Most calls go to VM, call waiting not working

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 14, 2004 Posts: 3

Hello All,

I have had Vonage for almost a year now. Recently, I have been having problems with the service... most of our incoming calls go straight to voicemail, and for the last couple of months, I cannot remember call waiting ever working, (any incoming call, when I'm already on the phone, goes straight to voicemail).

I went to my online dashboard and checked the following settings: I have the bandwidth setting on maximum, and I verified that call waiting is enabled.

This has been happening much more than usual. Calls go to VM even when I'm online and know the Internet is working, call waiting not working at all.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Does the ATA have any internal settings that might improve the quality of service? How about call waiting?

Thank you all for your help!

Chad

Posts: 41 · Full Forum Member Joined: 1064934432 Posts: 41

Chad,
Here's some random thoughts that popped into my head. Most of these are ideas that I've gotten from watching this forum for a while...

1. Try a complete power-off reset of your hardware. If it's been a while since you've done this, there may be a firmware update waiting for your ATA that will install when it powers back up.

2. Ask Vonage if they could set up your account on a better server. There have been several reports of individuals getting their problems fixed when Vonage moved their account to a different server.

3. See if Vonage has a way to check your ATA device to see if it may be failing. I don't know if they can verify it, or if it's just a guess. Several posters here have reported ATA failure and have had them replaced.

4. Verify that all of your line connections are solid. I initially had issues with my Vonage service and it turned out that I had one connection that was just loose enough to cause intermittent problems. I didn't think it was possible because I didn't notice problems with the internet. It finally ended up working loose to the point where my internet failed and when I finally figured it out and fixed it, my Vonage service became rock-solid.

5. There have been some internet issues due to a new rash of virus' lately, it's possible these are still affecting your Vonage service.

6. Who is your internet service provider? There are those who are getting suspicious of Comcast. Comcast is rolling out their own VOIP phone service and many Comcast/Vonage subscribers have been experiencing problems that have been difficult to track down. There is no proof at this point, but Comcast/Vonage users seem to have a higher problem rate than other combinations.

7. Have you done a thorough virus scan / spyware scan lately? It's possible that your computer is infected with something that is eating up your bandwidth.

That's all I can think of for now - maybe someone else has some other ideas...

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 14, 2004 Posts: 3

Big_bob,

Thank you for the suggestions! I will check for loose connections firstly.

I also visited www.dslreports.org, and there is a good forum over there as well, offering insight to correcting vonage issues. I found that some people had luck with service problems when the allowed certain port forwarding to the ATA. I added port forwarding for the specified ports and I will monitor the service.

The ATA has been rebooted within the last two weeks.. this has been going on since November.. It didn't happen all of a sudden, but instead I noticed a quick deterioration of service.

My broadband company is SBC, (DSL line). It's pretty stable and I don't have issues with getting knocked off the Internet. I used to have Comcast, and I would rate them as pretty low.. lots of downtime :/

I'll do another power reset today.. perhaps there is a firmware upgrade in the queue.

I run full scans on my entire network for virus and spyware every other day.. so I think I'm clean..

If my next steps don't seem to work, then I'll ask vonage to move me to a different server...

Bob, I appreciate your suggestions and help!! You have given me some good ideas to try out.

T