Inital Setup problems/ vonage disables other connections

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 13, 2009 Posts: 5

Vonage phone adapter VDV21RB.
I have a static IP through my cable provider TWC. Therefore I had to login to the UI and put in my IP information manually. When I install the Vonage adapter, it works, but all my other internet connections stop working. I have a cable modem with a cat5 going to the uplink port of my router. Then I have cat5\'s going out from my router to my other devices. I have followed your instructions by plugging a cat5 from my cable modem to the Vonage adapter(blue) then from adapter to my router(yellow) uplink port. The Vonage adapter works fine, but all of my other devices no longer have an INTERNET connection. I have tried powering down all my boxes but that doesn\'t help. It\'s like the phone adapter is not allowing the Internet to pass through. When it is installed like this, I am unable to hit the interface for my router (192.168.1.1). When I remove the Vonage adapter all my internet connections work and I am able to access the router interface.

Posts: 656 · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 9:22 am Post subject:

In the current setup, with the VDV21 connected to the cable modem and the LAN port going to your router's WAN port, what is the IP address you see in the status page of your router for the Internet or WAN port.

Since I don't know the make and modem of your router, I can only tell you to log into 192.168.1.1 and look for a status page. Then look for the WAN or Internet connection status. You may not be getitng an IP address. First make sure there is a link between the VDV21 and your router. Look at the port and see if the LED's are lit up. Maybe a bad cable.

If the LED's are lit up, try to assign your router with a static IP of 192.168.15.100, subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, gateway of 192.168.15.1, and 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 as the DNS servers.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 13, 2009 Posts: 5

The connection lights are all lit. The cat5 cables are good, I have swapped them around and they always work as long as the Vonage adapter is not in the mix. I am unable to configure the router with the phone adapter in place. In order to access the interface of the router I have to remove the Vonage adapter. I am using a Netgear router. 192.168.1.1 accesses it fine when the phone adapter is removed.

When I do an IPCONFIG from my pc that is connected to the router it reports the default gateway is 192.168.1.1 and the IP address assigned to the PC is 192.168.1.3

The router has 5 ports. One port labeled as uplink and the 4 ports for connecting devices. I am plugging the yellow connection from the phone adapter into the uplink port on the router. I have tried other combinations as well, but this seems the most logical.

I will try your suggestion on the router later today. At my day job right now.

Posts: 656 · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 9:42 am Post subject:

Well that's the problem. Your need to plug the VDV21 yellow LAN port to the port on your router that is labeled as WAN or Internet port.

Right now, the issue you have is that you are bypassing your router completely and only using it as a switch. But, since your router issued IP's to your computer on it's LAN of 192.168.1 and the VDV21's LAN is 192.168.15.x, they will not communicate.

The way it works is the VDV21 WAN connects to the modem and gets a Public IP from your ISP. The the LAN port on the VDV21 connects to the WAN/ Internet port of your router. By doing this, the VDV21 issues an IP address to your router's WAN port of 192.168.15.2. Your router's DHCP server issues all PC's connected to it IP addresses of 192.168.1.x. Any time a computer sends a packet to an IP address that is not 192.168.1.x, it will be sent through the WAN port 0f 192.168.15.2 and then to the VDV21. This cannot happen if the VDV21 connects to your router on a switch.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 13, 2009 Posts: 5

Maybe I was mistaken calling it uplink but that is what I recall seeing printed on the port.

There are only 5 ports on the back, 4 together and one set off to itself. I have it plugged into the one set off to itself.

here is the manual for the router:
[web]ftp://downloads.netgear.com/files/WGR614v9_SM_26Oct07.pdf[/web]

page 4 figure 3 #3, so it is in the WAN port. Just my terminology mistake. There is no UPLINK on the router.

Posts: 183 · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 2:19 pm Post subject:

Random thing just popped into my head. If I have it clear this is your old setup pre-Vonage:

TWC Coax > Cable Modem > Netgear Router > Computers.

New setup w/Vonage is:

TWC Coax > Cable Modem > Vonage ATA > Netgear Router > Computers.

When you setup the static IP in the Vonage ATA, did you then go the netgear and tell it to use DHCP rather than a static IP?

This is because your WAN port on the netgear is now plugged to the LAN port on the Vonage ATA. So the static IP serves its purpose on the Vonage box and the netgear box gets the 192.168.15.x addy from the Vonage ATA.

Hope this makes sense... yell if it doesn't.

Posts: 656 · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 2:19 pm Post subject:

I actually just realized something from your original post. You said you have a static IP from Time Warner and that you configured this static IP on the WAN port of the VDV21.

Question: Did you set the WAN port of the Netgear router back to DHCP or did you not touch the Netgear router's WAN port configuration which means it is still set with the Time Warner static IP?

If the answer is after connecting the Vonage VDV21, you never altered your Netgear router's WAN port configuration, then this is the problem. It is still set with a public IP statically assigned which means it wont communicate with the VDV21's LAN port.

You would need to access your Netgear router and change the internet connection WAN port configuration to DHCP. Then everything should work fine.

Posts: 183 · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 2:21 pm Post subject:

Great minds think alike... ha!

Posts: 656 · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 2:21 pm Post subject:

ksig,

We posted the same thing at the exact same time. How often does that occur? And today is Friday 13th. Very strange.

Posts: 656 · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 2:22 pm Post subject:

LOL