sometimes my freephoneline phone goes offline for no reason

[henry2335]

hello

sometimes my freephoneline phone goes offline for no reason, i am unable to make calls then, my internet still works and my router still works, however on the linksys ATA the phone led doesn't blink anymore and then i have to unplug the ata for 30 seconds and replug it back in in order to restore the phone. what causes the outage in the first place and how can i prevent this from happening again? it has been going on for at least a year.

if you need any more info just ask.

[ddd]

It means Internet disconnection: ATA disconnected from FPL server... Is your internet DSL, cable or wireless? Wreless = a lot of disruption possible. We should open ports in your router too. We would need to know model # of modem, router + how wired from modem, on whitch ports of devices. How often it happens?

[henry2335]

dsl internet, i don't have wireless internet.

modem is from tplink

it happens from time to time, i can't check exactly when cause that would not be possible

[ddd]

Call your DSL provider to see if disruption on there side or errors on Ethernet side of modem. If errors, try another wire between modem and ATA.

[henry2335]

can i get some help from someone who has more than 31 posts? preferably a tech support agent.

[ddd]

ddd,
VoIP TS for other provider: many calls in per day

[Jake]

can i get some help from someone who has more than 31 posts? preferably a tech support agent.

This forum is mainly a member supported forum, for official support you should really call into a CSR that might be able to help you better as they can see details on your account that is just not possible for us here.

To try and help - it sounds like your ATA is loosing registration with the server. Having said that you can usually still make outbound calls, but you say this is not possible so some of this help might not work.

First the basics -
Have you made sure you have forwarded all the right ports from your router to the ATA.
Has the ATA been set with a static IP from your router?


Other things to try -
Have you tried using a STUN server? < sometimes this can help or hinder
Have you tried lowering your registration time to something like 60 seconds? < it's a dirty solution, but can sometimes help.

A call to a CSR might also be helpful to you.


p.s. Everyone with more than 31 posts, even Fongo staff, had 31 posts at some point. It's not really a gauge of ones knowledge.

[dibsmft]

Try activating the "NAT Keep Alive on your ATA if it is not already active. It should help.

[Bloodsong]

Everyone here started with a low number of posts, one's time dedicated to the forum does not denote one's ability to help in troubleshooting.

The fact is nothing ddd asked you to do was unreasonable, and are likely steps to be asked at some point in the troubleshooting process by anyone here.

Often when you lose registration, it has been seen that it's due to micro-disconnects or service interruptions on your internet connection. VoIP is especially sensitive to these, while playing EverQuest or WoW you might notice it only as a "lag spike" and then everything starts to run fluently again, VoIP simply does not work the same way, many astute internet users are surprised to see how frequent such service issues exist after they start using a VoIP provider.

You said you have a TP-Link, what model? Most TP-Link routers/modems have the ability to turn on various levels of diagnostic logging in their WebGUI depending upon model and firmware version.

I will note I have only seen a modem/router combo from TP-Link in action once, it is for DSL being used by a TekSavvy customer in North York, and it is quite possibly the words ADSL2+ Modem I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with, and I worked tech support for a Bell reseller BEFORE I want to school for computer networking, so you might imagine in the last 10 years of supporting everyone from the neighbour to the local insurance brokerage, I've seen my fair share of hardware. Unfortunately, I just do-not see many of these. I have seen some TP-Link routers that pleasantly surprised me with their functionality and reliability, and it's possible that various models of the modem/router combos would as well.

Please check to see if you can turn on logging, both for LAN and WAN, also check firewall/security log settings. Anywhere there is a log you can turn on, do so, and max it out.

When you notice the ATA has gone down, check the logs, all of them. Are there any disconnects from the internet reported by the TP-Link? Are there any floods detected in the security log? Anything else that stands out on either side (LAN/WAN)?

What ATA do you have? Does it allow for logging to be turned on? Same as above.
Some ATAs only allow logging if you set-up a syslog server/daemon. On Windows? Try splunk; it has excellent support/service.

At the time that you notice the outage occur, call your ISP and ask what your present sync rate is. Does it match your connection profile? If not it could allude to issues on the Bell lines in you area, or that you're simply too far from the C/O for that particular package to run stable.

As mentioned by dibsmft, we're not part of Freephoneline, we're just other customers and users who like the service and want to help. The forum is NOT an official mode of support. If you phone the FPL customer service reps, they will be able to see a little bit more, but if they're seeing a loss of connection they may not be able to see the cause.

As we don't work for either your ISP or for FPL we have no insight from back-end systems as to the cause of the occurrence, and will ask questions to eliminate possibilities until a solution has been found.

"There are no stupid questions, only stupid people"

[henry2335]

my modem is tplink 8816
ata is linksys pap2t
router is linksys wrt54g

i have the modem running in bridge mode

it is hard to know when the phone goes offline cause i rarely use it, only when i pick up the phone then i realize that it is offline.

[Bloodsong]

Thus why I asked you to turn on all of the diagnostics. If you can't watch something happen, then having information about it happening is important.