Vodafone Sure Signal

[davidm_uk]

I'm having trouble setting up my Sure Signal 2. After several hours, it is still flashing the System and Phone lights together. The red power light is solid. Occasionally all lights go off, but it soon resumes solid power and flashing system + phone. In Googling for a solution, I have read conflicting details on whether or not UPnPis required. My router has this disabled, and I would prefer to keep it off for security reasons. I suspect that I will need to manually forward some incoming connections, which I am happy to do. http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Vodafone-Sure-Signal/New-Sure-Signal-Steady-Power-Light-Only/td-p/679... lists many IPs and ports which need to be forwarded for incoming connections (I think)? However, http://www.vodafone.co.uk/consumer/groups/public/documents/webcontent/vftst061123.pdf implies that many of these connections are outbound from VSS to Vodafone. I have no outbound connectivity restrictions in my firewall. Please could you provide details of any incoming ports (and their associated source IP addresses) which I need to forward through my firewall to my VSS. Thanks, David

[chrise · Accepted solution]

The SS only makes outbound connections, so you shouldn't have to mess about with port forwarding.

You mention "several hours". I recall some people finding it takes a day or so to first come online. So may be worth a little more waiting.

[davidm_uk]

Thanks, Chrise - very useful to know that it doesn't require UPnP or incoming connections.

You make a good point about waiting longer. I will do that. I've reconfigured my network, adding a DHCP server on my internet-facing firewall and enabling UPnP on just this - and it's made absolutely no difference! The Sure Signal still alternates between periods of 'just power light on' and periods of 'power light on, and other two lights flashing'. I'll leave it like this (with UPnP available) just in case it makes a difference, then once it starts working I may move it back to the main part of my network from where it can be put in a better location (but won't have UPnP).

David

[davidm_uk]

The "New Sure Signal - Steady Power Light Only" thread is full of discussions on enabling UPnP and forwarding ports through firewalls. Is there *definitely* no requirement for incoming connectivity?

I can't believe that this thing really takes 24 hours to establish a connection on my 50Mb+ internet connection. What can it possibly be doing?

[davidm_uk]

What chrise said was absolutely correct. Discussions of UPnP and inbound port-fowarding appear to be completely irrelevant.

After a lot of waiting and some further network diagnostics, I decided that my VSS was not talking to my router. For some reason, it didn't like the old Netgear switch that it was plugged into. Once I replaced this, it came to life and eventually finished initialising. I've since moved it back to where I actually want it to be located, and it is once again working fine.

For reasons which I won't go into, my VSS is now located behind a Virgin SuperHub (in passthrough mode), a Smoothwall firewall and separate NAT router (and two switches). No incoming ports are forwarded. UPnP is not enabled. It is working quite happily.

David

[chrise]

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davidm_uk wrote:

The "New Sure Signal - Steady Power Light Only" thread is full of discussions on enabling UPnP and forwarding ports through firewalls. Is there *definitely* no requirement for incoming connectivity?

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I imagine some people might have a router/firewall that doesn't allow the SS traffic by default.  But I think they will be pretty few and far between.  The vast majority of domestic setups allow anything out by default. It's a mystery why Voda insist on confusing the majority, for the benefit of a tiny minority!

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davidm_uk wrote: 

I can't believe that this thing really takes 24 hours to establish a connection on my 50Mb+ internet connection. What can it possibly be doing?

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You say 50M, but I don't think this is down to large volumes of traffic for setup or anything.  At a guess, various  provisioning processes only happen at Vodafone HQ at certain times.