Any experience with Grandstream VoIP equipment ?
I'm in the midst of what would be a comedy of errors if it weren't so annoying. I bought a new Grandstream HT701 VoIP terminal adapter from a guy on eBay who is apparently an official Grandstream reseller. It doesn't work. The guy I bought it from (whose support ends at "nobody else has that problem") pointed fingers at Grandstream, whose support has been, well, impressive and not in a good way. I've done packet traces on the LAN with the box, I know what the problem is: there's something wrong with the box so it doesn't respond to the Proxy-Authenticate: challenge from my SIP provider. I know the challenge is OK, I have an old VoIP phone of theirs which works fine, on the same LAN with the same provider and the same configuration. Unfortunately, Grandstream's support staff is apparently unfamilar with packet traces and networks, and after a variety of obviously wrong diagoses (no, it's not a NAT problem, you can see the responses coming back from the remote system, etc.) seems unable to understand that a packet trace is, you know, a trace of the actual packets that have passed by the device's NIC. There's more, but you get the idea. Does anyone else here use their equipment? Is there any way to find support for this stuff who can actually provide support? R's, John
You should try the voiceops list. Or maybe #natog John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
I'm in the midst of what would be a comedy of errors if it weren't so annoying. I bought a new Grandstream HT701 VoIP terminal adapter from a guy on eBay who is apparently an official Grandstream reseller. It doesn't work. The guy I bought it from (whose support ends at "nobody else has that problem") pointed fingers at Grandstream, whose support has been, well, impressive and not in a good way.
I've done packet traces on the LAN with the box, I know what the problem is: there's something wrong with the box so it doesn't respond to the Proxy-Authenticate: challenge from my SIP provider. I know the challenge is OK, I have an old VoIP phone of theirs which works fine, on the same LAN with the same provider and the same configuration.
Unfortunately, Grandstream's support staff is apparently unfamilar with packet traces and networks, and after a variety of obviously wrong diagoses (no, it's not a NAT problem, you can see the responses coming back from the remote system, etc.) seems unable to understand that a packet trace is, you know, a trace of the actual packets that have passed by the device's NIC. There's more, but you get the idea.
Does anyone else here use their equipment? Is there any way to find support for this stuff who can actually provide support?
R's, John
-- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
My experience: we called them the princess phones. They were useful for people who wanted really big buttons, and didn't care if the phones worked half the time. I wouldn't use them unless you have a specific reason to. On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 7:38 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
You should try the voiceops list. Or maybe #natog
John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
I'm in the midst of what would be a comedy of errors if it weren't so annoying. I bought a new Grandstream HT701 VoIP terminal adapter from a guy on eBay who is apparently an official Grandstream reseller. It doesn't work. The guy I bought it from (whose support ends at "nobody else has that problem") pointed fingers at Grandstream, whose support has been, well, impressive and not in a good way.
I've done packet traces on the LAN with the box, I know what the problem is: there's something wrong with the box so it doesn't respond to the Proxy-Authenticate: challenge from my SIP provider. I know the challenge is OK, I have an old VoIP phone of theirs which works fine, on the same LAN with the same provider and the same configuration.
Unfortunately, Grandstream's support staff is apparently unfamilar with packet traces and networks, and after a variety of obviously wrong diagoses (no, it's not a NAT problem, you can see the responses coming back from the remote system, etc.) seems unable to understand that a packet trace is, you know, a trace of the actual packets that have passed by the device's NIC. There's more, but you get the idea.
Does anyone else here use their equipment? Is there any way to find support for this stuff who can actually provide support?
R's, John
-- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
I wouldn't use them unless you have a specific reason to.
That seems to be the consensus. Lucky I didn't pay very much. Any ATAs that people acually like? -- Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Arris. One failure of 500 deployed so far and call jitter issues disappeared once we switched to the Arris Emta's On Feb 8, 2013, at 5:33 PM, "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
I wouldn't use them unless you have a specific reason to.
That seems to be the consensus. Lucky I didn't pay very much.
Any ATAs that people acually like?
-- Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Guess I should clarify that these are Cable Emta's. Not stand alone. On Feb 8, 2013, at 5:33 PM, "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
I wouldn't use them unless you have a specific reason to.
That seems to be the consensus. Lucky I didn't pay very much.
Any ATAs that people acually like?
-- Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
"John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> writes:
Any ATAs that people acually like?
Strangely enough, "Cisco" SPA-112. Formerly known as Sipura, then Linksys. I do not know if they move to Belkin as part of the Linksys sale. They are not perfect, but they are pretty good. /Benny
We've used the HT502 ata's on a number of deployments, but voiceops has a thread going now about a buffer overflow issue that leaks credentials. We're evaluating the issue now to see if any of our units are on the old firmware and, if so, how best to handle it. That being said they're great little ata's. No issues. Cheers, Joshua Sent from my iPhone On Feb 9, 2013, at 1:35 PM, "Benny Amorsen" <benny+usenet@amorsen.dk> wrote:
"John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> writes:
Any ATAs that people acually like?
Strangely enough, "Cisco" SPA-112. Formerly known as Sipura, then Linksys. I do not know if they move to Belkin as part of the Linksys sale.
They are not perfect, but they are pretty good.
/Benny
Strangely enough, "Cisco" SPA-112. Formerly known as Sipura, then Linksys. I do not know if they move to Belkin as part of the Linksys sale.
Just got a Sipura SPA-1001. It also has registration problems. Hmmn. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
On Saturday, February 09, 2013 1:34 PM, Benny Amorsen <mailto:benny+usenet@amorsen.dk> wrote:
They are not perfect, but they are pretty good.
Have you played around with the T.38 support on the SPA-1XX line? Historically, it has been difficult to find a reasonably-priced, bare-bones (1 FXS, no built-in router) ATA that also happens to do T.38 well. PAP2T had no T.38 support at all. SPA-112 price looks good, so I'm wondering what the catch is. -- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana@fsr.com
As another reference point, I really liked the sipura atas, they were my personal favorite as far as the gear we used. I don't know how well that translates to after the linksys takeover though, as I haven't done voice gear in a few years. -Blake On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 8:13 AM, Nathan Anderson <nathana@fsr.com> wrote:
On Saturday, February 09, 2013 1:34 PM, Benny Amorsen <mailto: benny+usenet@amorsen.dk> wrote:
They are not perfect, but they are pretty good.
Have you played around with the T.38 support on the SPA-1XX line? Historically, it has been difficult to find a reasonably-priced, bare-bones (1 FXS, no built-in router) ATA that also happens to do T.38 well. PAP2T had no T.38 support at all.
SPA-112 price looks good, so I'm wondering what the catch is.
-- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana@fsr.com
As another reference point, I really liked the sipura atas, they were my personal favorite as far as the gear we used. I don't know how well that translates to after the linksys takeover though, as I haven't done voice gear in a few years.
Got a Sipura SPA-1001, can't get it to work, similar issues. I found that my router had SIP ALG turned on, turned it off, now the Grandstream mostly works. Sigh. Didn't help the Sipura, though. R's, John
John Levine wrote:
As another reference point, I really liked the sipura atas, they were my personal favorite as far as the gear we used. I don't know how well that translates to after the linksys takeover though, as I haven't done voice gear in a few years.
Got a Sipura SPA-1001, can't get it to work, similar issues.
I found that my router had SIP ALG turned on, turned it off, now the Grandstream mostly works. Sigh. Didn't help the Sipura, though.
If behind NAT: On the sipura/linksys ATA, admin login, switch to advanced view, SIP tab. Ensure the following "NAT Support Parameters" are enabled. Handle VIA received, Handle VIA report, Insert VIA received, Insert VIA rport, Substitute VIA Addr, Send Resp To Src Port. I never use a STUN server, I've found it causes too much delay in answering a call. It might be in a slightly different place than described above on the newer SPA-1001/112, but the options are the same.
Man is this strange: when I set my DHCP server to assign the Sipura box a fixed IP address, the VoIP box didn't work. When I let it assign an address out of the pool, it did work. Same device, same LAN, same /24 subnet, same ISC DHCP server. The Sipura has a web server, so I could confirm that in both cases the IP, subnet mask, DNS, and gateway were what the DHCP server assigned. I also have a more modern Linksys 2102 configured by a VoIP provider, same DHCP strangeness. Beats me. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly On Mon, 11 Feb 2013, Travis Mikalson wrote:
John Levine wrote:
As another reference point, I really liked the sipura atas, they were my personal favorite as far as the gear we used. I don't know how well that translates to after the linksys takeover though, as I haven't done voice gear in a few years.
Got a Sipura SPA-1001, can't get it to work, similar issues.
I found that my router had SIP ALG turned on, turned it off, now the Grandstream mostly works. Sigh. Didn't help the Sipura, though.
If behind NAT: On the sipura/linksys ATA, admin login, switch to advanced view, SIP tab. Ensure the following "NAT Support Parameters" are enabled. Handle VIA received, Handle VIA report, Insert VIA received, Insert VIA rport, Substitute VIA Addr, Send Resp To Src Port. I never use a STUN server, I've found it causes too much delay in answering a call.
It might be in a slightly different place than described above on the newer SPA-1001/112, but the options are the same.
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
On Monday, February 11, 2013 9:33 PM, John R. Levine <mailto:johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
Man is this strange: when I set my DHCP server to assign the Sipura box a fixed IP address, the VoIP box didn't work. When I let it assign an address out of the pool, it did work.
So what happens if you now configure the DHCP server so that the (working) IP is removed from the pool, and have the DHCP server explicitly assign it to the device instead? Does it still work? What if you turn the DHCP client off in the ATA, and try to manually assign the ATA both the fixed IP that didn't work, and the IP that does? There has to be a difference somewhere, whether it is in the DHCP payload, the way a router or NAT engine upstream is treating that IP, or *something*. -- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana@fsr.com
Man is this strange: when I set my DHCP server to assign the Sipura box a fixed IP address, the VoIP box didn't work. When I let it assign an address out of the pool, it did work.
So what happens if you now configure the DHCP server so that the (working) IP is removed from the pool, and have the DHCP server explicitly assign it to the device instead? Does it still work? What if you turn the DHCP client off in the ATA, and try to manually assign the ATA both the fixed IP that didn't work, and the IP that does?
Seems to work for the moment.
There has to be a difference somewhere, whether it is in the DHCP payload, the way a router or NAT engine upstream is treating that IP, or *something*.
Most likely the DHCP payload, the NAT engine in the router isn't likely to treat one IP differently from another. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Nathan Anderson <nathana@fsr.com> writes:
Have you played around with the T.38 support on the SPA-1XX line? Historically, it has been difficult to find a reasonably-priced, bare-bones (1 FXS, no built-in router) ATA that also happens to do T.38 well. PAP2T had no T.38 support at all.
T.38 support was the primary reason for choosing that model. Before the SPA-112, we used SPA-2102 which had the major disadvantage of being a router. It meant we had to log in to the box to enable provisioning on the WAN interface (and just hope that no one plugged a cable into the LAN). The SPA-112 is a much better solution.
SPA-112 price looks good, so I'm wondering what the catch is.
So far only one bug found: Sudden 90% fax call failure rate in one specific setup with 4 ATAs, whereas all the ATAs used by other customers continued to work fine. Problem solved with firmware 1.3.1. /Benny
We used AudioCodes at my last gig - the MP202B, specifically. They were decent, from what I remember. It's been several years since I've worked on them, so don't take this as an endorsement. I'm just adding another possible vendor name/product to the pool. -----Original Message----- From: John Levine [mailto:johnl@iecc.com] Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 3:32 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Any experience with Grandstream VoIP equipment ?
I wouldn't use them unless you have a specific reason to.
That seems to be the consensus. Lucky I didn't pay very much. Any ATAs that people acually like? -- Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
participants (10)
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Benny Amorsen -
Blake Dunlap -
Jay Ashworth -
John Levine -
John R. Levine
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Joshua Goldbard -
Nathan Anderson -
Pedersen, Sean -
Plato, Art -
Travis Mikalson