Outgoing calls fine but not incoming

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Outgoing calls fine but not incoming

Postby rahim.hoffman » 04/01/2017

I have two freephoneline numbers in two different homes in the Lower Mainland (Vancouver area) in BC. Since I moved to Shaw few months ago both numbers are having a problem with incoming calls. One home is using Grandstream ATA and the other is using an app on Android. When the client is restarted both incoming and outgoing calls are fine... however, after sometime (few hours) incoming calls start to fail; caller is being sent to voicemail. The only way to resolve this is by restarting the client however the problem comes back again in few hours. I've spent many long hours in the last few months changing with config and setting trying to fix it but no luck so far. I appreciate any help in this as I am running out of ideas... any suggestions or feedback is appreciated.
rahim.hoffman
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ISP Name: Shaw

Re: Outgoing calls fine but not incoming

Postby Liptonbrisk » 04/02/2017

"We [Fongo/Freephoneline] will be performing an extensive upgrade to our backend voice calling system on March 28 and 29 from 12:00AM-06:00AM EST. Voice calling may be intermittently disrupted; please do not submit a support ticket during these times." If the problem you experienced was during those times, then the upgrade was probably the reason for your troubles.





You should be providing the brand and model of the router you're using, the brand and model of the ATA you're using (including firmware version), the name and version of the Android app you're using (I doubt I am familiar with whatever app you're using unless it's Acrobit's Groundwire, but if you want others to help you, you're not providing enough information), and the registration status of Freephoneline in both the ATA and the app when the problem occurs. If FPL is not registered, incoming calls will not ring. If you're dealing with multiple power outages, your internet service temporarily going down and coming back up, etc., keep in mind that proper device reboot order is always modem --> router (wait for it to be fully up and running)--> ATA, in that order.

With respect to using Freephonline with a smartphone SIP app, note that Fibernetics' (the parent company of Freephoneline and Fongo) solution is to use Fongo Mobile. Fongo Mobile is essentially the same service as Freephoneline. Also, if you're in a weak cellular data signal area, you should expect incoming calls to drop directly to voicemail and/or for registration to fail. Restarting the app once you're in a stronger cellular service area will tend to work.



1) Make note of the registration timers listed at http://support.freephoneline.ca/hc/en-u ... redentials

Registration Interval: 3600 seconds (1 hour)

Registration Expiry: 3600 seconds (1 hour)

Failed Registration Re-Try Interval: 120 seconds

2) Keep in mind that you may only register a FPL account on a single device at any given time. Should you attempt to register the same FPL account on multiple devices, only the most recently registered device will ring for incoming calls. Moreover, should an ATA (or combination of ATAs and devices) attempt more than 5 registrations with the same FPL account within 5 minutes, you will be temporarily IP banned by the specific FPL SIP server used. Consequently, the registration timers noted in #1 are important.



3) Typically it's far better to have your own router with strong QoS functions and a restricted cone NAT firewall, disable whatever SIP ALG feature is enabled in the router, and stick whatever modem/router combo your ISP gives you into bridge mode. These router combos issued by ISPs frequently have faulty (and hidden) SIP ALG/SPI features enabled with no way for the customer to disable them without getting a technical representative from his or her ISP to turn this feature off. Quite frequently, the first representative you speak to will have no idea how to accomplish this, much less know what SIP ALG is. Someone may try to enable DMZ in your modem/router combo or port forward; doing either is a huge security risk. Be aware if you reset your modem or when your ISP pushes a new firmware update to your modem/router combo, SIP ALG may be enabled again by default (and, therefore, it’s simply better to have your own router with SIP ALG disabled in it).

To understand why SIP ALG often causes horrible problems, please visit http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Routers+SIP+ALG.

4) If you have your own router (not given to you by your ISP), ensure that whatever modem/router combo your ISP gave you is in bridge mode. Contact your ISP if need be.

5) Now that you understand why faulty SIP ALG features in routers are horrible, try disabling it in your own router, unless you own an Asus router. At the time of this writing, Asus routers work fine with Freephoneline with SIP Passthrough, which is the name for Asus’ SIP ALG feature, enabled.

Visit https://www.obitalk.com/info/faq/sip-alg/disable-alg for an example of how to disable SIP ALG.

If you were issued a modem/router combo (or gateway) by your ISP and have no way of disabling SIP ALG, you should be using voip4.freephoneline.ca:6060. The purpose of voip4.freephoneline.ca:6060 is to circumvent faulty SIP ALG features in routers.

6) Thanks to Mango, many of us now understand that in order for ATAs to remain registered and working properly with a VoIP SIP provider like Freephoneline, in particular after power failures, the following conditions must be met:

UDP Unreplied Timeout (in your router) < NAT Keep-alive Interval (in your ATA; for Obihai ATAs this is X_KeepAliveExpires) < UDP Assured Timeout (in your router) < SIP Registration Failure Retry Wait Time (or RegisterRetryInterval in Obihai ATAs)

“<“ means less than.

When a modem leases a new IP address, a problem can arise where prior associations using the old IP address are maintained in the router. When the ATA attempts to communicate using the old IP address, the response is unreplied, and then if the UDP Unreplied timeout is greater than the Keep Alive Interval (and UDP Unreplied timeout is often set to 30 by default in consumer routers) a problem arises where the corrupted connection persists. If UDP Unreplied timeout is, for example, 10, and the NAT Keep Alive Interval is 20, then the corrupted connection will timeout or close. A new connection will be created, and everything will work fine.

Another problem can occur when the Keep-Alive interval is greater than UDP Assured Timeout (often 180 by default in consumer routers): the NAT hole will close due to the ATA not communicating frequently enough with the SIP server. In turn, incoming calls may, intermittently, not reach the ATA. Again, X_Keepalives expires is supposed to be 20 with FPL.

Getting access to both UDP Unreplied Timeout and UDP Assured Timeout settings in consumer routers may be difficult, if not impossible. Asuswrt-Merlin, third party firmware for Asus routers, does offer easy access to these two settings, which are found under Tools-->Other settings. In part, for this reason, I tend to use Asus routers that support Asuswrt-Merlin. However, my understanding is that third party Tomato firmware has these two settings as well. So if your router supports Tomato firmware, that may be another option.

The keep alive interval for FPL is 20. The SIP Registration Failure Retry Wait Time is 120. I use 10 for UDP Unreplied Timeout and 117 for UDP Assured Timeout.

7) If you have an HT-701, visit viewtopic.php?f=15&t=18839#p74332.
Otherwise, refer to the PDF guides listed at viewforum.php?f=15.
Note that many of the older guides don't have the Failed Registration Re-Try Interval set to 120 seconds, and the Failed Registration Re-Try Interval should be 120s.

Lastly, if Mango wrote posted anything in those respective guide threads, do what Mango wrote.
Please do not send me emails; I do not work for nor represent Freephoneline or Fongo. Post questions on the forums so that others may learn from responses or assist you. Thank you. If you have an issue with your account or have a billing issue, submit a ticket here: https://support.fongo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new. Visit http://status.fongo.com/ to check FPL/Fongo service status. Freephoneline setup guides can be found at viewforum.php?f=15.
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