Thursday, June 07, 2007, at 10:47AM, "Lea Galanter" <leatidbits.com> wrote:
>Does anyone out there who uses an Apple wireless router also subscribe to Vonage? I just started with Vonage and discovered that when I'm using my phone that my network goes down and I have no Internet access. That's NOT the way it's supposed to work. I'm having a horrible time dealing with Vonage customer service as well.

Have same problem with Verizon...... they change the ISP setting all the time.... and when you call it changes the ISP setting for the phone call.

Jack Bryant

I have a slightly more complicated set up that uses 2x apple airport expresses and a sipura ata (probably similar to the box vonage gave you) registered with sipgate uk and rapidvox

adsl modem-->AEX...>AEX-->Sipura box

where --> is an ethernet cable, and ...> is a wireless link

The set up works fine, but I do have a problem with the adsl modem partially locking up periodically and not allowing the sipura box to register. Strangely enough, even when it will not allow the sipura box to work, a mac on the wireless network can access the internet without problem, so I can only assume its a problem that leaves port 80 open but 5060 locked.

When on the phone I have to be v careful with bandwidth and, as there is no QoS (quality of service) function on the AEXs, which gives prioirty to particular network devices, a computer accessing the internet will affect the phone and vice-versa.

Lea, if your problem is temporary, ie when you hang up the phone the computers internet connection is ok again, you should choose a different codec in the vonage box, try g729 if its available, or anything other than g711. If the computer's network connection is not restored after you hang up then the problem probably isn't bandwidth related.

cable modem --> Airport Extreme --> Linksys Vonage box

This setup works perfectly for me and actually works better than when I was just using the Linksys Vonage router alone. The Linksys router used to crash all the time forcing me to power cycle it. With this new setup it hasn't crashed once. Two PC's are wired into the airport extreme and a MacBook Pro connects via wifi. The 3rd port on the airport extreme connects to the Linksys Vonage box. The linksys vonage box also has two ReplayTV's wired into it.

There may be an issue of network topology here. I have SunRocket which supplied a VoIP adaptor called a "gizmo". The preferred installation is to attach the WAN port of the gizmo directly to your cable modem or DSL and then connect your LAN (WiFi) router to the LAN port of the gizmo. Finally, you can plug your home phone (or wiring) to the phone port. The gizmo takes care of the extra layer of address translation and QoS between voice and LAN traffic. In my case of having a reasonably fast cable modem connection, it all works smoothly.

- Peter

On 12-Jun-2007, at 10:41, binarystatic wrote:
> cable modem --> Airport Extreme --> Linksys Vonage box
>
> This setup works perfectly for me and actually works better than
> when I was just using the Linksys Vonage router alone.

OK, this is strange then. I've once more reconnected a router for my
LAN and hung the Vonage router off the router, so it's in it's own
little area.

Cable Modem
    => Netgear
       => Vonage
       => 100bT switch => G4
          => MacPro
          => Wintendo
       Å> WiFi Connected laptops, etc

=> represents a cat-5 cable and Å> represents 802.11b/g wifi. WoW
runs on the MacPro and/or the Wintendo, iChat on the MacPro and G4,
IRC on the MacPro.

My internet connectivity is, overall, fine for things like email and
web-browsing. Things like iChat, IRC, World of Warcraft, and
downloads are nothing but problematic. I am disconnected from these
very frequently. Even in reading mail, there will often be a delay of
several minutes before a message in my IMAP spool is marked read, and
I can't hold a connection to WoW for more than 15 minutes.

I've gone so far as to enable QOS settings fro WoW's port (TCP/3724
or something), put my main Mac into the DMZ, and set the main mac to
have a 'fixed' DHCP address assigned to it by the Netgear.

I would suspect the netGear, but the same thing happens with two
other, albeit older, routers.

If I remove the netgear from the LAN, then it all works OK, but I
still have to reset the Linsys every couple of days.

> The Linksys router used to crash all the time forcing me to power
> cycle it.

I have to power cycle the Linksys RT300 every couple of days because
I loose inbound audio on connected calls. I pick up the phone, get a
dialtone, dial, and get dead silence. The people at the other end
can hear me, I can hear nothing. Restting the Linksys fixes this.
I've had the Linksys replaced by Vonage to no avail.

I keep thinking there is some 'magic' setting I am missing.
Everything worked perfectly for the first 8 months, and the last 10
months it's been so bad that I am seriously considering switching to
Comcast's digital voice service.

Hi Lea,

I've been a vonage subscriber for a long time now and have had to set
up the router to work in various nerwork situations (in different
countries). I had exactly the situation you describe in Romania a few
years ago. You don't mention what vonage hardware you have, I have the
old Motorola VT1005 (I did say I've been with them a while...)

I found that my issue had to do with DHCP and the default IP addresses
the two devices want to have. They both wanted to live at
192.168.102.1 and they both want to direct DHCP for the associated
subnet. This causes all kinds of VooDoo to happen.

You need to decide who will be the DHCP provider and specifically
disable DHCP on the other device. I would recommend against using the
vonage device as the point device, it just hasn't been reliable in my
experience, often losing it's connection and just generally being
tempermental. (As I write this, my vonage box is blinking away
cluelessly without a connection, which is does at least once a week
for an hour or so...)

My general experience with vonage has been that they are pretty good
for US calls but overseas calls have reduced quality and overseas
calls to mobile phones are horrible. At this point, I only keep the
phone so Mum has a local US number to call me on and so I can access
customer support lines for US companies that restrict calls to US
phones...

I hope my experiences can help you fix the issue you're having.

Christopher Appell