Vtech phone - "extension in use" - no dial tone

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 12, 2007 Posts: 9

Past few days, we've had sporadic problems where my VTECH wireless phones, plugged into my Vonage WRTp54g router, all display "Extension in use" and I have no dial-tone.

The wireless internet part of the router is working fine.

I've power-cycled the router -- even reset to factory defaults and reconfigured -- but still the problem.

My mom's in the hospital in another state -- I really need this phone line back. Any suggestions?

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

Please give us all the technical details listed in the sticky message at the top of the forum. Can you try it with a corded phone?

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 12, 2007 Posts: 9

Sorry about that. No other phones in the house to test with, unfortunately, but here's the requested information:

1. Your location
North Georgia

2. Your ISP name and type (cable, DSL, wireless etc)
Comcast cable

3. Upload and download speeds
Not sure, but sufficient and unchanged

4. Modem make and model
Motorola Surfboard 4200

5. Type of Vonage adapter used ie RT31P2 or PAP2
Linksys WRTP54G

6. Setup of Network ie Modem---->Vonage Adapter-->PC
Internet -> Modem -> Linksys WRT54G (wireless disabled) hard-wired to modem and to -> Linksys WRTP54G. I use 2 laptops - one cabled to WRT54G, and the other wireless to the WRTP54G. Phone is a VTech (unknown model but base model is plugged into WRTP54G, other nodes wireless to base). No other phones in the house.

7. Issue you are experiencing ie dropped calls, choppy audio etc
"Extension in use" sporadically (but increasingly) displays on all phones and no dial tone.

8. Run this VoIP Test:

Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 1608976 bps
Upload speed: 361896 bps
Quality of service: 22 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum download pause: 544 ms
Average download pause: 10 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 31 ms
Average round trip time to server: 127 ms

VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 3.1 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 8.8 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.1 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 2.5 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Number of supported VoIP lines: 6
Estimated MOS score: 3.5

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 12, 2007 Posts: 9

Is my QOS number a problem? If so, is there anything I can do about it?

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

I'm more concerned with your download pause and packet losses, but before we go there, what frequency is your cordless phone system? 2.4 GHz cordless phones don't play nicely with wireless routers.

If your phone is 2.4 GHz, and since you have no other, temporarily turn off the wireless function in the router. See if that works better.

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 12, 2007 Posts: 9

They are 2.4 phones. I disabled the wireless and power-cycled the phone. No change, unfortunately. They've been working, in the same location and with no changes, for ... years? Over a year, anyway.

Could Comcast or Vonage have changed something causing this? We did have an outage of SOME channels, right before this happened, that Comcast corrected remotely (not just a problem at our house, apparently).

My admin screen for the WRTP54G says "Firmware Version: 5.01.04 ". Is that right? Is that a problem?

Thanks for continuing to try to help me!

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

I doubt that Comcast is responsible for this problem. I think it's your cordless telephone system. When you lose dial tone, is the phone light on your WRTP54G on, off, or flashing?

Posts: 47 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 13, 2007 Posts: 47

The only reason the Vtech says "extension in use" is becase the the base is detection at least one of the handset in off-hook condition.
Make sure that all your handsets are onhook i.e. press the off/hangup button. Try pressing flash button and see if you get dial-tone. Try connecting to port-2 of the TA and see if you get any tone/message.

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 12, 2007 Posts: 9

Of the 4 handsets, one has a dead battery -- the charger is unplugged and the phone is totally dead. I can INTERCOM all the remaining 3 from each other. I just held them all and pressed the OFF button on all, and they all came back with Extension in Use. I'm not sure how to FLASH -- there's a flash button, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

I dug through my entire house and cannot find a "regular" (non-wireless) phone to plug into the WRTP54G. The light on phone port #1 is solid on. If I plug into phone port #2, the phone does give me the voice message that I'm plugged into the wrong port.

I know that the phones think other extensions are in use, usually, because of a drop in the phone line voltage. If I'm not using phone lines (but, rather VOIP), what is it detecting?

I just asked my husband where, in the house, we still had a POTS line that I could test the phone on -- and he pulled 'em all out when we moved to Vonage! News to me...

Posts: 47 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 13, 2007 Posts: 47

The port provided by a VoIP TA behaves same as POTS line. The TA has no role to play in "extension in use". Even if you disconnect the base from the TA i.e. no line is connected, it can still detect and display "extension in use". So at this point I would suspect the cordless-phone.