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

[babaganoosh]

I've been working with Voipo support for a couple weeks now in back and forth emails with this problem. Wonder if others have the same issue(s) or had them and were able to resolve them?

First, we have 2 voipo ATA boxes / 2 seperate phone lines. 1 box is a Grandstream and 1 is Linksys.

On the Linksys phone line, everything works fine... From any phone in the house, we can dial 123 and get to voicemail within about 2 seconds. The woman says 'welcome'...
And touch tones work fine to listen / delete, etc.

This box is set to use ports 5078 & 5079 and I have port forwarding set up in the house's router to forward to the static IP of the Linksys.

The problem is with the other line, with the grandstream. That uses ports 5065 & 5098. Again, I have port forwarding for those ports going to the static IP for the grandview. (we had been getting calls with no caller ID or 'ASTERISK' and no one there and the calls weren't showing up in the voipo incoming call log when it had the 'standard' ports so they changed to these 2 ports figuring it was hackers causing the ghost calls?).

On this line, from any phone in the house, when you dial 123, it takes about 13 seconds for the 'welcome...'. And touch tones do not work (yes, this happens from the same phones that work fine calling the Linksys line, can make outgoing calls with no problems with either box, can operate touch tone driven systems when we call, etc (I don't think it's a question of the touch tones on all the phones in the house being slightly 'off').

We've had voipo service for probably a year now and only recently started using voicemail (it's been on, but we had an answering machine in the house that would answer before voipo voicemail would. We disconnected the answering machine recently and now notice this problem with 1 line).

Again, we've been in touch with Voipo support and they've been trying some things to no avail.

I am curious if anyone is thinking 'yeah, I never thought about it but it takes a long time to connect on 123 for me also' or something like that. What type of ATA do you have? Maybe it's just brand loyalty, but the Linksys line seems more reliable - no ghost phone calls, quicker connecting to 123, etc...

Or if you had this problem and solved it?

1 thing I did notice is that disabling then enabling voicemail on the troubled line from the voipo website got the 13 seconds down to 8, at least right after doing that. But now, a few days later, it's back to 13.

This certainly isn't a huge deal - we're checking voicemail from the website. It just would be nice to have 123 as an option also.

take care!

[Russell]

What happens on the Grandstream if you press # after the 123? Does it speed it up?

[babaganoosh]

Yeah! That gets 'welcome' after about 3 seconds which is what it takes when calling from the other line!

So

a) what's that mean / what's the # doing? Saying 'that's the end of what I am going to enter', I guess?
b) is there a way to not have to enter # to get the 3 second response?
c) is 3 seconds the typical response time to get to voicemail?

[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!

[Russell]

Essentially, it's a dial plan issue. There are patterns of digits which are recognized as a complete set of numbers and sent (when recognized) by the device to the server. 123 is recognized by the Linksys but not by the Grandstream. # sends the preceding string on its way. If it does not recognize as complete it'll wait for a while and then send it anyway, which explains the long pause.

[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!

[stevech]

I'm told that some/most consumer routers don't require port forwarding for VoIP; they have port triggering or some such logic.

Dial plan: Wouldn't VoIPo have identical dial plans for both kinds of ATAs? These are configured by VoIPo who I assume, doesn't use the manufacturers' default.

[babaganoosh]

same plan? yeah, I would think. but again, they had me reset the box and then connected to my PC and configured it (manually) from inside my lan. likely forgot to enter 123 in some field? They don't give out the password for admin, correct? What started this was the password they had for the box didn't work for some reason. so they had me do the hard reset / wiped out the config from when I originally got it.

Previously, they had asked me to put the box on the DMZ but I guess without the password they or the automated system coulnd't get in to make the port changes.

[babaganoosh]

Russell et al:

After several back and forth emails over the last few days / week + and over 1 hour tech support remote session today trying to speed up the processing of 123 going to voicemail, I got this from tier 2 : I am reading this as 'yep, it's working as designed'. Maybe if I didn't have the linksys box also for a different line and that gets me to voicemail within a couple seconds, I'd believe them. But I think it's solveable thanks to russell tipping me off to 'dial plans'.

I was able to see / copy the dial plan in the grandstream:

{ *12 | *400 | [2-9]xxxxxxxxx | 1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxx | 011[2-9]x. | [34789]11 | [x*]+ }

I certainly don't know all of that, but from the dial plan tutorials on the web, it sounds like there should be a reference to 123 > [something] ?

does anyone know what the linksys dial plan looks like? Does the grandstream take 13 seconds for everyone? And if this is the design, I would think it'd be more well known - why have so many emails and 1 hour of remote support today not come to that conclusion sooner?

I admitted to tech support that this is a piddly small issue. Adding # DOES solve the problem. But is the dial plan wrong? Or is this a 'feature' of grandstreams only? cause again, the linksys knows to connect me to voicemail within 2 seconds.

Does VoipTim check all the threads or can I / should I ask him for intervention?


David,

The reason you would need to hit # after dialing 123 is simply because when you dial with the '1' prefix the dial plan does not know if you are going to dial an 11 digit phone number versus accessing our voicemail system. You are able to simply dial 123 however it will need to execute the normal dial plan timeout time that is set before the call is attempted to be 'sent'. We can lower this duration for you, however it will also lower the amount of time you have between inputing each digit when dialing normal calls. Please advise if you wish for us to do this for you, thanks!

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: EJW-602536
Department: Tier II Support
Priority: Requests Handled in Order Received
Status: Pending Customer Response

[burris]

I'm told that some/most consumer routers don't require port forwarding for VoIP; they have port triggering or some such logic.

Dial plan: Wouldn't VoIPo have identical dial plans for both kinds of ATAs? These are configured by VoIPo who I assume, doesn't use the manufacturers' default.

My Grandstream has a different dial plan scheme than the Linksys.

Maybe babaganoosh can pick it up from here...

This is my Linksys....

( *123S0 | 123S0 | 011[2-9]x.S5 | 1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS1 | [2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS1 | [2-9]xxxxxxS1 | [2-9]11S1 | *xxS1 | *xx1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS1 | *xx[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS1 | x. )

Grandstream....
{ *12 | *400 | [2-9]xxxxxxxxx | 1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxx | 011[2-9]x. | [34789]11 | [x*]+ }

[burris]

Babaganoosh...

If you read my dial strings and you actually have access to it in your ATA, insert the first two 123 as they appear in my Linksys plan..don't forget the | and spaces...stick them in at the beginning exactly as they are. This takes care of the VM wait time on the Grandstream.

I am using my SPA2102 now and since I don't use the system VM, I never noticed this. I just tried it in my Linksys with the Grandstream dial plan and all is well here.

[stevech]

Are the Grandstream and LInksys dial plans setup by VoIPo functionally identical? If not, why not?

[babaganoosh]

I can't see the linksys dial plan to know if they are the same.

After the last email I sent them saying that it's lame to claim it's as designed after soooo many back and forth emails and the hour of remote session, they did something and now it's working.

I am a big an of Voipo, but VERY dissapointed that what you guys are making it seems amazing simple to deal with took them SOOOOO long to fix AND worse, saying - 13 seconds is as designed. How many others walk away saying 'oh, OK'?

I'm involved in IT consulting and people come to me asking about Voip. It's things like this that make me pause when offering a recommendation. If the 'simple' things like this take so long to resolve, what if a 'real' issue comes up?

If I had access to my ATA - I don't.... do others here? I have the understanding that Voipo keeps users out of the box. For novices that makes sense.