And continuing . . .
Erft wrote:Today being Thanksgiving, some people have tried to call me. The phone never rang. All calls immediately went to email voicemail. That was the only way I knew anybody had called. I looked at my Freephoneline account, and there was no Call Log. No calls showed up in my phone CID. I had my neighbour call me on his cell, and I could hear from his end that the phone didn't ring; it went immediately to voicemail. The problem wasn't my phone. So in my account, I went into Follow Me settings, and they had changed. Since I don't have a cell phone or other phone number, I keep Follow Me "Disabled", but suddenly it was enabled for Always Forward. I disabled it, and had my neighbour call me again, and this time the phone rang. I looked at my account, and now the Call Log was available. His call showed up.
I have looked at other posts and some people are saying it's Windows updates causing problems.
No. Windows updates and Microsoft have nothing to do with your ATA and Freephoneline online account being hacked. Change your online account password:
https://www.freephoneline.ca/updatePasswordDetails.
Port forwarding and using DMZ are security risks. Don't port forward (UPnP is also a security risk in many routers), unless you have no other choice. Don't use DMZ. Change the default password for logging into your ATA. Refer to your ATA's manual if you don't know how. Using default passwords for devices connected to the internet is a great way to get hacked.
Always use a restricted or port-restricted cone NAT router. Refer to point #3 in the PDF guide on page 2. Also visit
https://forums.redflagdeals.com/freepho ... #p29299104.
-Why have I been experiencing intermittent phone service disruption for the last year?
There could be a multitude of reasons, including, but not limited to, intermittent internet connectivity.
Are Freephoneline’s SIP servers down? My ATA isn’t registered.A. Visit
http://status.fongo.com/ to check server status.
B. If the service status website doesn’t note any issues, then chances are the problem is on your end. In
your in your SPA122, Navigate to Voice-->Line 1 (or whatever you're using for FPL)-->SIP settings, change SIP Port to a random number between 30000 and 60000.
Just pick a port number in that range. Change to a new port number in that range. Afterwards, reboot the ATA.
If changing the local SIP Port works, you were dealing with a corrupted NAT connection in your router.
Possibly a NAT router connection was never disconnected or never timed out properly. And, then, the
ATA keeps the corrupted connection in a persistent state over and over again. (Credit goes to Mango for
this information). Possibly, this problem is due to the router's UDP timeout being in excess of the ATA's
Failure Retry timer. With FPL, that's 120 seconds.
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 < UDP Assured Timeout (in your router) < SIP Registration Failure Retry Wait Time (Reg Retry Intvl)
“<“ 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_KeepaliveExpires 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 General–>Tools-->Other settings. 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 (Reg Retry Intvl setting in your ATA) is 120. I use 10 for UDP
Unreplied Timeout and 117 for UDP Assured Timeout.
C. Double check your Registration timers.
i. Register Expires must be set to 3600 seconds
ii. Navigate to Voice-->SIP-->SIP Timer Values (sec)-->Reg Retry Intvl should be 120 seconds
If your ATA makes more than 5 registration attempts in 5 minutes (each time your reboot your ATA, it's attempting to register with Freephoneline; if the reg retry interval or Register Expires is too low, you also run the risk of getting temporarily IP banned), you may end up being temporarily IP banned by the specific FPL server the ATA was sending registration requests to. If you're temporarily IP banned, you could then try switching Proxy to a different FPL server than the one you were previously using
(voip.freephoneline.ca, voip2.freephoneline.ca, or voip4.freephoneline.ca:6060), unless you need to use voip4.freephoneline.ca:6060 because you have SIP ALG forced on in your router. The purpose of voip4.freephoneline.ca:6060 is to circumvent SIP ALG features in routers.
From
https://community.freepbx.org/t/trunk-s ... ca/22479/8"As May 2013, our servers will rate limit REGISTER requests to a maximum of 10 requests per 5 minutes. Each authentication round usually consumes 2 requests (digest auth), so it is a fair number given our guidelines. Also, it does not affect INVITES (which are also authenticated)...
This rate limit is applied per IP address as our service is tailored to residential Canadian users (ADSL/Cable)."
If you're temporarily IP banned, you could then try switching Primary SIP Server to a different FPL server than the one you were previously using (voip.freephoneline.ca, voip2.freephoneline.ca, or voip4.freephoneline.ca:6060), unless you need to use voip4.freephoneline.ca:6060 because you have SIP ALG forced on in your router. The purpose of voip4.freephoneline.ca:6060 is to circumvent SIP ALG features in routers. Or you can disable FPL SIP registration in all devices (turn off your ATA) and wait a few hours until the temporary ban clears.
-Why won't the desktop app work?
It works fine for me on four different PCs.
A windows update the same day that my settings changed and my password and proxies deleted made a pop-up appear advertising Microsoft's new 2019 Office program, and suddenly my legacy MS Office wouldn't work. Trying to reinstall and repair with the CD doesn't work because apparently my computer has been scrubbed clean of Visual FoxPro, with MS not allowing anyone to redownload it.
You may have bigger issues, in particular not having a stable, uncorrupted OS installed, that preclude you from getting the Freephoneline desktop app working. Possibly, a clean install of your OS may help.
For desktop app installation instructions, visit
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19063#p74810 (the instructions were posted for someone using Windows 8, but it's pretty similar for Windows 10 as well).
Also visit
https://forums.redflagdeals.com/newegg- ... #p28415214.
Note that only one registration per FPL account is allowed at any time. When there are multiple devices/softphones using the same account, only the most recent registration is valid. The previous device will lose registration. This is especially important to consider if someone else is using your SIP credentials (username and password) that are found after logging in at
https://www.freephoneline.ca/showSipSettings (or if you're trying to register your FPL account with a smartphone SIP app or with another device). Registration is required for incoming calls. It is not required for outgoing calls. If you simply want to make outgoing calls using your FPL number, configure, but don't register the account, on the SIP app being used. This is also important to consider if you're using Freephoneline's desktop application (don't have it running while using your ATA with the same FPL account). Additionally, keep in mind that if someone else is also attempting to register the same SIP credentials on another device where you live, too many registration attempts can result in a temporary IP ban.
WHY ARE MY SETTINGS CHANGING? In both the ATA and in my Freephoneline account?
You've likely been hacked or someone else has access to your ATA and FPL account.
Port forwarding and using DMZ are security risks. Don't port forward (UPnP is also a security risk in many routers), unless you have no other choice. Don't use DMZ. Change the default password for logging into your ATA. Refer to your ATA's manual if you don't know how. Using default passwords for devices connected to the internet is a great way to get hacked. Always use a restricted or port-restricted cone NAT firewall router to protect your ATA and devices on your LAN. Update router firmware if you have your own router (sometimes firmware updates contain security patches).
Use strong passwords, and don’t use the same password at any site:
https://haveibeenpwned.com/ (check your email addresses).
Run Malwarebytes on your PC:
https://www.malwarebytes.com/premium/ (there's a free trail; run a scan). I find Malwarebytes is useful for ransomware and general malware that some other products don't detect.
Run a free scan with ESET's online scanner:
https://www.eset.com/ca/home/online-scanner/. I like Eset because it has a really low false-positive detection rate in comparison to other products. In many cases, antivirus products are more annoying than viruses that never exist on a PC due to high false-positive detections.
Otherwise, you may wish to attempt a clean install of your OS.