Inconsistent Incoming Calls
 

I have been happily using the Voxalot service for many months basically just for outgoing calls (using VoipCheap). Now that I will be travelling more I want the incoming calls to work so that when away in hotels I can call home.
My home setup is a computer and an ATA (DLINK DVG-2001S) behind a DLINK DI-524 router. I have STUN enabled on the ATA (Full Cone NAT).

I have tried using Gizmo Project softphone on my computer (making sure the SIP and RTP ports on the softphone are different from the ATA) to call my voxalot number on the ATA. The result is I either get forwarded to the Voxalot voicemail or the softphone stops ringing after approx 25 seconds. I get no ringing on the ATA.

I also tried with only the ATA behind my router to call from a Sipbroker PSTN number (Australian gateway). The result is either it works perfectly (about 1 in ten times) or I get an engaged signal (most of the time). One time I got the voxalot voicemail.

I have tried putting the ATA in the DMZ instead of using STUN and also tried a different ATA (an SMC travel gateway which I intend to use on the road) and also with two different voxalot numbers all with the same results.

I understand from the forums that the most likely problem is with the router but I would expect the results to at least be consistent.

Has anyone else experienced this inconsistency and if so what is the fix?

I just this minute tried to call from the PSTN gateway and it worked perfectly twice in a row, which is a first. Were there problems with voxalot about ten days ago when I first started testing or was I just lucky this morning?

Any comments would be appreciated as I am travelling next week and want some confidence that I can call home reliably.

I have posted a thread detailing similar problems with regard to the PSTN access: http://forum.voxalot.com/voxalot-sup...-gateways.html

In addition, I also experience problems with calls from Gizmo project, albeit of a different nature (there's no audio for the first 7 seconds and then it kicks in).

A workaround which was suggested by kurun has been to use my Freedigits number in both instances, which is forwarded to Voxalot.

I have also noticed Gizmo having problems when calling SIP URI's sometimes....

When calling via SIP, try calling as *010xxxxxx@sipbroker.com instead of xxxxxx@voxalot.com or xxxxxx@us.voxalot.com (or the appropriate eu or au prefix)

Another possibility, especially in the cases of the PSTN gateways that seem to not function properly is to get a SipBroker Alias for your VoXalot account.

There is of course the option of forwarding FWD to VoXalot (try both xxxxxx@voxalot.com, and *010xxxxxx@sipbroker.com) and calling FWD account through gateway

Then there is the SipNumber/FreeDigits forwarded to xxxxxx@voxalot.com (putting the us, eu, au extension seems to work better) or *010xxxxxx@sipbroker.com

I have tested again last night and seem to get better results using the full SIP URI xxxxxx@us.voxalot.com. Before when testing with Gizmo I was just using *010xxxxxx. Although most times i was getting to the voxalot voicemail for my voxalot number so the call was getting to voxalot.

I note the FWD options you suggested but it seems a bit excessive when I just want to call voxalot to voxalot.

Anyway I will test again next week while travelling and see the results.

I will be calling ATA to ATA so I have added the full SIP URI to my speed dial in voxalot.

Thanks for the suggestions

I have been testing this week with still no real success.
I can not get my home ATA to ring. I am now just trying to call voxalot to voxalot. Calling my home voxalot account I always just get forwarded to the voxalot voicemail both using my travel ATA (SMCWTVG) or Expresstalk on my computer. (I have given up on Gizmo as I want to purely test with voxalot accounts).
My wife called my travel ATA several times yesterday and it worked but the audio always dropped out after approx 10 seconds.

Results:
I have never gotten my home ATA to ring from another Voxalot account.
I have got my home ATA to ring with full audio, but not consistently from PSTN access.
My travel ATA / ExpressTalk voxalot account will ring with audio but drops after a few seconds.

Martin,
I would really appreciate if you could check your logs and see if the problem is with voxalot or at my end. I have tried everyting I can think of at the moment. Next step is firmware upgrades and I would like some indication where the problem is.

Thanks in advance.

Happy to do a log check if you PM me your:

- 6 digit account no.
- which voxalot cluster your devices are pointing to
- numbers you were calling
- date/time of calls (GMT)

99% of the time dropped audio and inbound calls not ringing your device is firewall / NAT related. I would try using something like x-lite as an alternate test.
.

I got home last night, tested again and now both voxalot accounts work perfectly.

Thankyou Martin for taking the time to help :)