RTP300 power supply can cause low bandwidth & phone outa

Posts: 86

This is a troubleshooting tip I hope will help others.

Summary: Don't ditch a faulty RTP300, it may be just it's power supply that is faulty.

Detail: My Vonage and Comcast service is generally very reliable, but yesterday I lost dial tone. I checked bandwidth and noticed that it was much slower than normal. Instead of the normal 4-6 mb down and 1.6 up, it measured as low as 350kb down and 20kb up.

Because one of the other RTP300s I have gave me similar problems last summer, I figured this RTP300 that I switched to then was now also going bad.

I used the Move A Number Add-on on the Vonage site to activate the 3rd RTP300 that I had never used before.

Unfortunately, that 3rd RTP300 only worked for a few minutes after the switchover, then the phone light went out and I measured terrible bandwidth on that RTP300.

I spent several hours substituting the 3 RTP300s and a WRT54G as routers. Consistently all 3 RTP300s had low bandwidth while the WRT54G and a direct cable modem to computer connection had normal high speed connections.

I spoke with technical support who suggested that bad power supplies are a known issue with the RTP300.

Thank-you technical support, that was the problem!

I had never tried a different power supply other than the original 2 year old supply that came with my 1st RTP 300 for all these RTP300 tests. The power supply included with the newest RTP300 is much larger and heavier than the other 2, and is similar to the WRT54G power supply, so that is the one I placed in service just now.

The result is that the bandwidth tests now are consistently fast.

Bottom line is that all 3 of these RTP300 units are probably fine to use, because I never tried a different power supply until today, so all the bad symptoms I have had with all 3 RTP300s were probably caused by the bad power supply.

Posts: 86 · Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:34 am Post subject:

As follow up...

After one week of faultless operation with the new power supply, tonight bandwidth again slowed to a crawl, losing internet access and the Vonage phone light on the RTP 300.

Alternating between joining the cable from the cable modem to the cable leading to the computer CAT5 connector directly with a CAT5 coupler, and connecting those cables through the RTP 300 confirmed that bypassing the RTP300 cured the bandwidth issues and using the RTP300 resulted in low bandwidth.

I unplugged the RTP300 power for 60 seconds and then reconnected it and the speed was still terrible, 400k down, 0 up. Only after unplugging the RTP300 power for 5 minutes and then reconnecting restored most of the bandwidth and the phone service.

It is quite annoying when a router loses its mind.