NokiaIP30Firewall & Multiple Phones on House wires Succe

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 28, 2004 Posts: 1

Hello All. Thought I would pass on my successful Vonage configuration with my Nokia IP30 SofaWare Checkpoint Firewall. I had Vonage up and running in about 30 minutes and its been up for 2 months straight with no outage. If you are just looking for advice on multiple phones, skip down the post a bit.

Here are the pieces of my network config: Time Warner RoadRunner Cable Modem, Nokia IP30 Firewall(4 10/100 switch ports), Vonage Motorola, Radioshack 3 pronged phone coupler, 4 Telephones, and one Answering Machine.

Firewall/Vonage Config

First, My Nokia IP30 has its internal network range configured for a class c network of 192.168.10.0/24 with the LAN interface as 192.168.10.1. You have to plug your PC's Ethernet connection into the LAN interface of the Vonage Motorola box to change the WAN interface IP info. I connected to the Web Gui of the Motorola box and disabled DHCP on the WAN interface. My Nokia IP30 does distribute DHCP but I found it easier to statically code an IP address to the Motorola that is on the same subnet as my Nokia LAN interface(Just make sure and assign it an address thats not in the DHCP range). The address I assigned my Vonage box is 192.168.10.50/24. I obviously made the Nokia box my default gateway and DNS server as well. This required a reboot of the Vonage box to save and invoke the new settings. I then connected the WAN connection of the Vonage box to my Nokia IP30, and moved my PC Ethernet Connection back into the Nokia as well.

Next, I verifed connectivity to the Vonage box from the Nokia web administration gui and by pinging the IP address assigned to the Vonage. Once, I could see the box, I then opened up the ports specified in the Vonage user manual to the IP address I assigned my Vonage box.

After getting all of the network configuration out of the way plugged one of my phones into LINE 1 on the Vonage box and I HAD A DIAL TONE! I was shocked that I had it working the first try. I made a successful outbound call to my cell phone and a successful inbound call to my virtual number.

Number Portability - The most painful(but really not that bad part of my experience)

I sent Vonage my letter of authorization to transfer my exisiting home phone number the day after I got my box up and running and it took about 2 months for the number to port. Here is what I see happened. I sent the letter of authorization the week of Thanksgiving and got confirmation that they had it the Monday after the holiday. Now I know that Southwestern Bell/SBC moves at their own pace so I wasn't expecting much.(I had MANY problems with these guys fixing my previous DSL line I had, not to mention billing nightmares)

By Christmas my number had not ported so I wrote Vonage and they contacted SBC who apparently was behind on number transfers and it appeared my transfer got lost. I wrote the number transfer folks at Vonage and told them my whole point in getting their service was to can SBC and that I was paying for two services all this time and I wanted my transfer expedited. The wrote back a day later apologizing for the delay and for my trouble the credited me a full month! By mid January my number had transfered and my SBC account was cancelled.

Multiple Phones using Exisiting House Wiring

Now that my number was ported, I was ready to connected all of my phones in my house to my Vonage box. DISCLAIMER/CYA:VONAGE STATES THAT THEY DO NOT SUPPORT THIS CONFIGURATION SO PLEASE PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK

First, I went to the telephone box in my backyard and disconnected the feed from Southwestern Bell/SBC by unplugging the phone cable from its port. I verified the connection was severed by checking all of my phones in the house and making sure there was no dial tone. MAKE SURE THERE IS NO DIALTONE OR YOU COULD FRY YOUR Vonage BOX!

Next, in my office where I have my Vonage box, a phone, and answering machine, I started my configuration. From the Line 1 port on the Vonage box I ran a phone cable to a 3 pronged phone coupler I bought at RadioShack for about 5 bucks. (For those who don't know what this coupler is, it basically a little adapter that will split on phone jack into two ports.) Now that the Vonage box was plugged into the coupler I took another phone cable and plugged it from one port on the coupler into my exisiting wall jack, and then another phone cable from the other coupler port to my answering machine/phone.

For those who need a visual representation:

Vonage Box
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Coupler----Wall Jack----Other phones in the House
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Answering Machine/Phone

I then verified my Answering Machine/Phone was working and then went to verify that all my other phones had dial tone. All of them were working and I was successfully up on Vonage phone service! My co-worker also the same week had the same success with the same network configuration.

Please feel free to send any posts asking questions and I will try and answer them as quick as I can.[/b]