Voip Hookup

[stevech]

As someone who has tried both, I vote for the separate devices. Can't tell you how much time we wasted trouble-shooting (while experiencing outage) a combo only to find out it was the router..

The HT502 can do NAT routing, but it lacks several common capabilities in home routers so I don't use it on the WAN side.

[fisamo]

Why does this vary?

The need for port forwarding varies with home router model (including the version of firmware running).

[stevech]

The need for port forwarding varies with home router model (including the version of firmware running).

yes, but I'm a geek and wonder why some work without explicit port-forwarding and others do not.

[fisamo]

yes, but I'm a geek and wonder why some work without explicit port-forwarding and others do not.

Understandable, but I don't have a more satisfying answer. I'm sure it depends on how the firmware in the various routers filters incoming packets, but detail beyond that level is more than I'd know...

[goldentouch]

My service was working fine for about a year with no forwarding.
Last week all calls suddenly went to voicemail.
Support suggested the usual ports to fix the issue.
I suspect changes with all the network upgrades etc. was the culprit.