Vonage and ADT alarms

Posts: 89 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Feb 04, 2004 Posts: 89

The above post was mine. I have to agree that Safemaster cought a lucky break.

Posts: 89 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Feb 04, 2004 Posts: 89

I spoke to soon. I got the darn thing working with ADT. I called Vonage and their tech support asked me to put my ATA in front of the router instead of behind the router. Their tech guy then decreased the "packetization level" of my ATA to 10. He explained to me that lowering that value decreases the sampling level (I think that means compression level) that the ATA is using. We triggered a couple of alarms and ADT confirmed that they got the codes. The tech explained to me that the major change was to put the ATA in front of the router so it could do QOS. He also suggested that if possible to tell the ADT technician to program the system to use a *99 prefix for the calls. That will force the ATA to data/fax mode. This mode is suppoused to be detected automatically by the ATA but some times it fails to do so. For those of you having similar issues with DirecTV Tivos, this change and the *99 prefix fixes the problem in some cases. Call Vonage and give this a try.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 03, 2004 Posts: 5

Excellent, txcas! My setup currently has the ATA *behind* the router, due to all the reliability issues I've read about from posters on this forurm who have their ATA out in front.

The ADT technician didn't give me the master/programmer code for the panel, so I doubt I can set the *99 prefix. Did you get yours working without *99?

Posts: 89 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Feb 04, 2004 Posts: 89

Yes mine is working without the *99 prefix.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 05, 2004 Posts: 10

We did have to use a new software load as part of the fix, so that does sound about right. Also, our MTA IS the cable modem, so it cannot lie behind a router. That may well be the final factor. Great!!!

Guest

Txcas was right on. It took me a while to get everything working together nicely (port forwarding, firewall, webservers, etc...), but finally all is good.

The Vonage rep that I spoke with also said that some people need to increase theire "packet period size". He said that moving the default (20) to 10 helps a lot of people, but some people need to have the setting bumped up to 30. Mine happened to be ok at 10.

To anwer the earlier post about "I'm wondering if your alarm system releases its line seizure? Mine seizes the line fine and seems to dial out, but even if I cancel and give it a minute, I don't get a dial tone back on my phones.", it's actually the alarm system that's doing this. The ADT system that I have will try to call over and over for 10 minutes until it finally gives up. It won't release the lines to a normal condition until it stops trying to connect with ADT. Once you get the service working right, the call takes only a few seconds and the line seizure resets right away.

Posts: 89 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Feb 04, 2004 Posts: 89

I learned another trick yesterday and now my ATA does not freeze when in front of my router. I was configureded this way: cable modem->Motorola ATA->Linksys Router. I had NAT/DHCP enabled on the Motorola ATA. With those settings the ATA was grabbing the IP address from Comcast, then it was assignig 192.168.102.100 to the Linksys router. The Linksys routher was also configured for DHCP so it was assigning 192.168.1.10x addresses to my PCs. With that setup my ATA was freezing and I was also loosing my Internet connectivity. I also had to configure port forwarding from the ATA to my Linksys router and from the Linksys to the appropriate PC.

Here comes the trick. The setup stays the same, cable modem-> ATA->Linksys; but I disabled NAT/DHCP on the ATA. Now the ATA is in pass-through mode. All the incoming traffic goes straight through the ATA and it is now the Linksys router the one doing the port forwarding. Now I don't have to configure port forwarding twice (at the ATA and at the Linksys) and the ATA has not frozen at all. With this setup the Linksys router is now grabbing the IP address from Comcast and not the 192.168.102.100 address the ATA was assigning to it. I think that all the freezin on the Motorola ATA happens when it is working as router doing NAT/DHCP and port forwarding. I tested the ADT alarm system again last night and ADT got all the calls the system made. I think this is the perfect configuration since it provides QoS, the ATA no longer freezes, and I don't have to configure port forwarding twice. I hope this helps.

PS. Man I can't wait for my number to get ported to Vonage so I can bye bye to SBC.

Guest

Hey guys,

I'm new to the forum. I have a Ademco Safewatch Pro 3000EN(made for ADT) alarm with ADT service. I just hooked up my ATA from Vonage earlier this week and have been testing my alarm ever since. I can not get the alarm to communicate with ADT. I can see where the alarm is trying to dial them. It tries like 16 times. My ATA is behind my router. I am going to try moving it in front of my router and program my alarm to dial *99 before the number. I noticed one of you is doing pass through on your ATA. I would assume that this causes you to get 2 ip addresses from your ISP. Am I correct? I run several web services from behind my router and can't afford the ATA to block ports. I'll let you know how my testing goes.

PS: I found my Alarms installer code in the alarms install manual. It's probably the same for all ADT Ademco alarms. If you can't find it let me know and I'll tell you what it is offline.

Nathan Aaron

Posts: 89 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Feb 04, 2004 Posts: 89

With the ATA in passthrough mode you don't get 2 IP addresses from you ISP. Only your router will get one.

Guest

If the ATA is in passthrough... and it is on the internet... How does it communicate without an ip address? I can see that my router has an address assigned by my isp. If you know something I don't, please explain.

Nathan