Don't hear ringing of called phone

**VOIPoTim** · 01-19-2012 05:37 PM

Originally Posted by ram1220

I sent the requested information to your support people this morning. I received an email response back that basically did not even address the issue nor the information I gave. All the tech did was deflect blame once again for problems that are obvioulsy not on the customer side. It was a complete waste of my time to send the information you requested. Obviously VOIPo has no desire to fix this issue. Only to deflect the blame as usual. I have requested my account be cancelled.

What is your ticket number?

**Lancelot** · 08-19-2012 12:44 AM

Finally! Registered now, you can see me. I too have been having the very same issues with dead air on my handset, ringing on the other end, person picks up and I don't hear a thing. My case is a tad different as I hear nothing during the progress of the call - no dialtone, no ring, no pick-up, no voicemail, no termination of call, nada.

After reading several posts, I powered down for 1 min, then powered back up. My phone seems to be working right now. I also opened a ticket though, as NO calls were working for two days, inbound nor outbound.

Hopefully, they will take a look at it first thing on Monday morning. My friends all think I am a crackpot for doing VOIPo, turn me into a salesman, let's get this fixed! :-)

**ram1220** · 01-19-2012 06:35 PM

XAX-506533. I have canceled my account and support has closed the ticket. But you are welcome to review it.

**markbet** · 01-22-2012 10:26 AM

I did the port forward as suggested by the Voipo techs, in fact, I spent an hour on the phone with AT&T, and they did it for me while I was on the phone with them. AT&T took control of my computer and did it remotely as I watched and talked with them. To my dismay, I still have the problem of the phone that I dialed not ringing. Getting a tad frustrated here.

**holmes4** · 01-22-2012 02:18 PM

Support asked me to unplug my adapter for 30 seconds and reconnect it so it could get updated configuration. The next call I made I could hear the ringing.

**markbet** · 01-22-2012 03:50 PM

Originally Posted by holmes4

Support asked me to unplug my adapter for 30 seconds and reconnect it so it could get updated configuration. The next call I made I could hear the ringing.

I will give it a try. At this point, I will try just about anything. I hope I made the right decision going to this service. Been through enough hell with Magic Jack.

**markbet** · 01-22-2012 04:59 PM

Originally Posted by markbet

I will give it a try. At this point, I will try just about anything. I hope I made the right decision going to this service. Been through enough hell with Magic Jack.

I rebooted the adapter, and made a call, it worked. I will cross my fingers and hope it continues, but, I will not hold my breath.

**markbet** · 01-23-2012 10:59 AM

I made a couple calls this A.M. and not only did I not hear the ringing on the other end, it just disconnected me and gave me a dial tone. Opened another ticket.

**markbet** · 01-26-2012 08:10 AM

I think the Voipo techs got the bugs worked out. I asked the tech if the problem was on my end, or Vopio's end, he told me that it was mainly the settings in my adapter that was out of sorts. They made the changes, and all seems to be good.

**SpaethCo** · 02-07-2012 04:13 PM

I'm not sure how much detail you really care about here, but this can actually be tracked back to one of a few different things.

Not all audio you hear comes from the network
For example, when you pick up the phone you hear a dial tone, but that's actually generated by the device that VOIPo sent you. In fact, that device can generate every sound the phone network uses from ringing sounds, to busy signals, to the sound you hear for call waiting.

Not all calls are handled the same
This is the part that gets confusing. The ringing that you hear on a call can actually be generated in 2 different ways. Say you want to call 444-555-1234. After you finish dialing the number on your phone, the ATA device generates a request to the VOIPo servers that looks a little like this:

INVITE sip:14445551234@someregion.voipwelcome.com SIP/2.0
{A bunch of other stuff goes in the packet guts, mostly things like your username, what codecs your device supports, and what UDP port you will receive audio on}

VOIPo's servers can respond back with something like what you see below. The "180 Ringing" response means that your adapter should generate the ringing sound.

SIP/2.0 100 Trying
SIP/2.0 180 Ringing
SIP/2.0 200 OK
{ This signals that the call has been answered and gives the remote IP handling the audio for the call }

... but they can also respond back with something that looks like this:

SIP/2.0 100 Trying
SIP/2.0 183 Session Progress
{ This is a bit unique in that you get an IP for call audio before the call is answered }
SIP/2.0 200 OK
{ Here the call is answered, and you get an IP for where the audio will go to/from -- it's usually the same as the Session Progress IP }

This option uses what is known as "early media" because you get audio from the PSTN before the call is answered, so in this case the ringing sound actually comes directly from the PSTN. This is essential for dialing things like AT&T 800-number teleconference services because AT&T doesn't actually signal the call as being answered until after you've entered a valid conference pin code.

As was already mentioned, a lot of routers include a feature called SIP ALG. What it's supposed to do is read all of the SIP status messages and read things like what port your ATA says it will use for a call, and what IP your provider says will be used for the call audio, and automatically open a hole in the firewall and create a NAT mapping to get that traffic to the ATA. The problem is that SIP ALG sometimes has problems reading the SIP packets, and sometimes skips some altogether like the "183 Session Progress" packets -- when that happens, you have problems with incoming audio.

Since you're having intermittent problems, as an outside observer with limited knowledge of how VOIPo is setup these would be my first 3 guesses:

1) Your adapter isn't properly generating a ringtone for calls made on carriers that don't support early audio. If you go to your Call History and click on calls you can see a reference ID for each call. If you can provide to VOIPo support which calls had ringing and which calls didn't, they should be able to track down the carrier they used for each call and use that to troubleshoot further.

2) You have a router in front of your ATA with SIP ALG or similar functionality and it's eating some of the "183 Session Progress" messages, or preventing the correct NAT mappings from being setup.

3) VOIPo has a rarely used carrier that is being used to terminate some of your calls, and VOIPo's SIP gateways aren't properly translating call progress codes when relaying status to your ATA.