Router/GS502 Help!

I'm having serious issues with the GS502 playing nice with my router.

My router is a Linksys BEFSR81.

http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satel...=1115416832205

A few days ago I noticed my router was cycling over and over. It did this after there was an IP assignment conflict on my network (running DHCP).

The fix was supposedly to assign a static IP address to the 502, which I did in the ATA. And after rebooting a few times, all was well with my phone and my network.

However, when the IP address expired on the VOIPo servers, the ATA went down and stayed down.

I cannot find the settings in my router to set an IP address for the 502 using the MAC address. Anyone know what that would be called on a Linksys router?

Now, I am going to try setting up my network with all static IP addresses and turn off DHCP to see if that works (and hopefully not affect the rest of my network).

If not, I may set them all static except for the 502 and leave DHCP on to just renew the 502. Though I suspect that may not work.

If that doesn't work, I will have to try putting the 502 in front of my router again (which didn't work last time) and see if I can get that to work.

This is all kind of frustrating to me because I am not that knowledgeable in network management and I tend to make mistakes I don't realize and really screw things up.

Setting static IPs for all the devices on my network including the 502, should make this problem go away right?

What is the benefit of DHCP on a home network?

Should I update the router's firmware?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by digger16309

I'm having serious issues with the GS502 playing nice with my router.

My router is a Linksys BEFSR81.

http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satel...=1115416832205

A few days ago I noticed my router was cycling over and over. It did this after there was an IP assignment conflict on my network (running DHCP).

The fix was supposedly to assign a static IP address to the 502, which I did in the ATA. And after rebooting a few times, all was well with my phone and my network.

However, when the IP address expired on the VOIPo servers, the ATA went down and stayed down.

I cannot find the settings in my router to set an IP address for the 502 using the MAC address. Anyone know what that would be called on a Linksys router?

Now, I am going to try setting up my network with all static IP addresses and turn off DHCP to see if that works (and hopefully not affect the rest of my network).

If not, I may set them all static except for the 502 and leave DHCP on to just renew the 502. Though I suspect that may not work.

If that doesn't work, I will have to try putting the 502 in front of my router again (which didn't work last time) and see if I can get that to work.

This is all kind of frustrating to me because I am not that knowledgeable in network management and I tend to make mistakes I don't realize and really screw things up.

Setting static IPs for all the devices on my network including the 502, should make this problem go away right?

What is the benefit of DHCP on a home network?

Should I update the router's firmware?

Thanks in advance for your help.

---

If you are using a router, first only plug your ATA WAN port into a spare port on your router. Don't use the LAN port on the 502 as it will then want to behave as another router, which could present other conflicts.

Although my ISP supplies a static IP for me, I still leave everything set to DHCP in my wireless router. I have 5 PCs on my home lan and this seems to work ok for me.

I don't yet have my 502 hooked up and am using my SPA2102 in the interim, but I don't think it should make any difference.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by burris

If you are using a router, first only plug your ATA WAN port into a spare port on your router. Don't use the LAN port on the 502 as it will then want to behave as another router, which could present other conflicts.

Although my ISP supplies a static IP for me, I still leave everything set to DHCP in my wireless router. I have 5 PCs on my home lan and this seems to work ok for me.

I don't yet have my 502 hooked up and am using my SPA2102 in the interim, but I don't think it should make any difference.

---

Thanks Burris. Yes, I'm only plugging in the ATA WAN port into the Linksys router - no LAN.

To clarify...

My ISP supplies a static IP address to my cable modem, but my router uses DHCP to supply local IP addresses to my 3 computers, 2 DVRs, and the GS502.

For some reason, with the GS502, when the leases expire on the local IP addresses, the 502 and computers on my network clash, sometimes causing a conflict where they pull the same local IP address, making the 502 not work. I did not experience this with the 286 (or with the Linksys PAP2T when I had that)

Assigning a static IP address to the 502 with DHCP turned on did not fix the problem.

Digger, if you try to assign a static IP to the 502, you need to make sure it isn't in the range served up by the linksys router. for example: if the linksys dhcp server settings are to serve up 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.254, you would want to use 192.168.1.99 or something not in the range of 100-254 in that block, as you may otherwise give a static IP and the linksys happens to serve up that same IP to a dynamic host and you have a conflict. I don't understand how if you have the 502 set up for dynamic addressing, it can end up conflicting with anyone (sounds like it isn't really 100% dynamic?) Anyway, try the static IP method with my above comments.

Change the lan address of the 502 to something further outside the subnet of the linksys.

10.10.50.1 would work just fine...

And you could try setting it from router to bridge...

Huh? If the static IP is not in the subnet of the linksys, it won't be able to reach any outside host! It needs to be in the linksys subnet, but NOT in the linksys DHCP range.

The Lan ip not the wan ip... :)

The grandstream will attempt to block anything it thinks is on its own subnet from getting out of its wan port. If its close enough things can get messy.

Sigh, I thought you meant the address of the 502 on the LAN, not it's LAN address. Yes, having these overlap is a recipe for disaster, and not all routers diagnose this :(

Its the old double nat pitfall...


I would set up the 502 so that it hands out addresses in its new lan subnet also so that getting into its lan port is not a problem. ;)

this is not really double NAT, it's a routing issue. routers can't have two interfaces in the same subnet...

Thanks for all of your replies. Although I'm still kind of confused.

I have the 502 behind my Linksys router, so I'm not using the LAN port on the 502 at all.

I'm only using the WAN port connected to an open port coming off the router.

There is no double NAT issue and even if that was a possibility, I set it to Bridge mode anyway.

What is happening is that yes, the 502 is dynamically assigned an address like 192.168.1.103. All is well until the router decides to refresh the LAN IP addresses on the network for some reason and then the 502 and one of my computers conflict getting the IP address renewed causing the 502 to go offline and into cycling mode. Then when I statically assign it 103, there is conflict again later as my router tries to assign 103 to something else.

So as I understand your posts, if I change the static address for the 502 to outside the DHCP range, like 192.168.1.99 (but using the same subnet 255.255.255.0), then the conflicts should go away, correct?

If so, I'll try that tonight.

I still have a question from my first post. What is the benefit of running DHCP on my home network. Couldn't I just turn that off and assign static addresses to all of my devices?

What are the drawbacks, if any, of not using DHCP?

Again, thanks for your help!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dswartz

this is not really double NAT, it's a routing issue. routers can't have two interfaces in the same subnet...

---

Yea I know but you would be surprised how many times I get called from friends where this is the issue. And these are guys that build their own. :rolleyes:

:)

Yes, this should eliminate the issue.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by digger16309

I have the 502 behind my Linksys router, so I'm not using the LAN port on the 502 at all.

I'm only using the WAN port connected to an open port coming off the router.

There is no double NAT issue and even if that was a possibility, I set it to Bridge mode anyway.

What is happening is that yes, the 502 is dynamically assigned an address like 192.168.1.103. All is well until the router decides to refresh the LAN IP addresses on the network for some reason and then the 502 and one of my computers conflict getting the IP address renewed causing the 502 to go offline and into cycling mode. Then when I statically assign it 103, there is conflict again later as my router tries to assign 103 to something else.

So as I understand your posts, if I change the static address for the 502 to outside the DHCP range, like 192.168.1.99 (but using the same subnet 255.255.255.0), then the conflicts should go away, correct?

If so, I'll try that tonight.

I still have a question from my first post. What is the benefit of running DHCP on my home network. Couldn't I just turn that off and assign static addresses to all of my devices?

What are the drawbacks, if any, of not using DHCP?

Again, thanks for your help!

---

Technically the voip portion of the 502 is on its lan subnet. In its own kind of way though...

But I see your problem better now after I have had a little sleep in the last hour. :rolleyes: (new child yesterday.:) )

Yes assign it something else out of the Linksys dhcp range...


Yes you could turn dhcp off but it would make it more difficult to add devices or computers later. Instead you might change the range to something higher in the subnet. I set mine from xx.xx.1.201 - xx.xx.1.225 and then statically assign everything below that.

Good Luck. And sorry for my confusion... ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by chpalmer

But I see your problem better now after I have had a little sleep in the last hour. :rolleyes: (new child yesterday.:) )

---

Congrats. I'm childless and glad I get to sleep as much as I want. Plan for it to stay that way for a while too. :)

Thanks! :)

Hopefully we will get this ones schedule in the right order a little quicker than his siblings... :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by chpalmer

Thanks! :)

Hopefully we will get this ones schedule in the right order a little quicker than his siblings... :p

---

Congrats on the new little guy, and good luck with that (scheduling...) :)

OK - your suggestions did not work, and they did not work because the damn GS502 continues to cycle in a mentally unstable way anytime I make any changes at all. I barely have enough time to put in the password before I can make a change, hit update, and reboot. Then it just cycles until I figure out some new combination to boot everything so it can obtain a dynamically assigned LAN address.

On reboot I get something similar to this person:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 1bird2

Setting a static IP does not seem to work for me.

I log in as Tim mentions. Set IP address to a private IP in my network (NAT'd behind a FW), set subnet, default route and add two public DNS server addresses (my ISP DNS servers)

I update this info, select "Update". Message returned that values are saved, reboot to take affect. I reboot device remotely. Wait 30 secs and login again.

THe static IP is set (as I login with the new IP address in the browser), but the DNS entries are gone and all set to 0.0.0.0. I also notice I have lost dial tone and LED on GS is now flashing on / off with red color.

Log back in to GS. Reset to Dynamic (note, I have reserved an IP for the GS by MAC address), save configuration, reboot GS. Everything works after I do this.

---

Basically, I can set the static IP, but then it doesn't have DNS so it is useless.

I ended up setting a static address to my other devices and leaving my router setup with DHCP to set the 502 dynamically. But I'm not certain that is going to hold when the lease expires (I have it set to maximum - 24 days).

Again, this is very frustrating. I ended up missing a workout tonight because I was screwing around with this.

I have now spent more time in 4 days fussing with this setup to get it to work, than I ever did with (GASP) ViaTalk, in 16 months.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by digger16309

I have now spent more time in 4 days fussing with this setup to get it to work, than I ever did with (GASP) ViaTalk, in 16 months.

---

I don't remember your network setup specifically so there may be a reason, but is there any reason you can't connect it directly to the modem? That's what these were designed for and the reason we switched to them. It eliminates 99% of issues.

I'll also have a developer check tomorrow to see if there is anything that can be done with just hardcoding our DNS servers in so it's not depending on your router to issue them.

sounds defective, no?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VOIPoTim

I don't remember your network setup specifically so there may be a reason, but is there any reason you can't connect it directly to the modem? That's what these were designed for and the reason we switched to them. It eliminates 99% of issues.

I'll also have a developer check tomorrow to see if there is anything that can be done with just hardcoding our DNS servers in so it's not depending on your router to issue them.

---

Cable Modem --> Router --> 502 --> Phone

This worked fine for the 286 and previously a PAP2T. I had no issues with either one.

I did try putting it in front of the router and got the same issue - constant cycling of the 502. Going router to router would not be my first preference.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dswartz

sounds defective, no?

---

That might be it.

It is maddening to deal with because there are less than 10 seconds to make changes each time before it blinks out and I get locked out of the interface until it reboots.

The only way to get it to hold is to switch back to dynamic, then take several chances on restarting, modem, router, ATA in such an order that the ATA likes. It never seems to be the same each time. That's been true since I got it.

I think the suggestion dswartz made may solve a lot of this and also explain why these are problem-free when connected to a modem directly.

I think he's saying the LAN IP range of the GS is conflicting with the router's range so the GS is confused when you hook it up to the LAN port and it gets a WAN IP within its local IP block.

To be completely safe, can you just set the LAN portion of the GS to use an entirely different block like 10.175.1.1 or something that's not remotely in the same block?

I hadn't thought about that much, but it makes sense as to why it would loop sometimes if it's thinking the WAN IP is suddenly in the LAN IP range.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by digger16309

I did try putting it in front of the router and got the same issue - constant cycling of the 502. Going router to router would not be my first preference.

---

Didn't see this part. In that case it's very possible that it is defective.

I'm having someone look at the DNS stuff though to see if that could be related.

If that's not the issue and they think it's defective too, then we can overnight a replacement tomorrow.

I hesitate to mess with it right now for fear I will take another 30 minute odyssey of cycling hell.

My Linksys router DHCP range is 192.168.1.101-250

The 502 LAN port is not enabled and is running with different IP address even if it were enabled.

It currently reads as this:

Device Mode: Bridge
NAT maximum ports: 1024 (range: 0 - 4096, default is 1024)
NAT TCP timeout: 3600 (range: 0 - 3600, default is 3600)
NAT UDP timeout: 300 (range: 0 - 3600, default is 300)
Uplink bandwidth: Disabled
Downlink bandwidth: Disabled
Enable UPnP support: No
Reply to ICMP on WAN port: Yes (Unit will not respond to PING from WAN side if set to No)
WAN side HTTP/Telnet access: Yes (WAN side access will be rejected if set to No)
Cloned WAN MAC Addr: (in hex format)
Enable LAN DHCP: No
LAN DHCP Base IP: 192.168.2.1 (base IP for the LAN port, default is 192.168.2.1)
LAN DHCP Start IP: 100 (default is 100)
LAN DHCP End IP: 199 (default is 199)
LAN Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 (default is 255.255.255.0)
DHCP IP Lease Time: 120 (in units of hours, default is 120 hours or 5 days)

I believe this is resolved for everyone now.

We had a flood of tickets tonight about this and finally discovered a big issue on our end resulting from a change we just made today.

Basically, we made some final changes to the provisioning servers today and there was an error in the test where the config file being passed to the 502s was not fully correct. When an IP renewed or you rebooted a 502 this evening, it would resync with our provisioning servers and download the bad config. Since it was a bad config, it didn't know what to do with it and just cycled.

We've corrected this now and I think it'll resolve the issue for everyone.

So far in all tickets where we've gotten a response back and in all our internal testing, it's been resolved.

I apologize for the inconvenience and am am going to sit down and discuss our dev to production procedures tomorrow to make sure we're all on the same page and clear that everything is to be tested before being pushed out.

If anyone is still seeing the cycling, please turn your ATA off for a few minutes then reconnect it. Once it syncs back up with us (make take a minute or so), it should pull a valid config file and will likely reboot 1 time.

If you're still having issues, please e-mail support@voipo.com and let us know.

Thanks Tim - I'm going to submit a ticket anyway. My 502 took the hard-coded DNS server just fine (thanks for that fix) but either that or the config glitch, caused it to be cycling unmercifully at 5 am this morning.

It took me almost 30 minutes to get it to play nice again, with about 50 reboots, even after I had it set to a static IP address.

It may be fixed but I'd kind of like to try another 502 and see if it has the same behavior.

One question, the VOIPo servers seem to renew SIP registration on my ATA once an hour - or that's what it looks like on my end. I don't know enough about it. Is there a reason for that re-lease in a short timeframe?

-----------------------

edited for correct term

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by digger16309

Thanks Tim - I'm going to submit a ticket anyway. My 502 took the hard-coded DNS server just fine (thanks for that fix) but either that or the config glitch, caused it to be cycling unmercifully at 5 am this morning.

It took me almost 30 minutes to get it to play nice again, with about 50 reboots, even after I had it set to a static IP address.

It may be fixed but I'd kind of like to try another 502 and see if it has the same behavior.

One question, the VOIPo servers seem to renew the lease on my ATA once an hour - or that's what it looks like on my end. I don't know enough about it. Is there a reason for that re-lease in a short timeframe?

---

digger16309,
are you sure it's the DHCP lease time not the ATA SIP register expiration?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by voxabox

digger16309,
are you sure it's the DHCP lease time not the ATA SIP register expiration?

---

That's what I meant - the ATA SIP register expiration.

Why is that set at 1 hour intervals?

Mostly, I'm just curious about it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by digger16309

That's what I meant - the ATA SIP register expiration.

Why is that set at 1 hour intervals?

Mostly, I'm just curious about it.

---

3600 secs is the default value specified by most ATA/SIP phone manufacturer
I do not recall if there is a specific value recommended by any RFCs
since you're curious, you can consult my library, and let us know:)

This problem is now fixed for me.

No more crazy cycling. And I'm not crazy, nor is my network. I feel better now.

Thanks to everyone who provided suggestions that might help, and also to Tim and especially to Ray.