2 problems with Voicemail - 13 seconds to connect to it and touch tones don't work?

[babaganoosh]

I was real psyched you nailed a work around so quick and was looking at your profile - you make a point to say you run multiple ATAs? Mind if I ask how many? (all on the same LAN?). Is that configuration reliable? You have seperate pairs of ports for each ATA? And port forward the pairs to each ATA? Do you know what the upper limit is on different ATAs you can run on 1 lan?

Thanks!

[babaganoosh]

Oh, Russell, another thing:

What brand(s) of ATA do you use? Any preference for brand of ATA? Grandstream vs. Linksys vs. whose else does Voipo supply? Or for the end user, it's all the same?

Are these in front of the computers at your location? (and I guess you are using the NAT of at least 1 of the ATAs for that?) or are the PCs and the ATAs in the same subnet / all connected to the same router?

Thanks!

[babaganoosh]

If it does not recognize as complete it'll wait for a while and then send it anyway, which explains the long pause.

is there a way to teach the grandstream that if I dial 123, there's nothing else after it? can I do that? Or can Voipo? Should voipo techs know this? I have 5+ emails from them over the last couple weeks about this, with them trying things behind the scenes.

[Russell]

If it does not recognize as complete it'll wait for a while and then send it anyway, which explains the long pause.

is there a way to teach the grandstream that if I dial 123, there's nothing else after it? can I do that? Or can Voipo? Should voipo techs know this? I have 5+ emails from them over the last couple weeks about this, with them trying things behind the scenes.

It should be (I'm not a techie) in the dial plan of the device. If it's not, adding it to the dial plan should "teach" it.

[Russell]

Oh, Russell, another thing:

What brand(s) of ATA do you use? Any preference for brand of ATA? Grandstream vs. Linksys vs. whose else does Voipo supply? Or for the end user, it's all the same?

Thanks!

I've tried several. Unfortunately, I've yet to find one which works perfectly for my situation :-(.

[Russell]

I was real psyched you nailed a work around so quick and was looking at your profile - you make a point to say you run multiple ATAs? Mind if I ask how many? (all on the same LAN?). Is that configuration reliable? You have seperate pairs of ports for each ATA? And port forward the pairs to each ATA? Do you know what the upper limit is on different ATAs you can run on 1 lan?

Thanks!

Only one VOIPo ATA. One think I dislike about the VOIPo architecture is the requirement to port-forward UDP ports 5004-65000 to your device for reliable service. Not sure how you can place more than one VOIPo ATAs reliably behind a router given that requirement - someone from VOIPo may comment on this. Do note since I just run one VOIPo ATA, the requirement to me is a minor negative compared with the positives of VOIPo. I've played with a second one (on and off). Actually have a "cracked" Vonage RT31P2 in service at the current time. Currently my VOIPo device (PAP2T) and Vonage device are behind my UVerse modem+router box with the previously mentioned ports forwarded to the PAP2T.

[babaganoosh]

you said:

I dislike about the VOIPo architecture is the requirement to port-forward UDP ports 5004-65000 to your device for reliable service


I don't have that set up (and things are working (relatively) good). How critical is that? I heard that mentioned somewhere as recommended.

And I did see you say you aren't techie, I'm always wondering how things DO work without port forwarding of the 2 ports. It's just 'recommended' to forward those ports.

Seems it should or shouldn't work. Either the router keeps out the inbound packets or they ride in on the reply to packets sent out from inside the LAN.

I need / want to learn more about Voip (and I guess voipo - that forwarding of a wide range of ports isn't part of 'true' Voip? Voip and voipo are different?

Thanks!

[Russell]

you said:

I dislike about the VOIPo architecture is the requirement to port-forward UDP ports 5004-65000 to your device for reliable service


I don't have that set up (and things are working (relatively) good). How critical is that? I heard that mentioned somewhere as recommended.

If things are working fine, I'd leave things the way they are. If you start getting (say) one way audio, VOIPo would recommend you port forward UDP 5004-65000. So, you can think of forwarding from day one as a preemption of sorts. What their best practices are when you have two of their ATAs, which is your situation, I don't know.

[babaganoosh]

one way audio - that was also the problem with the grandstream - 123, wait 13 seconds, get the 'welcome' and touch tones didn't work....

but with 123#, i get welcome within a couple seconds AND the touch tones work.

Guess I have to have Voipo techs add 123 to my calling plan. they did have me reset the grandsteam before I noticed this 13 second delay so they could change the ports... and they couldn't get into it to admin it - the system didn't like the password they thought it was. so I reset it and they reconfigured it during a help session. the call plan / 123 likely got lost in the process? I'll get in touch with them monday.

thanks for all your help!