HT502 Not Visible to Router

[mobilelawyer]

You may have seen my prior post. I got the 502 up and running just fine by running the ethernet cable from the WAN out on the 502 to a LAN input on the switch attached to one of my router LAN inputs. Incoming and outgoing calls working wonderfully. I have not ported my old phone number, so I forwarded it to my new VOIP number. That set up did not work intially, but it did after a went throug a multi- device reboot.

Not to get overly paranoid about trouble down the road, but my my router cannot see the device. It does not show up as an attached device. So if I run into trouble in the future, I am hard- pressed to see how I can assign it a fixed address and port forward as suggested in the VOIPO set up documents, if trouble arises. Past experience teaches that if trouble can arise, it will.

What other settings do I need to adjust to make the device visible to the router, if I need to go that route at all?

Again, thanks in advance!

[MarkTomlinson]

If you've got the ATA ahead of your router (which you do), you won't have to assign a fixed IP or port-forward to the ATA. It just runs silently between your modem and the router. The router thinks the ATA is your Internet connection.

However, I ran into problems with this setup because I port-forward to devices behind the router. That means I have to port-forward through the ATA first -- which I can't do without getting the ATA's password and then altering the VOIPo default settings. Plus I use dynamic DNS from my router, which requires my router to know it's WAN address, but it thinks it's WAN address is the address the ATA assigned it. Most home users don't have these issues, so keeping the ATA ahead of the router is perfectly acceptable for them -- and probably for you.

If you do find yourself in such a position, though, my fix was just to get a newer router. I ended up with a Belkin F7D2301. It doesn't let me do everything I'd like to do, but it was relatively cheap and the ATA works fine behind it without any fixed IPs or port-forwarding.

[mobilelawyer]

Uh oh. I've got the Netgear DGND3700, and I have got some of its ports forwarded to use Remote Potato. I have not tried to access them since I got the 502 up and running. If you don't mind, may I ask what aspect of the design of the Belkin F7D2301 allows it to use the 502 behind it, when other router models do not, and how did you find out it had that feature.

I really really hope that if this issue does crop up with me, as I assume it will, there are some settings on the netgear that I can change to make it work.

[jack90125]

my setup is cablemodem -->router--->grandstream and it works fine.
I have stuff running on the router (ddwrt&optware) and all works fine.
I had to change the grandstream to a set ip as not running a dhcp server (do not need someone parked on the street hacking the internet). on the grandstrteam lan port is empty as have no need for anything hanging off it.
I had to call support to get it working as they had me change a setting in the advanced tab of the grandstream.
all has worked great and I still have my media server running off the router with no issues.

[MarkTomlinson]

If you don't mind, may I ask what aspect of the design of the Belkin F7D2301 allows it to use the 502 behind it, when other router models do not, and how did you find out it had that feature.

Honestly, I had an old router and just decided to replace it because so many other people had their ATA behind the router. I figured mine was just a crap router. I just took a chance, really.

The longer version of the story is that I had a Netgear running DD-WRT. Then, also, I had no problem with the ATA behind the router and had didn't have to port-forward to it or anything. But I'm constantly tinkering and bricked my Netgear, so I threw in an old Belkin I had laying around. But that's when I found I had to have my ATA in front of the router. After several failed attempts of trying to unbrick the Netgear, I gave up and bought the first router I could find that had port-forwarding in case I needed it. Lo and behold, the new Belkin worked flawlessly. So I decided to stop tinkering with the routers and just leave everything the way it is.

[mobilelawyer]

my setup is cablemodem -->router--->grandstream and it works fine.
I have stuff running on the router (ddwrt&optware) and all works fine.
I had to change the grandstream to a set ip as not running a dhcp server (do not need someone parked on the street hacking the internet). on the grandstrteam lan port is empty as have no need for anything hanging off it.
I had to call support to get it working as they had me change a setting in the advanced tab of the grandstream.
all has worked great and I still have my media server running off the router with no issues.

Question - how did you get into the Grandsteam to configure it? Since my set up does now allow it to be seen as a device, and it does not show up with an ip address, I do not have a way to log into its interface. At least as far as I know. My problem is that if I attach the WAN output of the Grandstream to the WAN input of my router, the Grandsteam still does not show up as a device, and I lose my internet connection. If I could turn its dhcp server off, maybe I could change my set up to emulate yours.

[jack90125]

Question - how did you get into the Grandsteam to configure it? Since my set up does now allow it to be seen as a device, and it does not show up with an ip address, I do not have a way to log into its interface. At least as far as I know. My problem is that if I attach the WAN output of the Grandstream to the WAN input of my router, the Grandsteam still does not show up as a device, and I lose my internet connection. If I could turn its dhcp server off, maybe I could change my set up to emulate yours.

plug the gs wan into the lan of router plug computer into lan port open browser and 192.168.2.1 and you can change the settings.
best bet is just have everything ready ,call support to walk you thru it.

[mobilelawyer]

Talked to a tech via telephone today, and everything is up and running. I did not have to change any settings. My port forwarding is working. I was typing in the wrong web address to access my media center server over the internet. When I got the tech on the phone he had me unplug the grandsteam, test the connection, and then I plugged it back in and we retested: everything worked just fine.

I was frustrated becuause I was not able to get into the web configuration page for the Grandstream. I had been able to do that over the weekend, but could not replicate. We made sure WAN access was enabled over the Grandstream. I had already changed that on the voice menu trying to get into it, so that did not have to be changed. We had already re-booted the grandstream testing to eliminate it as a problem on the port forwarding.

I was able to simply type in the ip address for the grandstream, and blip, the menu was there.

One thing I remembered after I hung up that I had changed over the weekend: I had changed the device from a NAT server to bridged mode. That was not an advanced setting. It is on the basic menu. So, given that everything is working now, I am not inclined to mess with it anymore. Would have asked the tech about it, had I remembered.

The tech refers to my set up where the WAN from the grandstream is plugged into the lan input on the router as being "behind" the router, not in front of it.

At any rate, I am a happy camper.