Using a dialup modem with Vonage

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 12, 2008 Posts: 1

I would like to say yes you can use dial up on vonage I just did it doing dial up modem test I got 50.6k when I was connected.

Posts: 180 · Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 1:36 pm Post subject:

I use dial-up modems over Vonage voice lines every day. But I'm using 1200bps modems. I place a couple hundred short data calls every day, as I need to poll a large number of rather old-fashioned devices that can only communicate that way.

When I first tried to do this, back in 2003, it failed completely. The modems failed handshake and neither end detected carrier when calls were dialed. I kept a few analog telephone lines for the modems and used Vonage only for voice for several years. Than, a year or so ago, I made a modem test call over Vonage, and it worked perfectly. I then used Vonage to replace one analog line for a month or so, and it worked consistently. So I replaced all of my analog lines with Vonage, and they still work.

I'm not sure whether my ISP improved something or Vonage improved something. Your results may vary from mine at different modem speeds, using different ISPs etc.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 23, 2009 Posts: 1

Great tips! Thanks!

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 19, 2009 Posts: 1

Modem over VOIP

This is a late post, but I have been trying to connect a modem over VOIP (a regular Vonage line, not a Vonage Fax line) for about a week and was finally able to do it last night. I double checked that it still works this morning - just to be sure that I wasn't delusional last night after a frustrating weekend messing with this stuff.

To be quite honest, I think that the solution consisted of several small changes that I had to make. I hope this helps someone, because I was pulling my hair out for a week trying to get dial-up over Vonage.

My setup:

- Regular Vonage VOIP line

- Roadrunner (Tme Warner Cable) internet connection

- Cable modem connected to LinkSys broadband router with two phone ports

How I got it to work:

1. After reading several forum posts (from all over the place, not just the Vonage Forum) it seemed to be the consensus among some experts that you could not get an internal fax/modem to work over VOIP. I'm not sure of all of the technical reasons, but I certainly couldn't get mine to work.

2. I started searching for external modems that people had used over VOIP, and stumbled upon this USB modem and the comment by L. Lupton with the title "Works on VoIP and Win XP just fine!" Off I went to Micro Center and picked one up for about $50.

3. I logged in at Vonage and under the settings area, increased the line quality to the max setting.

4. At the back of my router, I have a line filter that I had left over from an old DSL connection - not sure if it helps or not, but I figure it can't hurt. It's plugged directly into the router, and then has two ports - one for phone/voice and one for data. I tried to plug the line from the modem into the data port, but it wouldn't work. So, I plugged a phone line splitter into the phone port, and then the modem into one of the ports. I plug my home wiring into the other port. (Note: At first I had my modem plugged into the home wiring further away/downline from the router, but couldn't get a "handshake" from the dial-up location. I had to connect my modem as close to the router as possible - probably to cut out a lot of interferance in my home wiring).

5. Before I bought the new external modem, I had downloaded a "Dialer" from Roadrunner that lets you choose a location to dialup to. During the installation process, it installed a dialup script (see below). Using the dialer never helped my internal modem, but under the Properties for my Dialup Connection (in Control Panel - Network Connections) and then under the Security Tab, Interactive Logon and Scripting area, the "Run Script" box is checked and the location points to "C:\Program Files\Roadrunner_Dialup_Internet\icc\login.scp" script. This may be standard stuff, or maybe just something that Roadrunner requires - I have no idea.

The script looks like this:

proc main

string prefix = "aolnet/ent."
string UID = prefix + $USERID

waitfor
"ANSNet" then DoANSLogin,
"Login:" then DoPPPLogin,
"sername:" then DoDirLogin,
"% Username:" then DoPRLogin
until 20

DoANSLogin:
waitfor "login" until 5
if $SUCCESS then
transmit prefix + $USERID, raw
transmit "^M"
goto DONE
endif

DoPPPLogin:
transmit UID, raw
transmit "^M"
waitfor "Password" until 5
transmit $PASSWORD, raw
transmit "^M"
waitfor ">" until 5
transmit "ppp", raw
transmit "^M"
goto DONE

DoDirLogin:
transmit UID, raw
transmit "^M"
waitfor "Password" until 5
transmit $PASSWORD, raw
transmit "^M"
goto DONE

DoPRLogin:
waitfor "% Username:" until 20
if $SUCCESS then
transmit UID, raw
transmit "^M"
waitfor "Password" until 5
transmit $PASSWORD, raw
transmit "^M"
goto DONE
endif

DONE:
delay 2
endproc

6. I added "*99," to the phone number of the dialup location. This is supposed to tell Vonage to use the highest quality line, which I had already done, but it may also affect some other line settings as well.

7. I turned off "Enable Modem Error Control" and "Enable Modem Compression" on the modem configuration screen under my connection properties. (At first I also scaled back my modem speed to 9600, but later put it back to 115200 and it doesn't seem to make any difference).

8. When I tell the modem to connect, it starts the dialup process. A dialog box appears that says "Dialing *99,xxx-xxx-xxxx". Then it says "Postconnecting through [script name]". Then it verifies my username and password. Then registers my computer with the server.

9. The modem connects at 46.6 Kbps.

I have noticed that some dialup locations (Hunstville, AL for example) seem to be more buggy that others (Dallas, Kansas City), but Roadrunner has a large enough network of servers/dialup locations that it doesn't matter for my purposes.

My internal modem still does not work with these changes.

I hope this helps somewhat. Good luck.