1st time user help - no incoming calls and no audio on outgo

[fleeterbuzz]

Hello,

I have recently installed FPL but I'm unable to receive phone calls. I tried the "Test connection", which gave me:

Results: Call service is OK
Sound data transfer: Unable to send/receive sound data! Port 13000 should be available

I opened the suggested ports on my linksys wrt router, but the same message comes up and I'm still unable to receive calls on the computer. I have tried calling it and it goes straight to voicemail, whereas previously it would give me a fast-busy tone.

I'm running windows 7 - 64 bit home prem. on a brand new lenovo y460

Any tips or tricks?

I have NO AUDIO on my speakers/headphones on outgoing calls

Thanks,
J

[FONGO_steve]

Did you try turning off your firewalls?
You might need to set individual port exceptions in the firewall, versus a program exception.

[bsbcer]

Did you try turning off your firewalls?
You might need to set individual port exceptions in the firewall, versus a program exception.

I was having the same problem
and i did what FPL-steve said. and now it works perfectly

here what I did
i went to control panel - System and Security - Windows Firewall
and on the left side i clicked on Advanced Setting

then on the left side again i clicked on Inbound Rules and on the right side under Actions i clicked on New Rule
I selected Port and clicked next, selected UDP and besides Specific local Ports i entered: 13000, 13001, 5060, 5061, 6060, 6061
I did the same for outbound rules

I am not sure if you need that many ports open, maybe someone can inform me about that. but anyhow i can make calls perfectly with no problems.

[fleeterbuzz]

Hi and thanks for the help, but I'm having the same issue with Windows Firewall off. I have forwarded all the UDP ports on the router already, still same issue, no audio when i test call outbound from FPL.

Thanks in advance!

J

[fleeterbuzz]

Update:

The problem is with the router wrt54g - ver. 3 !! Please disregard my earlier comment about the modem. Any tips on how to troubleshoot it from here?

Thanks!

[OverDrive]

Check out my other post - http://forum.freephoneline.ca/viewtopic ... 8355#p8348

Flash your router with DD-WRT (the instructions I provided are NOT FOR YOUR MODEL. A quick google search gives this link - http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Li ... RT54G_v3.0 for your model.)

make sure you first flash with linksys firmware, then with the MINI build, then you can use the VINTAGE -Standard build or the VINTAGE - VOIP build as per http://dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database

[fleeterbuzz]

I am not willing to flash the firmware on my router. I've spent too much time setting up the security for popups and port forwarding. Is FPL incompatible with the latest Linksys firmware for my router?! If so, then goodbye FPL until you make it work.... jeez Can someone please give me an official answer to this question?

Thanks!

[bridonca]

Freephoneline might not be suitable for you. Freephoneline runs using a standard SIP protocol, which expects it's own IP address and free reign to the ports on that IP address. The SIP protocol is a nightmare of configuration issues when run through NAT based routers, which most people use. Non standard kludges have to be used to get SIP working on NATs. The problem is that some NATs are awful, and are not able to reliably handle the complexities of SIP routing.

You can get freephoneline working with your standard Linksys firmware, but from experience, it requires a lot of work forwarding ports. The firmware is buggy and sometimes randomly, the settings would not take, and I would get random connections and disconnections. I ended up with a further hateful dislike to linksys routers because of the experience.

Because I had a router I hated, I did not have any problem flashing DD-WRT onto it. The difference was night and day. I now had a router that works! Not only that, there were new features that I got to play with. VOIP just worked, transfers were better. Bit torrent was no longer hit and miss.

I understand you are a newbie, and I clearly understand you do not want to flash you router, especially since there is a chance you can brick your router. But if you want to play in the realm of SIP VOIP, you need a good router. SIP carriers like freephoneline can only do so much.

[OverDrive]

Freephoneline might not be suitable for you. Freephoneline runs using a standard SIP protocol, which expects it's own IP address and free reign to the ports on that IP address. The SIP protocol is a nightmare of configuration issues when run through NAT based routers, which most people use. Non standard kludges have to be used to get SIP working on NATs. The problem is that some NATs are awful, and are not able to reliably handle the complexities of SIP routing.

Not entirely true about SIP expecting it's own IP... (assuming you mean external IP). It also doesn't expect free reign on the ports - I only have 2 ports open for my ATA and it works flawlessly. All home based routers are NAT (Network Address Translation) based routers unless you have multiple External IP's and you do 1 to 1 NAT mapping - oh wait, that's still NAT. It's just 1 to 1 NAT vs 1 to many NAT vs many to many NAT.



See TechTarget's definition of NAT here

The reason SIP has an issue is not because of nat itself, but because the default firmware of linksys and many other routers is unstable. Too many torrent connections kill it, multiple different types of connections kill it, it may have a memory leak, it may have a bug in the firmware.

I am not willing to flash the firmware on my router. I've spent too much time setting up the security for popups and port forwarding. Is FPL incompatible with the latest Linksys firmware for my router?! If so, then goodbye FPL until you make it work.... jeez Can someone please give me an official answer to this question?

Linksys firmware is buggy, same as dlink and all the others. Once the product is out there and is used, a company will spend a bit of time fixing bugs but after a certain period, they stop developing fixes for it. It becomes EOL (End of Life). Usually it's 2-3 years after the product was released as most of all bugs out there "should" be caught within this time frame. In the case of the WRT54G - which was released in 2002, as seen below, they last updated it in 2007, because it is the most widely used router on the market today... that's 5 years to EOL.

DD-WRT on the other hand is an OPEN source firmware which is CONSTANTLY being developed and patched and fixed.

FPL is not incompatible with your router nor the latest linksys firmware, but the latest linksys firmware is OLD.

http://homesupport.cisco.com/en-ca/wireless/lbc/WRT54G

Firmware
01/30/2007
Ver.4.21.1
Download 2.95 MB
(Firmware)
Release Notes

VS

http://dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database

Mini-Build required for inital flashing via WEB dd-wrt.v24_mini_generic.bin 2009-10-10 2,95 MB
VINTAGE : standard dd-wrt.v24-13064_VINT_std.bin 2009-11-13 3,59 MB
VINTAGE : voip dd-wrt.v24-13064_VINT_voip.bin 2009-11-13 3,62 MB
Standard Generic dd-wrt.v24_std_generic.bin 2009-10-10 3,54 MB
VoIP Generic dd-wrt.v24_voip_generic.bin 2009-10-10 3,57 MB

2 years difference (for the "recommended" version of DD-WRT... and if you go to the latest build which is 14896, the dates look like:

Mini-Build required for inital flashing via TFTP dd-wrt.v24_mini_wrt54g.bin 2010-08-09 2,89 MB
Standard Generic dd-wrt.v24_std_generic.bin 2010-08-09 3,58 MB
VoIP Generic dd-wrt.v24_voip_generic.bin 2010-08-09 3,61 MB

Port forwarding for you will be a less than 5 minute deal.... you just make a note of all your ports and IP's forwarding to and transfer them over to the new DD-WRT version... along with (I assume) your DHCP reservations.

The security you claim to prevent popups - I assume is a block list of websites/keywords to disallow. You can do that too with the DD-WRT firmware - you need to just take a screenshot or something to backup your current settings.


But, if you're unwilling to update your firmware to DD-WRT, with your current router you WILL experience more issues with FPL. If you bought a new router, it would probably work much better out of the box as it's newer technology and has been updated.

As an analagy, what you're saying is since Windows XP SP2 is working properly with everything else, why can't I use Office 2010 on it... - The technology has changed, and although Office 2010 is just software and runs on Windows XP SP3, you're on Windows XP SP2 - you need to update to SP3 in order for it to work properly. However, if you buy a new computer with Windows 7, out of the box it will work with Office 2010.

Food for thought.

[fleeterbuzz]

I understand you are a newbie

I'm new to FPL.. I guess that makes me a newbie... lol I've been administering DBs and have been a project manager for 7 years... how about you, Sherlock? When you assume, you make an...

Anyways, I looked into the DD-WRT and figure I'll flash my router when I have time tonight. NOT because of FPL, because it looks like a good idea. I'll let you know if I brick my router

[fleeterbuzz]

Update: I flashed to dd-wrt.v24-13064_VINT_std and updated my fpl software to this week's version. My symptoms are still troublesome:

1) When I call someone there is no incoming audio, (the other person can hear me, but I can't hear them)
2) I'm unable receive (incoming) calls, the caller reaches a fast-busy after appx 15 seconds of dead air.

My test now reads:

Results: Call service is OK (just like before)
Sound data transfer: OK (before flashing to dd-wrt and updating FPL, it reported the port 13000 unopen /audio error)

The problem is obviously on the incoming connection when it hits the router.