Unable to connect MTA to ISP using DHCP

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 21, 2004 Posts: 2

I'm a Vonage customer, but I also work for a nationwide ISP and we are having issues trying to get Vonage customers connected to our network.
Our DHCP servers read and register the MAC from the Client ID field of the DHCP header, not from the MAC field of the BOOTP header. The Motorola VT1005 does not send any Client-ID field in it's DHCP request,(I've checked this with a sniffer) so all requests are being rejected by the server. Does anyone know how to add / change the Client ID field in the VT1005's DHCP request. I don't want to have to tell our customer that he needs to buy a router (although the Vonage tech support has told him this repeatedly) but it's looking like this is our only option.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 30, 2004 Posts: 3

I too am having this problem. I just got the Vonage package yesterday, hooked it all up and it wouldn't go past the obtaining ip stage. After trying everything I could think of I finally emailed installation support and was instructed to enter in the physical address of my ethernet card in the advanced settings of the MTA page, but that didn't help either. The tech support guy called me and we did more troubleshooting but nothing would work. He finally said to contact my ISP to see if they need to provision the MAC address, but I know they don't. The other suggestion was to get a router. I will purchase a router if I know it will work but I don't want to waste the money if it's not going to make a difference. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 06, 2004 Posts: 2

I've had a problem that might be related: Up until ca. two months ago, I had my VT1000 set to obtain it's IP by DHCP, and it worked just fine. However, one day it stopped working, and the only way to coax it back into working order was to use another device with the same (cloned) MAC address (in this case a PC) and have it obtain an IP via DHCP from the ISP. I could then plug this IP as a static IP into the VT1000 and it all worked fine.

Note that this only works for me because my ISP gives me the same IP everytime anyway, so there's no conflict.

Anyway, it **** that the VT1000 isn't as capable at providing a working DHCP header to the ISP as any other ethernet hardware, like PCs, routers, network cards, etc. Couldn't Vonage fix that with a firmware upgrade??