can't hear the caller

[ians77]

Hello i have a pap2 adapter connected on an ericsson w35 modem and router from rogers wireless.

About 95% of the time i can't hear the caller but they can hear me all the time. I've red the articles and forwarded my ports but still doesn't work even when i restart everything.
It used to work fine but not anymore.

Any idea?

thank you!!

[bridonca]

You have 2 problematic pieces of hardware, the PAP2, and the Ericsson w35, or more specifically, Rogers 3G. Rogers 3G is a bit of a picky beast when it comes to NAT, so you need a ATA that is tolerant to picky NAT configurations. You would be hard pressed to pick a worse ATA for improperly configured NAT than the PAP2.

It would be difficult to change the Rogers setup, but you can get a better ATA. Grandstream products seem to handle dodgy NAT better.

If you are still set on the PAP2, I suppose you could set up your PAP2 to use another SIP port like 5062, and change the PAP2 RTP ports to something like 12000 to 12100 to see if the change will do any good. just make sure the Ericsson w35 is aware of the new ports changes and adjust accordingly.

As a last ditch hail Mary, you could try using a STUN to hopefully direct the ports to the ATA. Good luck.

And power everything down after you save the new settings, so as to clear the the RAM memory on the ATA and router. Funny how these devices still try to use the contents in the old memory even when reconfigured.

[ians77]

Thanks for the answer i'm gonna try the new setings.
Would it be better to have another router and use the ericsson only as a modem?

[bridonca]

Thanks for the answer i'm gonna try the new setings.
Would it be better to have another router and use the ericsson only as a modem?

Not really. You really cannot replace the Ericsson w35, so you are kind of stuck with it. I believe Rogers has a NAT on their side also, which you have no access to. If you have access to the Ericsson w35, and can forward the correct SIP and RTP ports from the w35 to the ATA, you might have better luck.

Another thing you can do is to set the keep alive on the PAP2 to something like 2 minutes. That will remind the w35 that it still wants to use those RTP ports you have allocated every 2 minutes. Some routers/modems get amnesia after 5 minutes, so they need a keep alive to remind them not to re allocate the desire port.

[wormx]

@ians77: I'm having the same issue. I have the pap2 (it's what FPL sold me). I don't have the Ericsson, though -- just standard rogers cable internet. It seems that if the phone hasn't been used in a while, then the next incoming call I won't be able to hear the caller (the caller can hear me). But all follow-up calls work. It's almost like there needs to be an initial call to get the phone to work.

[dibsmft]

@ians77: I'm having the same issue. I have the pap2 (it's what FPL sold me). I don't have the Ericsson, though -- just standard rogers cable internet. It seems that if the phone hasn't been used in a while, then the next incoming call I won't be able to hear the caller (the caller can hear me). But all follow-up calls work. It's almost like there needs to be an initial call to get the phone to work.

Bridonca has really covered this above. The port assignments made by the router expire after a while if not used and need to be acquired anew before the ATA will work properly again. The NAT keep alive sends a message to the router to prevent the ports being released. So, try etting the NAT keep alive and see it that cures the problem.

[wormx]

I guess I'm not 100% sure about bridonca's answer. How does one "use a STUN?"

In the PAP2, I have a setting under NAT support parameters: NAT Keep Alive Intvl -- it's currently set to 15. Is this what I should change?

I also have:
NAT Mapping Enable: YES
NAT Keep Alive Enable: YES
NAT Keep Alive Msg: $NOTIFY
NAT Keep Alive Dest: $PROXY

This all looks fine to me. My ports should be fine, as this has been working for years, until recently.

[bridonca]

I guess I'm not 100% sure about bridonca's answer. How does one "use a STUN?"

In the PAP2, I have a setting under NAT support parameters: NAT Keep Alive Intvl -- it's currently set to 15. Is this what I should change?

I also have:
NAT Mapping Enable: YES
NAT Keep Alive Enable: YES
NAT Keep Alive Msg: $NOTIFY
NAT Keep Alive Dest: $PROXY

This all looks fine to me. My ports should be fine, as this has been working for years, until recently.

STUN is a "solution" to the NAT problem and for the most part, is a dismal failure. In some very rare circumstances, it might actually fix NAT issues. It works great when there are no NAT issues. Useful huh?

Set the NAT Keep Alive Intvl to 2 and see what happens.

I get the "it has been working for years, until recently" line a lot. Short answer, your router is starting to get senile! Longer answer, the router is losing track of where to route stuff, and usually a simple power down of all devices, router/ATA/modem will kind of fix the problem. It is better to manually forward the correct ports from the router to the ATA, so you do not run into that problem and have to deal with keep alive.

[dibsmft]

Actually, turning on NAT can sometimes make things worse if there was no NAT problem in the first place or the other end uses software/hardware to circumvent NAT.
Usually, when things go wrong after a long period of working OK it means that something has changed and that can be quite a lot of things including the ISP presentation of the service (Has happened to me twice) over years.
The only way that I got things back to normal was to systematically check each device in order, modem->router->ATA, and then each service that I use (some are robust and work with almost any setup and some are distinctly difficult to almost impossible!).

If you are not using STUN with Fongo then give it a try. Any working STUN server will do eg. stun.callwithus.com

[charlton_chow]

@ians77: I'm having the same issue. I have the pap2 (it's what FPL sold me). I don't have the Ericsson, though -- just standard rogers cable internet. It seems that if the phone hasn't been used in a while, then the next incoming call I won't be able to hear the caller (the caller can hear me). But all follow-up calls work. It's almost like there needs to be an initial call to get the phone to work.

This is exactly the same issue as I am having.

Let's keep this one going. I'll be updating on what I have tried and what works, what doesn't.

[TheHardy]

Is it throughout the duration of the call, or just initially that you are having the "can't hear the caller" issue?

Using the softphone, I have this at the beginning of CALLS I PLACE for a few seconds and then it clears up (so long as the other person has not hung up in frustration, thinking it is a dead line!). However, on INCOMING calls TO me, it seems to be a lot longer of a duration, and almost invariably leads to the caller bailing and hanging up, assuming, correctly in this case, that it is a bad connection. As I have never had anyone persistent enough to stay with it, my solution is to check the call log, get the ID of the call (whole nother story there) and call the person back to complete the call.

Why do I check the log? Because the incoming CALLER ID is broken ... and has not been fixed in over 15 months of faulty deployment ....