TechAgility

So a little while back I had noticed that the Netgear DG834N that I had been using was getting quite hot at times with regards to the 240V Brick power supply – it even needed to be turned off at times to let it cool. So I hunted around and then decided to replace it with a fairly simple and effective Billion 5200N – nothing fancy – just a simple and cheap ADSL2+ capable Wireless Router/Modem combo.

So before removing the Netgear I had copied down all the specific settings information, powered up the Billion in isolation and applied all the settings OK, then tested and then finally swapped it out. And it ran very well – so well in fact that the lass who was working next door who was “borrowing” some Internet for her MacBook didn’t even realise there was a swap out.

So I thought I’d done pretty well with that – UNTIL – I came home to find a bill from Telstra (the incumbent Telco) for $73 for the month? WTF!!! We normally just pay the min. amount just to be connected to the copper and I have an account with PennyTel to redirect all phone comms on to the VoIP courtesy of a neat little Sipura SPA-3000 unit. Sipura has since been bought out by LinkSys and then Cisco – but that’s another story?

So I’m looking at this bill and then it occurs to me that I didn’t double-check the VoIP after the switch – DAMN!! So I check the Web Admin page, and sure enough I can see that it’s failing to register with the service… so I then started to try and configure a SIP service on the device for port 5060, and find that it’s not simple and not easy, and what the heck – why should it be so hard? So then I start looking around and consulting lot’s of forums, etc…  So I spent about 4 – 5 hours plus that night trying to get the bottom of it – no joy. Major bummer.

So when I came home the next day I was chatting to my brother and we go through all the obvious things…  then we decide that I really should try a SoftPhone from my PC, bloody hell, it works – so the Router *IS* passing VoIP and SIP anyway? I confirmed this with Wireshark – 5060 and SIP traffic is passing through no problems. So what is the cause of this problem? Why won’t my little box access and deliver VoIP traffic?

So I step through the settings from the top one more time – and then it hits me that I had set up the little SPA-3000 unit with a static IP – NOT DHCP!!!!
The older Netgear was set with 192.168.0.1 as the Gateway – the Billion came default with 192.168.1.254 – so I arbitrarily chose to make it 192.168.0.254 as the new gateway

AND – I had not updated the SPA-3000 to point to the .254 – it was still pointing the DNS and Gateway to the old .1 address
Problem solved, VoIP registration complete and Phone now working as it should.

written by dcaddick