No success configuring SPA3102 for VT - any help would be really appreciated - TIA!

[robin_joe]

Hi, I am a SR refugee who hasn't been able to get his Viatalk service functioning yet, and I wanted to ask the kind members of this forum for assistance. I have been getting increasingly frustrated, so, thanks in advance for any and all assistance! To clarify, I have received my login information and all account setup information from VT, the issue appears to be with the way I have tried to set things up on my end.

I will show screen shots of each pertinent page. Probably I made a simple mistake that one of you experts can easily spot. It’s beyond my expertise at this point.

I had intended to post the screenshots inline with this thread, but it's probably won't happen like that. Sorry that this will be more difficult to read.

My setup: Canopy --> Zyxel x550 --> Linksys SPA3102. The Zyxel handles all networking tasks for my network, and the SPA3102 is my own VOIP adapter, fully unlocked, from Voxilla. There will be nothing downstream from the SPA3102. This is identical to how my setup was for SR so I presume this can be made to function the same way.

Zyxel setup: All I did here was to add the IP for the SPA3102, and to put it into the DMZ section. I didn’t have to use DMZ for my SR setup, but have done so for VT in an attempt to alleviate the setup issues. Screenshot: (SC1)(SC2)

SPA3102 setup: I started out with a clean unit from the factory, and I’ve tried a number of things and managed to get myself confused. I’m going to attach a screen capture of each page. Hopefully this isn’t too burdensome to look thru.

Screen Captures from SPA3102

Router --> Status. This is just a status page, I changed nothing here.(SC3)

Router --> Wan Setup. I changed the Internet Connections settings, and I set the Static IP settings. Don’t thing I changed anything else. (SC4)

Router --> Lan Setup. I set the Lan IP address, the subnet mask. I played with DHCP a little but have nothing downstream of this router (nor do I intend to), so I don’t think these settings matter. Do they? (SC5)

Router --> Application. No intentional changes here from Factory Default. (SC6)

Voice --> Info. Just a status page (SC7)

Voice --> System. No intentional changes here from Factory Default. (SC8)

Voice --> SIP. This screen was confusing and there is probably stuff wrong here. I played around in here a lot. (SC9)

Voice --> Provisioning. No intentional changes here from Factory Default.
(SC10)

Voice --> Regional. No intentional changes here from Factory Default. (SC11a-c)

Voice --> Line 1. Here’s where I thought most of the setup would be performed. Many changes here from default (SC12a-b)

Voice --> PSTN Line. No intentional changes here from Factory Default. We have no landline to our house so I didn’t thing this screen was pertinent. Is it? (SC13a-c)

Voice --> User 1. No intentional changes here from Factory Default. We have no landline to our house so I didn’t thing this screen was pertinent. Is it? (SC14)

Voice --> PSTN User. No intentional changes here from Factory Default. We have no landline to our house so I didn’t thing this screen was pertinent. Is it? (SC15)

[robin_joe]

Wouldn't all fit on the first post. Even more after this...

[robin_joe]

Sorry for all these captures - hopefully enough here to set me straight. 1 more post should handle the remaining ones.

[robin_joe]

Thanks again for your assistance. I'd like to use my own adapter and not have to purchase another one from VT. I really didn't think this would be so challenging. Anyway, thanks again!

[voipguy]

Setting the DNS Servers and NTP Server on the WAN menu made my 2102 work. See my thread here:http://forums.hostrocket.com/showthread.php?t=22044

[DracoFelis]

My setup: Canopy --> Zyxel x550 --> Linksys SPA3102. The Zyxel handles all networking tasks for my network, and the SPA3102 is my own VOIP adapter, fully unlocked, from Voxilla. There will be nothing downstream from the SPA3102. This is identical to how my setup was for SR so I presume this can be made to function the same way.
I've got an SPA-3000 working very well with VT, so I'm assuming the 3102 setting would be very similar.

However, I'm having a lot of trouble reading your screen captures, to see if I find something mis-configured in your settings. Could you please post your SPA-3102 settings as an HTML file, so that I can see them the same way you see them? To do that just:

1) From your browser, log into your adapter as "Admin Login", and "Advanced".

2) Tell your browser to do a "save as" of the current web page to file "mysettings.htm" somewhere on your local disk. It doesn't matter which tab you are currently on, as the "web page" produced by that adapter has all the tabs on a single "page". But you do have to be logged in correctly (i.e. both "Admin Login" and "Advanced") to capture all the advanced settings (except for your passwords, which are NOT included in the file).

3) Attach that "mysettings.htm" file to a post in this thread.

Once you do that, we can then download that mysettings.htm file, and see your VoIP adapter settings exactly as you saw them when you made the file (down to the tabs even working the same way they work for you). That should make is MUCH EASIER to see how you have your adapter setup.

[robin_joe]

Voipguy, that did it (the primary and secondary DNS numbers). After quite a few hours of putzing, that little setting did it.

That's exactly why I posted to this forum, I thought some expert might be able to easily spot the problem.

Thank You Very Much!

[robin_joe]

I've got an SPA-3000 working very well with VT, so I'm assuming the 3102 setting would be very similar.

However, I'm having a lot of trouble reading your screen captures, to see if I find something mis-configured in your settings. Could you please post your SPA-3102 settings as an HTML file, so that I can see them the same way you see them? To do that just:

1) From your browser, log into your adapter as "Admin Login", and "Advanced".

2) Tell your browser to do a "save as" of the current web page to file "mysettings.htm" somewhere on your local disk. It doesn't matter which tab you are currently on, as the "web page" produced by that adapter has all the tabs on a single "page". But you do have to be logged in correctly (i.e. both "Admin Login" and "Advanced") to capture all the advanced settings (except for your passwords, which are NOT included in the file).

3) Attach that "mysettings.htm" file to a post in this thread.

Once you do that, we can then download that mysettings.htm file, and see your VoIP adapter settings exactly as you saw them when you made the file (down to the tabs even working the same way they work for you). That should make is MUCH EASIER to see how you have your adapter setup.

I've attached zip files of the router settings at your excellent suggestion. Didn't think of doing this. Thanks for the suggestion.

While the router now seems to work, any additional suggestions (things which aren't quite set right, etc) would be appreciated.

[voipguy]

Voipguy, that did it (the primary and secondary DNS numbers). After quite a few hours of putzing, that little setting did it.

That's exactly why I posted to this forum, I thought some expert might be able to easily spot the problem.

Thank You Very Much!


I think it's time for Viatalk to add a FAQ giving tips for those who BYOD. Eventually I hope they add provisioning for our devices.

[robin_joe]

One would think the DNS numbers under the WAN setup might be important - why not email those out with the credentials, or have them show up on the control panel under softphone setup?

It's almost as if they'd prefer for BYOD setup to be overly difficult, which I don't believe since they went to so much effort to make the user interface nice (ie, they should be proud of their technical abilities, part of which would be to provide new customers with *all* required info for a successful setup).

[DracoFelis]

It's almost as if they'd prefer for BYOD setup to be overly difficult, which I don't believe since they went to so much effort to make the user interface nice (ie, they should be proud of their technical abilities, part of which would be to provide new customers with *all* required info for a successful setup).
Blame the VoIP adapter makers (not the VoIP providers) for the difficultly of BYOD setups.

The people that designed most of the VoIP adapters on the market where telco engineers, and designed their equipment to make sense to other telco engineers (not "normal end users"). In fact, they even assumed (in some cases correctly) that their primary customers would be telco companies, and so it wouldn't matter that this equipment was hard/confusing to "normal people" (because we "end users" were always just an "afterthought" to the designers of consumer VoIP equipment)!

As a result, the setup of almost all these cheaper VoIP adapters is designed to only be "easy" for people with years of telco experience, and therefore is usually a LOT harder than it should be IMHO. Could they have designed the setup screens to make more sense to "normal people". IMHO yes, they easily could have. But the sad fact is that almost all VoIP adapter makers chose to design the setup to only make sense to telco people, and therefore setup is usually much harder than it needs to be. And there is a limit to how much ViaTalk (or any VoIP provider) can simplify the process, as the foolish design decisions were actually made by the VoIP adapters designers, and therefore a lot of the complexity is built into your own adapter (and not on ViaTalk's end at all). :(

[robin_joe]

While I hear what you are saying, and very much appreciate the frustration in seeing key settings spread out among multiple screens, the DNS settings are still something which VT should have provided, right? Don't ALL adapters, regardless of manufacturers, need to have these set? Or is this unique to my Linksys adapter?

As an engineer myself, I think that many tech products fail common-sense usability criteria, and this adapter seems to me to be more difficult than need be. Perhaps a nice addition to the UI would be to add a non-expert mode which would collect all parameters which might be required to be set by the end user into one screen.

[Brian188]

While I agree VT documentation on EVERYTHING could be much better, including BYOD, I have to say for DNS settings, you can always put the local IP address (192.168.x.x) of your router in there and use your ISP's. Using VT's servers are better, but in most cases using your ISP's would not present a problem.