Vonage and Xbox Live

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 03, 2005 Posts: 1

It's been a few weeks since this thread has been updated so I thought I'd just *bump* it back up again.

I'm having the same continued problems w/Vonage and XBOX Live! - especially when my son is in Halo2.

Just hoping that maybe someone out there has found some resolution...

Thanks in advance!!

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 26, 2005 Posts: 9

I will add to this as a new Vonage user of two weeks. I have the following setup:

Optimum Online > Motorola Surfboard Modem > LinkSys Voip Router > D-Link 614+ wireless router > Uniden switch > Xbox

So far I have not had any problems playing Halo 2. I do have problems with my wireless connection when on the phone. I have made no changes to any of the D-Link settings. I will do some more extensive testing this weekend. I have never been on the phone and Xbox Live at the same time. I have also never been disconnected or experienced any lag playing Halo 2 since I installed Vonage.

But now that I posted this I'm sure I will experience tons of problems, Murphy's Law.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 07, 2005 Posts: 2

This discussion is very interesting. I have been using Vonage for about 8 months or so. At certain points, I have had some issues with a couple of games -- "Ghost Recon: Island Thunder" and "Rainbow Six 3", I believe -- but overall, things have worked very smoothly. In other words, no show-stoppers like getting kicked off repeatedly. I should also say that I've been using Vonage over Speakeasy's OneLink DSL service for the whole time.

Suddenly, as of about a week ago, I've been having problems with disconnection on a regular basis. The games that I've experienced disconnections with are: "Halo 2", "Brothers in Arms", "Doom 3". The first time I began experiencing problems with it was probably last week some time (the last week of March, beginning of April 2005). Everything was fine a week earlier, because I played Halo 2 on the previous weekend; I basically always use the voice communicator, so there's no question about whether I did or didn't.

I signed on to play Brothers in Arms with some friends on Saturday, April 2nd. In the space of 30 minutes, I got kicked off about 6 times. Though I couldn't be certain, I'm pretty sure that I got kicked off each time just after a round started (maybe about 30 seconds into the round).

Either way, I played Halo 2 again a little this week Tuesday. I engaged in a little troubleshooting with one of my friends from Saturday night. Basically everything stabilized once the Motorola box from Vonage was removed. My typical setup looks like this:

INET--DSL Modem--Mot. box--Belkin WAP/Switch--Xbox/Computer/Etc.

I picked up Doom 3 this week and did get kicked off at least once, though I didn't play online for very long.

So, at least for me, there seems to be a pretty strong correlation to things working w/out the Vonage box in the mix (that's not going to work since I'm losing my work cell phone to which calls would be forwarded) and all these problems are fairly new: I've logged several hours of play with both Halo 2 and Brothers in Arms prior to any of these complications arising.

I'm really anxious to get something resolved here. If anyone wants any more information from me, please feel free to ask. I'd be happy to try some additional troubleshooting if it'll help.

Go Users!

Posts: 13 · Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 11:00 pm Post subject:

i tested this out today wife was on the phone with her bro in finland, aim yahoo and msn messengers running, downloading music (legally of course) and playing xbox live it was like this for at leat 3 hours except when a song finished and i was able to get back and download another with no lag on the phone or ANY problems with the connection to live

i have adelphia 6mb down and 768 up
terayno tj715x cable modem >linksys rt31p2 router > linksys wrt45g router> comp in living room xbox and then to comp in bedroojust thought i would share this. if anyone has adelphia and is having trouble and your using the rt31p2 look in to geting the wrt54g because adelphia does not work well with just the rt31p2 i spent hours and hours on the phone with tech support over 4 days got the wrt54g and not a prob for almost 4 weeks now

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 07, 2005 Posts: 2

After doing a bit of troubleshooting last night and trying to rearrange my gear in this fashion:

INT--DLS modem--Belkin RTR--Moto. box/Xbox/PC

Things were better from a gaming standpoint, but I had terrible phone problems. Calls were getting forwarded to my cell phone, calls would get dropped while in progress, or audio for the person on the other end would cut in and out.

So I went back to my original setup described in my previous post. In the process of setting things up again, I noticed the VT1000v's "Enable DMZ" option in the Advanced Configuration. I turned it on and set it to the internal IP address of my Xbox.

I just got off playing a few rounds of both "Brothers in Arms" and "Halo 2" w/out any drop-off! Obviously, only time will tell whether this change in settings was what fixed things; I'd be interested to hear whether anyone else has any success with a similar setup.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: May 07, 2005 Posts: 2

Is this topic still live? I've been having the same problems as many people here with my xbox dropping while playing Halo 2 and having to reboot my Vonage Moto modem in order to recover.

I recently upgraded to a WRT54G and started having problems with dropped sessions in halo2. Before I was using linksys's B router, with the xbox wired directly to the router. No problems except some occasional lag. No dropped sessions though. I've moved my xbox away from my router and started using their G game adapter with the WRT54G.

Now I get a pretty volatile ping rate, with increasingly more frequent drops till finally getting disconnected all together. By then my network is hung and so far I've traced it back to my Vonage modem. The router appears to be working fine.

My connection currently is:
INT-Cable Modem (cox)--Vonage Moto--WRT54G--PC(wired/wireless)/Tivo(wireless)/Xbox(wireless).

I've been playing Live with the voice module in, I'll try taking it out and see if that makes a difference. I'm also going to try putting my xobx in the DMZ, but that shouldn't make a difference in the Vonage and xbox are having conflicts over voice. I'll also try pulling the Vonage box off of the network with live and see if that helps (though that would defeat the purpose of having a Voip phone). I currently have QoS enabled on the WRT54G with preference given to the xbox.

The one interesting thing I've noticed that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else is whenever this problem arises my main PC's Norton Firewall starts asking me if I want to accept UDP packets for xbox live (goes to the xbox port). Anyone know why the packets would be hitting my PC as well? Shouldn't they go directly to the xbox, especially since I have port forwarding to the xbox's IP?

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: May 11, 2005 Posts: 1

i *was* having trouble with Vonage and XBL. but i rearranged my network, and all is now well.

when i had problems, i had my network set up like so:
[cable modem]->[motorola Vonage box]->[5-port switch]<-all my computers and xbox plugged into that

this setup would lead to xbl games consistantly being dropped. really obnoxious.

i fixed it by doing this:
[cable modem]->[linksys befsr11]->[5-port switch]<- all my computers, xbox, and [motorola Vonage box] plugged into this

from here, the Vonage box was able to get a solid status led going on, which means it was connected to the servers on vonage's end. however i could not place or receive calls. i fixed that by forwarding the Vonage IP ports to my Vonage box's IP address. my befsr11 provides a list of all it's dhcp clients and that's how i was able to find the IP of the Vonage box. works perfectly now with no QOS issues unless i'm maxing out my pipe with torrents or whatever. simultaneous world of warcraft connections and Vonage calls do not have any ill effects on each other. xbox live works just fine too.

i'm on comcast with a 4mbit/256kbit connection.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: May 07, 2005 Posts: 2

Well it appears I've been able to get a stable connection. I tested out a bunch of options, but ended up with the following:

INET->Modem (cable)-> WRT54G->Vonage (moto, wired), Xbox (wireless), PC/TIVO (mixed).

I had to setup portforwarding for the Vonage on the WRT (as well as give the Vonage a fixed IP) but it all appears to be working fine together now.

I also reflashed my WRT with the HyperWRT firmware and setup its QoS services to prioritize my Vonage and Xbox over everything else.

No disconnects since doing all this. I've DLed 100s of megs in files, streamed music, had calls, Live, Tivo, etc and not a hiccup yet. In fact my Vonage quality seems to be a little better, which is weird.

Posts: 1389 · Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 12:45 pm Post subject:

Hey all...has there been any update on this at all? I noticed the same issue with my service,,,,

Posts: 76 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: May 18, 2005 Posts: 76