Remote Phone Registration Error

[craig]

I have been running an Alworx 6x with remote phones successfully for years. With the exception of 1 remote user I am still running remote phones successfully. This user works from home and had the phone working without issue until about mid-June of this year when she started getting registration errors. As best I can explain here is what happens on power up. The phone lights up, goes through the initialization sequence, the orange extension lights eventually stop blinking, the username and extension shows up on the screen but it then says there is a registration error. She can't make or receive calls from the phone but she can see the BLF lights of the other users on the system.

She has Comcast service at home and has contacted Comcast and they swear up and down that they do not block any ports or services. She has tried multiple different routers with the same result. We have Comcast here at our office with a static IP. I have 4 other remote users at various different locations all working fine. 3 of the 4 also have Comcast service at their locations.

I have had my employee bring her phone back, I have reset all configuration settings and set it up successfully both inside and outside the office at a different location. She has taken the phone to her father's house who has AT&T service and it works properly there. She's taken it to her neighbor's house who has Comcast, and it does not work at his house either. It seems to be some regional Comcast thing and I don't know what I can try.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get this phone to register properly?

Thank you -- Craig

[ryano]

Well if it works everywhere else, it's got to be comcast.

The xfinity routers provided by comcast nowadays do have a firewall built-in.

Perhaps theer is some weird NATing going on for the communication outbound to your Allworx PBX. I would assume the registration happens over SIP port 5060, or whatever port is programmed for that particular phone. Perhaps you can use join.me to remote desktop to the users computer and then access their xfinity router to look over their firewall config. Perhaps they have a weird setting in place. I've heard SIP ALG can cause problems, perhaps that's something that can be disabled under advanced settings.

You could also do a network packet capture using wireshark from the users computer and filter on the IP of the Allworx WAN IP and see what the phone is trying to send out and what responses it's getting back, as well as see if there are any firewall logs for the xfinity.

With remote phones wouldn't you still need to port forward for the incoming calls coming to the user from the Allworx PBX? I assume that was setup for their specific phone?
Something like: BLF udp port 2088, SIP udp port 5060, and RTP range 16384-16393

Ryan

[ryano]

Marina-Your question doesn't appear to have anything to do with this thread, or the Allworx phone system?

[itguy001]

Xfinity Rental Modem/Routers are the problem. I recently upgraded my service at home to XFI Complete, Gigabit service, which required a new modem. Arris XB7-CM The piece of junk looks like an Air Freshener.
Anyhow my Allworx phone (9224) and same issue with the Verge 9304- using it at home has been a nightmare, first issue, no date and time stamp.
Calls would come in, I could not answer it. I would place a call, it would ring 5 times then busy signal.
Using the button to call my manager direct, would not work, I would call his extension, it would pause for 5 seconds or so, then busy signal. Frequent Registration Failed messages. Retried after rebooting phone, could place call or receive one good call then back to not working again.
In the modem interface there is no option to disable SIP anywhere. And it did not allow me to turn off the firewall on IPV6. It would on IPV4 only. But nowhere in the interface was anything involving SIP ALG
So tried setting up Port forwarding. No go as well.
I even placed the modem in Bridge mode and added a Linksys Router to the equation and disabled SIP from it. Still same issue. The Modem was still controlling SIP
I got tired of it all and purchased an ARRIS SURFboard 24 x 8 DOCSIS 3.0 Voice Cable Modem with AC1750 Dual-Band Wi-Fi Router for Xfinity. Retail 189.00 Spend 2 hours with their very talented (sarcasm) trying to get the Modem Activated. They mistyped the CMAC and the MTA MAC in their system, long story I was livid after 2 hours on the Xfinity app in the chat. But, they finally got it activated. Online! However, they did not set it up right, I had to reactivate it on the Xfinity app with the CMAC to get it register correctly so y Xfinity phone would work.
Needless to say, half way through my day today on my personal modem/router and my Allworx phone has had ZERO issues whatsoever. We set up in Allworx Admin page a Comcast template for our home users like myself with time.xfinity.com in order to get them to populate on the phone display.

[Allworx6xCT]

Yeah, it's experiences like this that make think, why not ring central? Glad you got it sorted and posted what you had to do. Hopefully helps the next person.

[wshrader]

Yeah, it's experiences like this that make think, why not ring central? Glad you got it sorted and posted what you had to do. Hopefully helps the next person.

Have you ever used Ring Central? Their support is useless. I hope you never have a problem. I can name at least three other SIP trunk vendors that would be a wiser choice.

[Allworx6xCT]

Yeah, it's experiences like this that make think, why not ring central? Glad you got it sorted and posted what you had to do. Hopefully helps the next person.

Have you ever used Ring Central? Their support is useless. I hope you never have a problem. I can name at least three other SIP trunk vendors that would be a wiser choice.

No I haven't seriously looked at Ringcentral or any other; I was being speculative that larger services like RC are better supported. Feel free to PM me or post your better suggestions because althoug Allworx has been good for my small business, as we're getting bigger and adding VA's from outside the US, the newer allworx softphone has only been ok. Better than Reach though, which for domestic staff that is on the road has been pretty spotty (although better in the past 6 months or so).

[wshrader]

Yeah, it's experiences like this that make think, why not ring central? Glad you got it sorted and posted what you had to do. Hopefully helps the next person.

Have you ever used Ring Central? Their support is useless. I hope you never have a problem. I can name at least three other SIP trunk vendors that would be a wiser choice.

No I haven't seriously looked at Ringcentral or any other; I was being speculative that larger services like RC are better supported. Feel free to PM me or post your better suggestions because althoug Allworx has been good for my small business, as we're getting bigger and adding VA's from outside the US, the newer allworx softphone has only been ok. Better than Reach though, which for domestic staff that is on the road has been pretty spotty (although better in the past 6 months or so).

I think we're talking about apples and oranges here. Wasn't the orginal post related to an ISP and his SIP trunk vendor? It sounds like you're talking about a business case for switching platforms entirely from on-premisie PBX to hosted (cloud) PBX. If that's the case, I don't have a good recommendation. In my experience, though there are features that either has which the other does not, over all, an on-premise PBX or equivalent (virtualized either on-site or cloud) is more flexible. Also, at least for Allworx, you don't have to pay forever. You can own it immediately and only need to pay for the dial-tone and support (if you aren't supporting it yourself).
I beg your pardon if I'm wrong but I assumed you were an authorised Allworx partner which would allow you to consult with not only Allworx technical support but your regional Allworx channel manager.

Remember that with Allworx, remote phone (either physical or software) performance is dependent upon the network where the Allworx server resides as well as not exceeding it's capabilities. This I think has been addressed with the Connect series with hard limits, unlike the x-series. For example, if you have a dozen remote endpoints with relatively high call volume and your HQ uses terminal sessions hosted somewhere else or otherwise uses applications that are "in the cloud" you might have trouble with a standard cable modem connection used for both.
In our small office we have only 200/10 coax and we have been able to use both Reach and the Interact Softphone without issues. I agree that Reach seems hit or miss though in our case, it's been hit. In my experience the overwhelming occasion of problems with Reach has been with iOS.
Given that you have international users, you're at the mercy of the remote ISP and that is where a hosted solution could provide a more stable quality of service. I have one customer with endpoints in South America and every time they've complained, the fault has been the Internet connection there.

Please forgive me verbosity especially if it does not help you at all.

[Allworx6xCT]

Well said and too right wshrader; I didn't mean to hijack op's post. I do appreciate your accurate and thoughtful responses and find them informative. Thanks!