Flashing Power and Solid Amber Signal light

[Mark_B]

I've followed several of these threads to try and get my SS working but I've not been able to get anything other than a Flashing  power light and a solid amber Signal light.  I've registered, de-registered, waited 24hrs between registering and powering the device, etc, etc, but the result is always the same.  I have received text messages from Vodafone saying that it should now work, but nothing.

This is not the only device on my home network that provides a PPTP service on port 1723 .  I've currently disabled all other port forwarding entries and I've added port tiggering as follows so there should not be a problem at the moment.  Once it is working I will need to distinguish between the Vodafone sourced Port 1723 requests so I can distinguish them from the other service.  Can you tell me which source address range it will come from and I can distinguish the two.

I have a static Internet IP address of 92.27.83.75.

Port Triggering Portmap Table

# Enable Service Name Service Type Inbound Connection Service User     1   Port 123 UDP:123 TCP/UDP:123-123 Any     2   Port 8 TCP:8 TCP/UDP:8-8 Any     3   Port 50 TCP:50 TCP/UDP:50-50 Any     4   Port 500 UDP:500 TCP/UDP:500-500 Any     5   Port 4500 UDP:4500 TCP/UDP:4500-4500 Any     6   1723 TCP:1723 TCP:1723-1723 Any

Unit Serial No: 40124247152

Postcode: NP18 1PR

Unit Family Name: Alcatel - Lucent 9361 Home Cell p3.0

Tracing route to cluster4.vap.vodafone.co.uk [212.183.133.177] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.0.0.2

  3    33 ms    31 ms    32 ms  host-62-24-255-32.as13285.net [62.24.255.32]

  4    39 ms    67 ms    39 ms  host-78-151-225-49.static.as13285.net [78.151.225.49]

  5    40 ms    40 ms    97 ms  host-78-151-225-48.static.as13285.net [78.151.225.48]

  6    40 ms    40 ms    39 ms  xe-11-3-0-rt002.bir.as13285.net [62.24.240.137]

  7    47 ms    47 ms    65 ms  xe-10-1-0-rt001.bre.as13285.net [62.24.240.27]

  8    57 ms    57 ms    57 ms  xe-11-2-0-rt001.the.as13285.net [62.24.240.13]

  9    59 ms    58 ms    58 ms  host-78-144-1-61.as13285.net [78.144.1.61]

 10    58 ms    57 ms    58 ms  host-78-144-0-195.as13285.net [78.144.0.195]

 11    60 ms    61 ms    62 ms  LNDGW2.arcor-ip.net [195.66.224.124]

 12    59 ms    59 ms    59 ms  85.205.116.2

 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 17     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 18     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 19     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 20     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 21     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 22     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 23     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 24     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 25     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 26     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Any help much appreciated.

Mark

[Jenny]

Hi Mark_B,

Thanks for getting back to us.

I’m pleased that the number 585 is working fine as this shows that there is no fault with the Sure Signal unit itself.

Regarding the number ending 092, please can you try putting the phone into airplane mode for around 30 seconds and then turn back on. Does this now connect?

If not, can you let us know if you have any problems with the number ending 092 in any other locations?

It could be that a simple SIM change may be needed but it’s worth trying the above first

Thanks,

Jenny

[Mark_B]

That worked.  Strange that a power cycle did not.

Any more on the DNS issue?

Mark.

[Retired-James]

Hi Mark_B,

I’m not too sure about this one as it is something that will need to be done in the background.

So that we can look at this I have flagged your comments to our support teams to look into this possibilities for you.

James

[Emre]

Hi

I have exactly the same problem as Mark_B, which is the same DNS issue he's been having. I'm using SS v3 and have the same Netgear DGND3700v2 router as him. Any updates on updating the DNS with an IPv6 entry? This looks like it will solve a lot of the connection related problems people have been having with the SS3.

Mark_B -- how have you worked around this issue, if you don't mind giving a hand here?

Many thanks

[Mark_B]

Emre,

The work around requires you to stop the VSS pointing to the router for its DNS server and to get it to point directly to your ISP DNS server or to a DNS server such as Google.

The NetGear manual does say that if you manually enter the DNS server IP address under the Advanced -> Internet Setup then it will provide this address instead of the NetGear address. I could not get this to work on mine and I did everything i could think including a power cycle; you could try it on yours to see if you have any luck. Just use the Google DNS server address of 8.8.8.8. You can see if it has worked as your PC should also receive the same DNS server address. To check you can either type nslookup and see if it reports the server as 8.8.8.8 or type ipconfig -all and see what DNS server is reported on your network interface.

You can find your ISPs DNS address by going to the Disgnostics menu in the NetGear and under the DNS test you will see the DNS server IP addresses it has learnt from the ISP.

Alernatively with this router you can also use the parental control opton as that changes the DNS server IP address to the OpenDNS service.

I tried all of the above but none would stop the NetGear giving its own IP address as the DNS server. If the above does not work then the ony other workaround I can think of is to use another device for your DHCP server and use this to provide the external DNS server address. This is the work around that I've used as I have a separae Linux server running on a different security segment and I have configured dhcpd on it to give the TalkTalk DNS server IP address. You have to use a machine that is always on as all your devices will be dependant on it for their IP address allocation and default gateway (your router's IP address) as well. A linux server is ideal for such a task as something like Ubuntu linux will run on almost any old machine especially f you just use the command line interface.

If that work around is not an option then i'm out of ideas other than trying a different modem, but the NetGear is a good modem and probably not the only one with this problem.
Hope this helps,

Mark.

[groovio]

Hi Mark,

I installed a stand alone DHCP server (software) on a computer I have lying around, and made sure it was passing the IP address of the ISPs DNS servers and not the IP of the gateway.... but it still did not work.

Earlier I bought a simple PPPoE router and the VSS worked with that.. so the problem resides around my Draytek 2820/ BT infinity setup ... I have done all that is humanely possible with no joy.

[Mark_B]

Did you try the DNS tests from your PC?

The best way to debug at this level is with something like wireshark.  If you or a friend has an old ethernet hub (not a switch) or a switch that will do port mirroring then you can get a network trace between the VSS and router and see where the problem lives.  The good thing is that like me you can get a trace when the VSS is working and not working so just compare the two and you should quickly get to some evidence that points to the problem.

Cheers,

Mark.

[Emre]

Hi Mark_B

Many thanks for your post and instructions. Still no luck though. As you said, I just couldn't get the router to use a different DNS so I'm still stuck.. don't really have a separate machine lying around for the DHCP server solution either. 

What really amazes me is that despite you having pinpointing the root of the problem and suggested the solution re: IPv6 and there are countless people on these forums suffering from the same problem, Vodafone are so disconnected internally that they can't get this right. 

Hope there was a way to go back to VSS v1. That used to work perfectly until it broke down. 

i remember seeing another suggestion to try port forwarding to solve this. (will send the link if I can find it) do you think that might work?? Sounds a bit irrelevant to me. 

Cheers

[Mark_B]

I have seen other postings on this forum having success with the NetGear so it seems to be a combination of ISP DNS and modem that causes the NetGear to stop responding but some other modems seem to exhibit the same behaviour as well.

Port forwarding could be an issue but i have two firewalls and two NATs to get through, the first one is not even UPnP enabled, so I was surprised that it worked given the port forwarding and port triggering recommendations. It seems to have worked for some but in the cases i've seen it's not totally clear that it was the cause.

You can try port forwarding and I'll look to get a network trace with the device working to see what ports it is using on the wire.

Cheers,

Mark.

[allegoricus]

Hi Emre,

If your router has the means to place the address for the Sure Signal into a DMZ (effectively places the unit on the ooutboard side of the firewall), just do that. It's a lot less trouble than dealing with individual ports.

TTYL,