Comcast Service Issue - Resolved

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 14, 2008 Posts: 2

I've had Comcast and Vonage service for 3+ yrs now. No recent equipment changes, then suddenly last week my LAN and Vonage phone stopped working.

Setup is

Comcast => Cable Modem (Motorola Surfboard SB5100) => Phone Adapter/Router (Motorola VT1005) => Fast Ethernet Switch => Computers

Basic situation was:

(1) This simple connection works every time

Comcast => Cable Modem (Motorola Surfboard SB5100) => Any Computer

(2) Phone Adapter is unable to acquire IP address. If I put in a static IP address, it could figure out my Vonage phone number but wouldn't complete registration, no DNS server found, and no downstream internet access.

After a wild goose chase swapping out the cable modem, I found myself talking this morning to reps from Comcast and Vonage.

Comcast rep told me
(C-1) Comcast does not require router behind cable modem to be registered.
(C-2) Comcast does not interfere with 3rd party Voip phone services. (In my nbhd, Comcast would prefer that I use their phone service instead of Vonage, but they would also not like to lose me to newly arrived FiOS.)

Vonage rep was way more helpful and succeeded in not only getting my phone service working, but incidentally all the rest of my network operations are properly restored too. I cannot say enough good things about the Vonage rep - he was knowledgeable and patient with my reconnecting cables and finding all various settings, and made sure that my restored phone connection was good quality AND that fixing the Vonage hadn't broken any internet functions. * * * * * Yup five stars (can I give six ?). In this day and age of customer NON-service, I was delighted to find that Vonage would take care of me.

It seems pretty clear to me (but hey I've been wrong before) that the root cause of the problem was not a hardware malfunction, and was not a problem at the Vonage end. For some reason, whether malicious or collateral damage I can't tell, Comcast servers last week decided to stop "playing nice" with my phone adapter.

One more satisfied Vonage customer !
- Muddler

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

Nice to hear a good Vonage service experience. Do you know what the Vonage rep did to fix the problem? It could help others here to know.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 14, 2008 Posts: 2

Good point Steve48,

We put a different MAC address into the Phone Adapter/Router.

There appears to be at least a possibility that the phone adapter's MAC address is blacklisted. You'd think if an ISP was doing this there would be people screaming up and down the web. So on one hand I think the explanation may be more humdrum and less sinister. But it is mighty peculiar that (1) a working system stops working (2) two phone adapters behave exactly the same (I tried my old Linksys RT31P2 to see if it could get further in the configuration process than the Motorola VT1005 - it behaved exactly the same as the VT1005 under both DHCP and static IP settings), and of course (3) merely changing a MAC address solved the problem.

- Muddler

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

Interesting. Thanks.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 17, 2008 Posts: 1

Comcast / Vonage customer in GA. Similar problem where outgoing voice quality has been poor for a few days after working just fine for months. Changing the mac address on VT1005V resolved the issue.

Go Jackets!

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

Thanks!