Vonage banned in Oman

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 09, 2006 Posts: 8

Omantel (the sole ISP here) blocked Vonage at some point last week.

I see that other groups have had similiar problems but they have managed to get around them.

I have a soft phone but I also have the adaptor with me in country.

Can anyone explain to me how I get around this problem? I believe if I change the ports that I might be able to solve this?

I moved out to Oman last week and my business in based on Vonage, I am effectively screwed as Vonage send me robot replies and my clients cant contact me and I am losing huge amounts of money.

Anyone? Please? Thank you.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:25 pm Post subject: Re: Vonage banned in Oman

mowers wrote:

Omantel (the sole ISP here) blocked Vonage at some point last week.

I see that other groups have had similiar problems but they have managed to get around them.

I have a soft phone but I also have the adaptor with me in country.

Can anyone explain to me how I get around this problem? I believe if I change the ports that I might be able to solve this?

I moved out to Oman last week and my business in based on Vonage, I am effectively screwed as Vonage send me robot replies and my clients cant contact me and I am losing huge amounts of money.

Anyone? Please? Thank you.

Vonage doesn't guarantee that their service will work outside of the USA. Chances are that Omantel is a gov't-owned monopoly and can do whatever they want. Short of running a VPN or SSH tunnel back to a matching server in the 'states or friendlier country, there's not much that can be done. You can call up Omantel and see if they can help you out, but I doubt they'll be sympathetic to your needs.

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 09, 2006 Posts: 8

THank you,

Can they ban all Voip services or do they have to ban each service individually? Could I use another service and have all my Vonage lines divert to it?

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 3:33 pm Post subject:

It's possible to do either or both for that matter. With any decent router (meaning something better than most consumer routers), you can block domains, so *.vonage.com could be blocked, or you can block individual ports, like the 5060/5061 ports used most commonly for Voip.

One way to check is to try going to www.testmyvoip.com If this fails, they're blocking ports and your only option is to change ports. If it works, then they're probably blocking Vonage. Can you access the Vonage website & dashboard?

Posts: 533 · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 4:54 pm Post subject:

VonageTPA wrote:

It's possible to do either or both for that matter. With any decent router (meaning something better than most consumer routers), you can block domains, so *.vonage.com could be blocked, or you can block individual ports, like the 5060/5061 ports used most commonly for Voip.

One way to check is to try going to www.testmyvoip.com If this fails, they're blocking ports and your only option is to change ports. If it works, then they're probably blocking Vonage. Can you access the Vonage website & dashboard?

They can go a step past that as well and check payloads to determine if you're using SIP or H.323, regardless of the port.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:19 pm Post subject:

EzCo wrote:

VonageTPA wrote:

It's possible to do either or both for that matter. With any decent router (meaning something better than most consumer routers), you can block domains, so *.vonage.com could be blocked, or you can block individual ports, like the 5060/5061 ports used most commonly for Voip.

One way to check is to try going to www.testmyvoip.com If this fails, they're blocking ports and your only option is to change ports. If it works, then they're probably blocking Vonage. Can you access the Vonage website & dashboard?

They can go a step past that as well and check payloads to determine if you're using SIP or H.323, regardless of the port.

Agreed, but if they're blocking the Vonage domains, (or worse, IPs), then we're dealing with a totally different animal. The packet type issues can be resolved through tunneling

Posts: 533 · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:03 pm Post subject:

Quote:

They can go a step past that as well and check payloads to determine if you're using SIP or H.323, regardless of the port.

Quote:

Agreed, but if they're blocking the Vonage domains, (or worse, IPs), then we're dealing with a totally different animal. The packet type issues can be resolved through tunneling

Indeed, and in this case tunneling solves all the issues. I wouldn't put it past these types of countries to block encryption protocols though. They may want everything in clear text, who knows. He'd have to make sure he uses a device that supports NAT-T or use a VPN client that supports NAT-T or tcp encapsulation. If they do block encryption protocols, they probably include udp 4500 which will render NAT-T useless.

So...he's going to have to find somewhere outside of Oman to build the tunnel to (?????) then, even if they didn't block encryption protocols, my advice is to check the Export Administration Regulations before you use any encryption software that came from the States.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:07 pm Post subject:

The US still hasn't found Osama... trying to bust someone for using encryption to call home isn't real high on their list of priorities at this moment.

Posts: 533 · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:50 pm Post subject:

VonageTPA wrote:

The US still hasn't found Osama... trying to bust someone for using encryption to call home isn't real high on their list of priorities at this moment.

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 09, 2006 Posts: 8

Thanks guys, I ran the following test with testyourvoip.com and here is the answer I got from my 56k modem at home. As follows:

The test agent could not connect to London using the standard SIP port (5060), but was able to connect and run a test to another location via an alternate port (6000). This indicates that one of the following may be true:

* If you have a Voip Service, your VoIP/Phone Adaptor may have reserved the standard SIP port and is filtering out our SIP packets. Consider temporarily removing the Adaptor from your configuration and re-running the test.
* Your Personal Firewall, if you are using Windows XP, may be filtering the SIP port used for communication.
* Either your home firewall or your broadband provider's firewall is blocking the SIP port used for communication.

You should consider investigating these settings and trying the test again.

What do you recomend I do now?