RTP300 VPN

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 16, 2005 Posts: 3

I just spent about an hour on the phone with Vonage about the VPN in the RTP300.

Preface: The rep was extremely helpful and did what he could. Overall, Vonage tech support, in my experience, has been overwhelmingly positive.

Also, I have to mention here that his credibility is in question because I had to *overlook* a great number of technical errors he made while attempting to help me. He clearly had a very good knowledge base in front of him while he helped me and he learned from me very fast when I corrected him. I was able to see past the mistakes. But I can see how others could become frustrated if he acts this way with everyone.

Here is an account of what I was told:

1) RTP300 has *known issues* with VPN.
2) There is no firmware upgrade for the router to fix it.
3) The Vonage rep insisted that other people at the office use VPN over the RTP300. I find this hard to believe. Maybe he meant they use the slightly older Linksys router that they used to give out (I had one of those and it did VPN outbound just fine)
4) No combination of turning on and off NAT, firewall, putting the thing in the DMZ, port fowarding port 1723, turn on and off PPTP, PPoE, and IPSec passthrough or VPN Passthrough made a difference.
5) I connect to two kinds of VPN's (Microsoft Server and a Cisco PIX) Both have issues with the RTP300.

My impression is that the thing just doesn't route GRE packets and that's all there really is to it.

So what I did was install a non Voip router as my primary router and I hung my computers off of it. That router could do GRE outound. (but not inbound)

Then I connected the Vonage router to the primary one (LAN on primary router -> WAN on Vonage router). Now I have 2 routers in series. To make this work, I went into the settings on both routers and turned on RIP v2. After a few moments, the phone became active.

So now VPN outbound works.

Remaining problems and my hypothesises:

1) I have no QoS now because my primary router doesn't do QoS. I could go buy another router with QoS I suppose. Also, someone on another post claimed that the QoS in the Vonage router doesn't do anything. I'll have to see if the lack of QoS makes a difference to me.

2) VPN inbound doesn't work. So I can't connect to my VPN at home from work. I think this is something that Linksys did to the router that I now have as primary.

I have to say overall, that I'm completely dissatisfied with Netgear's stuff, D-Link's stuff and Linksys's stuff. I think all of it is crap and they don't fix their stuff. I've gone through 4 routers in 5 years for one reason on another. They all end the same. The companies eventually stop with the firmware updates, then the routers start to hang (prolly cause a hacker figured out a way to jam them up) and their VPN ****. (or is fixed, then **** again depending on firmware version) (or is fixed then a hacker figured out how to hang the router, out comes a new firmware update but VPN is now busted) Stay on top of this!