VERY strange Vonage problem - solved - info for others

Posts: 276

As of a couple months ago, I'm up to 4 Vonage phone numbers - two personal and two business on a separate account. The two personal were most recently on two different adapters - an old Motorola VT1000 and an RT31P2, while the business phone and fax lines are on a single RTP300. That setup has been working fine for the last 2-3 months. Last night, both personal numbers, on two different brands/models of adapters, started losing Vonage connectivity. They were both intermittent - the phone light on the RT31P2 going on and off randomly, and the VT alternating between steady and 4 blinks. When the lights weren't on, I had no dialtone if I went off-hook, BUT I could still receive calls just fine! And, if in the middle of a call, the call would stay connected even if the lights indicated a disconnect.

Meanwhile, the RTP300 and its two lines remained absolutely rock solid, with no problems at all! All three Vonage devices were plugged into different ports on the same primary WRT54G router.

After the normal BS trying to deal with Vonage customer service - 4 calls, redirected to level 2 and then disconnected - repeatedly! - I finally did get through to a level 2 tech, who started trying to troubleshoot with me. He was initially as stumped as I was. He tried a number of different settings, with no luck. Finally, in an attempt to simplify, I had him move the line from the VT to the other port on the RT31P2, and remove the VT from the setup totally. Once that was done, the problem was still there, but the two lines weren't in sync - sometimes both lights lit and dialtone available, sometimes 1, sometimes the other, sometimes neither. Meanwhile, as before, even when the lights were off and no dialtone was present, the lines would still ring for an incoming call and work just fine!

I had an idea from a thread here about troubleshooting, and asked him to check which "RTP Relay" server the 4 lines were using. He said that sounded like a good idea, and said if I was talking to other techs in the future, that they refer to those as "proxy servers." Sure enough, when he checked, both RTP300 lines were using one server, and the two on the RT31P2 were using two different servers, both different from the ones the RTP300 was using. He re-homed the two lines on the RT31P2 to the server the RTP300 lines were using, and everything locked in and has been solid ever since - several hours now.

So, that's solved the problem *for me*, but I think they have two servers here in the DFW area not working correctly since last night. Likely there are lots of folks in this area with troubles, although there's no outage info on the website. In the meantime, if it had not been for the other two working lines, might have never thought to try that fix. But something to keep in mind for others here if your lines suddenly start acting the same way.

-Gary-