First day with vonage....

Posts: 81 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 02, 2006 Posts: 81

Ahh....what a first day. Let me give you a bit of history first.

My wife and I are buying a house. We settle on Feb 24th. The mortgage is going to be a bit more then were currently paying in rent, so we need to cut back on some expenses. Phone bill seemed like a good place to start. I work in the IT world and knew about vonage..so I decided to go for it. Got the free RTP300 router adapter. Also, I read almost every bit of info I could on these forums as well.

Now I have comcast cable high speed internet. I have a netgear 4 port router currently on it. The four ports supply my computer, my work computer, and a hub downstairs that has a wireless router connected for my wife, tivo, and my ps2.

So I got the RTP300 router and decided to plug it behind my router as shown in the instructions. Done. Boots up well and all lights are good. Made sure I get a good dial tone...all good. Then life took over and I had to go to the house were buying to follow the contractor around to tell him what we'd like fixed. On the way there I call my virtual line and leave a mvx.....

So I get home, chat with the wife about the house and go to do more tests. I notice odd behavior on the phone adapter. The phone light keeps blinking. So I go to test the phone...and about half the time I have terrible static on the line. So I used my cell and did some test calls to my Vonage line...static static static.

So being IT minded...I rebooted everything. In the order that the website said. Made sure my cable modem booted back up first, then my router, the the phone adapter. I'm still getting that blinking light. Checked phone again, same thing...about half the time I try to make outgoing call I get static...incoming calls are all static. So I tried different phones, different phone lines, even updated my cable modem cable to RG6....still getting wierd static.

So I called tech support. Now I work in tech support and deal with it all day long. First lady I got was defintly in India. She tried to be nice, I know she did...but she did two things that annoyed me. First she said "I understand" about 40 times. Second thing that annoyed me is she kept making me repeat myself. If she truely understood...I wouldn't have to repeat myself. She got my info and stuff and short story long...had me reboot again - still didn't work. So she passed me up to second level support.

Now I don't mind getting passed up to higher support...what I do mind is the fact that lady number one didn't tell indian guy who I was...so I had to once again repeat who I was. This guy was a little more techinical...had me log into the router and check firmware...was 1.00.58. He initially wanted to update my firmware...but I never did get his email with the info. We tried several other things and nothing really worked. Light was still blinking.

He had me try some odd things, like plug my phone adapter directly to the cable modem. Keep in mind internet worked like a charm during all these problems. He then had me move my adapter so it's not close to anything electronic. Odd since you'd think a router should be able to sit next to a computer or a hub without getting major interference. When he asked me to make sure its not next to any electric plugs, I asked him if he wanted me to unplug the adapter. When he asked why, I said because the electronic cord might cause interefence (he didn't get the joke..oh well).

So he got my firmware back to 1.00.55. Did some quick call tests and static seems to be gone. So one problem solved. So I asked him the same thing I asked the first lady...if the problem is gone why does my phone light keep blinking (keep in mind in tech world blinking things aren't usually good...unless it's on a hub)? He didn't know..and had to refer to his manager.

This is were it gets funny. The blinking light means I have a voicemail. So I checked my voicemail and deleted the message. Phone light stops blinking...it's a miracle.

Now it could have been the firmware causing the problem, or the odd fact that I had a voicemail. He did say that with 1.00.58 you shouldn't pick up after the first ring..wait for the second ring very odd.

After all this, I put the phone adapter were it started, behind my router. I have it mounted next to the router, and next to a 10/100 switch now. You'd think with all those devices...there might be interefence...but no...workes like a charm.

So it's now 11:32 pm here...I have to be up at 5:30 am tomorrow. Oh the fun with tech support. Hoping for a better day tomorrow. I'm working from home and will give the Vonage service a good run for it's money.

Posts: 476 · Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 11:58 pm Post subject:

I must be blessed to not have had some of the problems I read about on here. All of my issues have been localized to the web site and those problems seem to be gone, too. I work from home all the time - go into the office once a month. Today I had my first 2 long conference calls with Vonage. Over an hour on both. I was worried, after everything I've read here, that the call would drop at any minute. Neither of them did and call quality was excellent through both.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 8:15 am Post subject:

heh, that is obvious to a lot of us. next time, post your question here before dealing with tech support. can't guarantee we can help, but I know we would have told you the answer to the slow blinking phone light real quick.
there are also several US techs here that can help on the more involved issues.

Posts: 81 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 02, 2006 Posts: 81

good to know. I did looks at tons of stuff in the forum before getting vonage...and it never clicked that when you guys were complaining about your voicemail light thats what it was!

Funny thing is, I looked in the manual that came with it and it didn't talk about the blinking light. Maybe I missed it in my tired state.

So far today it's working great. Working from home today and I've made a couple calls with it so far.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 8:35 am Post subject:

for whatever (bad) reason, it's not in the manual. I found out from vonageTPA.
http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic7476-0-asc-10.html

Posts: 81 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 02, 2006 Posts: 81

Wow...I can't believe something so obvious is so hard to find!

I'm looking at page 8 of the RTP300 manual now and for phone 1-2 it says:

"Blue. The PHONE LED is solidly lit when a telephone or fax machine has an active or registered connection to your interenet phone service provider through the corresponding port (PHONE 1 or 2). It flashes when the is being used or is off the hook"

No mention of Voicemail. You'd think we should notify someone...very odd.

Posts: 215 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Nov 24, 2004 Posts: 215

hey just so you know there is a known issue with static and .58 ... .59 is coming out very soon and should solve all your issues

Posts: 81 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 02, 2006 Posts: 81

are new firmware releases automaticly pushed to my router or is it a manual process?

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

It's automatic.

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

roiegat,
When Vonage comes out with a new update, it's a push to the device. Should require no intervention. It may reboot itself afterwards though.