Comcast Business Modem with Vonage

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 04, 2006 Posts: 2

I've been a Vonage customer for almost 2yrs and set up a few networks with Vonage for friends and family.

For my business, I just got Comcast installed and they gave me a SMC8014 modem, which has a built in firewall and 4 port router.

I turned off all firewall, port forwarding and extras on the modem. Plugged into the modem in the first port is my wireless network, the 2nd port is the Vonage router and the 3rd port is my server.

The network is working great and the comcast router is the only router with DHCP enabled. This is where I get confused.

The Vonage router is a RPT300. I have DHCP turned off and I have a static IP assigned to it. I'm confused about where to plug the ethernet cable into... if I plug into the Blue port, I can't log into the router via the network, the network doesn't see it but this is the "internet" port. When I plug into the yellow ports (any one) I can administer the router but it doen'st provisioin. Actually, it doesn't provision in the other port (blue) either.

Vonage says to absolutly plug into the blue, but I recall when I installed multiple Vonage routers inline, the 2nd router was plugged into the yellow port and the IP was changed to 192.168.25.1. (the third would be 192.168.35.1, etc... Isn't this the same, since I'm plugging into a 'router' and not a modem?

Anyhow, any help is greatly appreciated. BTW, the Vonage soft phone installed on my laptop, running over the wireless network works GREAT!

Posts: 185 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Dec 18, 2005 Posts: 185

You need to plug it in the blue (Wan or INTERNET) port. The problem is that when you put a router in (The RTP300) the yellow Lan ports are their own network, so connections from the other computers (connected directly to the CM) are considered outside of that network. You would need to connect to the RTP300 with Remote Access enabled, or, from a computer connected to one of the yellow ports. Also, as a router the RTP300 will have 2 IP addresses, a WAN IP (statically assigned, or assigned from the Cable Modem) and a LAN IP (statically setup) used to address the RTP from computers connected to the yellow ports

Posts: 94 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Sep 15, 2006 Posts: 94

I also have a Comcast business modem (same one as yours), and this is how I do it. First, I didn't mess with the business modem at all. They set it up so that all ports are open, and there was no firewalling activity being performed.

I plug a D-Link DI-102 Internet accelerator (VOIP prioritizer) into one of the ports of the business modem. My "regular" router, a D-Link LB-604, plugs into the DI-102. The Vonage adapter, a D-Link VTA, plugs into the LB-604. All the other components on the network (computer, network printer, etc), also plug into the LB-604.

If you don't have an DI-102 (which I highly recommend, by the way), I would plug your "regular" router (D-Link/Linksys/whatever) into the Comcast business modem, and plug the Vonage adapter into your regular router. Thus, insofar as the Comcast business modem is concerned, you're just plugging one thing into it, your regular router.

This setup has worked flawlessly for us. People can't tell that I'm on a Voip line, and further, I lose no voice quality even when ftp'ing large amounts of data, or doing an Internet speed test. I did have to manually configure the DI-102 to tell it what my uplink speed was (I first detected the actual uplink speed a few times with an Internet speed test, and then took the lowest #). Also, in the DI-LB604, I set up QoS so that all traffic to/from the Vonage adapter has higher priority than any other traffic. To do this, I also set up the Vonage adapter with a "static dhcp" address -- i.e., the Vonage adapter uses DHCP to get its address, but the LB604 always give it the same address, which you need to establish QoS settings, and which also helps if you ever want to go into the Vonage adapter to reset it remotely.

We've had Vonage for about a month or so now, and there have been no issues. We lost power for 7 hours yesterday (!), and although I have a backup generator, Comcast's battery backup on their Internet service apparently only lasts six hours (this is actually one advantage of cable over DSL for Internet -- they are required to have battery backup if they offer their own digital phone services, whereas any time we lost power when we had DSL, DSL went down immediately, which was a major bummer, insofar as we have a backup generator). I set up the network outage settings for our phone lines to roll over to our cell phones, and it performed flawlessly. Our phone #s were both ported in less than a week. Voice quality has been no different than regular POTS lines. I had one issue with no getting a stuttertone when we had voicemail, and although it took about a week to get it fixed, I enjoyed working with their customer service folks -- the key is to only deal with the "advanced" Tech Support in New Jersey, not the off-shore people.