How can UPnP be best used with Vonage device?

Posts: 131 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 131

What is the best location for the Vonage router device?

I have a DLink UPnP router, but with the Vonage device between it and the cable modem, UPnP functionality seems to have been lost. At least, that’s what MSN Messenger reports, and file transfers via Messenger are very slow.

Any help would be great appreciated.

Thanks,
-Mark

Posts: 67 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 22, 2004 Posts: 67

Yes. As far as I know, the MTA does not handle UPNP and so even if MSN can open up the DLink, it still can't open the MTA. I don't know of a good solution for this other than to open up the ports MSN wants open in the MTA. This is a problem since the MTA only allows you to open a few ports at a time and no ranges of ports.

Posts: 131 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 131

Hummm...yes, I would certainly call that a problem. That would mean that the MTA would need to be inside of my router, and of course, that would kill the voice priority feature.

I was hoping that it might be possible to open all the ports on the MTA, and just let the router so what it was intended to do. I also thought of assigning a static internal IP address that is within the range that my router is using. Then maybe it would work to use the DMZ feature on the MTA to open all ports to my router.

Is no one with Vonage service doing anything that requires UPnP?

-Mark

Posts: 67 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 22, 2004 Posts: 67

My experience is that the voice priority isn't really a big deal (but then I have a pretty fat pipe and a fast lan).

I also tried to use the MTA DMZ, but it appears to be broken. Unless I am doing something wrong it only passes ICMP packets. It will not pass TCP or UDP traffic. So enabling the DMZ basically kicks you off the network. I have not tried DMZ to a PC, only a router, but it shouldn't make any difference (I think).

Posts: 67 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 22, 2004 Posts: 67

Oh, one other thing that occured to me. If you can get two IP addresses from your modem (I can't without paying for it) you might be able to use "pass through mode". The trick is to turn off the MTA's NAT server in configuation. It then acts as a bridge and your router will get an IP from your ISP and the MTA will get another IP from your ISP. This only works if your ISP will issue you two IPs without disconnecting the other one.

The other way to do this would be to hook a switch to your modem and hook the MTA to one port and the router to the other port. But again, your ISP has to let you lease two IPs.

Posts: 131 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 131

Well, I can enable DMZ on the MTA, but since it does not use the same IP range as my router, it doesn't really do anything.

The MTA has a local IP of 192.168.102.1. My router has an assigned internal IP of 192.168.0.1, and naturally, everything inside of the router gets an IP address in that range via DHCP.

For example, my PC got handed 192.168.0.102 via DHCP, yet I can still access the MTA configuration page at 192.16.102.1. To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure why it works at all, unless my router has been convinced that 192.16.102.1 is a public IP address.

-Mark

Posts: 67 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 22, 2004 Posts: 67

Yeah, in theory if you wanted to use DMZ (and it worked) you would need to statically assign an IP to your router's WAN port in the 192.168.102.XXX range. Then you'd set that IP to the DMZ address. I've done this, but only ICMP passes through the DMZ. No TCP or UDP.

Most consumer routers will pass so-called unroutable IPs like 192.168.102.xxx even though you could argue that they shouldn't. Of course, that's a good thing in this case, but you could shut it down with a firewall rule. So yes I'm sure your router just thinks 192.168.102.1 is some other Web server, passes it to the WAN port and the MTA responds. I've had this same experience when hooked up that way.

Posts: 67 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 22, 2004 Posts: 67

Yeah, in theory if you wanted to use DMZ (and it worked) you would need to statically assign an IP to your router's WAN port in the 192.168.102.XXX range. Then you'd set that IP to the DMZ address. I've done this, but only ICMP passes through the DMZ. No TCP or UDP.

Most consumer routers will pass so-called unroutable IPs like 192.168.102.xxx even though you could argue that they shouldn't. Of course, that's a good thing in this case, but you could shut it down with a firewall rule. So yes I'm sure your router just thinks 192.168.102.1 is some other Web server, passes it to the WAN port and the MTA responds. I've had this same experience when hooked up that way.

Posts: 67 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 22, 2004 Posts: 67

Don't know why that posted twice. Sorry!

Posts: 131 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 131

From what you are saying, I see little choice but to move the MTA inside the router if I want UPnP to work. I am concerned about doing that, because frankly, I find the quality to be marginal, even with it installed the way that Vonage reccomends. If moving it makes it sound any worse, I don't think I could live with it.

Does Vonage ever respond in this forum?

-Mark