Fried Sure Signal?

[frunet]

Three weeks ago my Sure Signal stopped working and now has just a solid green power light.

I've spent hours on the phone, checked my network, had an upper tier (or whatever it's called) tech guy do the upseed bandwidth and traceroute tests (could have done that myself), only to be told there is nothing wrong and that I should open some ports. Hmm, I wondered, it's uPNP, has worked fine for 2 years without them so this seems like a pointless exercise. Nonetheless, to satisfy the tech guy I forwarded the list of ports and surprise, surprise still nothing but a solid green power light.

Not content with the rather limited diagnosis I did some more searching before calling back to see if there was something they'd missed. This time the tech guys didn't want to talk to me since they had already performed their diagnosis. That's a very limited set of activities to be able to determine that nothingis wrong. Instead I was told by a CS agent that I could send it back for repair FOC, which after a short debate was expanded to being able to take it to the local store where a shop techy could test it and send it for repair direct from store. I chose the latter, but wasn't holding my breath.

On arrival at the store I was informed (as expected) that there is no in-store techy, that they cannot test the SS box there, and that a return would cost me £50 as it was out of warranty. However I could buy a Mk2 SS for £50 (always the salesman!). Sounded like a solution until I found out this new version uses wireless to connect to the router, and I don't have, need or even want wireless! So a wasted trip there.

Digressing slightly but possibly useful for some doing diagnostics,after more research I got a feeling for why the device only works on PPPoA and not PPPoE, and that a PPPoE server cannot be running on the same network (not mentioned here before), not that I have one active anyway. Apparently the SS creates a VPN pipe over PPPoE so no other PPPoE can be active on the same LAN otherwise it will fail to connect.

Anyway, back to the topic. I came across this post by Community Manager 'Tom' (http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/56) regarding SS firmware updates: http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Vodafone-Sure-Signal/Sure-Signal-software-updates/td-p/1282038

Considering the potential failure of this update and the effects thereof, I wondered. Now, the user guide states that when the device starts up the power light is solid, followed by the four green lights flashing once in sequence before the @ light begins flashing. Mine never gets to this third stage and I've always assumed that the four lights in sequence is a self-test. Apparently not.

I wondered how to test it, and remembered a few lines in this thread about performing a hard reset: http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Vodafone-Sure-Signal/Sure-Signal-Flashing-Steady-Power-Light-No-Other... that state: 

Perform hard rest of the VSS unit by

• Hold in the reset button until all the light go solid
• Pull the power lead out with the reset button still pushed in
• Continue to hold down the reset button and reconnect the power lead
• Wait for all of the lights to come on the release the reset button

I did this and surprise surprise all the lights do not go solid. Essentially it's fried, and my guess is that the firmware update failed since the device's failure coincided with falling within the 6-weeks of firmware updates period stated by Tom.

So Tom, Vodafone, whoever, what will you do to fix my SS that you've fried? It will certainly be not at my expense.

Forgive me for not holding my breath waiting for a satisfactory solution whilst I languish in my GPRS one bar signal due to no longer having a functional wired SS Mk1 giving me 3G over my own broadband network at my expense. Sarcasm intended.

I Hope that some others can get some satisfaction from these findings.

[allegoricus]

"Digressing slightly but possibly useful for some doing diagnostics,after more research I got a feeling for why the device only works on PPPoA and not PPPoE, and that a PPPoE server cannot be running on the same network (not mentioned here before), not that I have one active anyway. Apparently the SS creates a VPN pipe over PPPoE so no other PPPoE can be active on the same LAN otherwise it will fail to connect."

Hi frunet,

Sorry but this doesn't figure. PPPoA and PPPoE are WAN protocols used to transmit data between the outboard side of your router and the switch used by your ISP. Neither are active on your LAN, where everything connects via Ethernet and/or wireless.

Your Sure Signal may yet turn out to be 'fried' for all I know, but don't forget that the effect of any changes (resets & so on) can take several hours before the unit becomes active, so Iyou may not be allowing sufficient time for the unit to respond.

One more thing you can check: log in to your router and verify that an IP address has been assigned to the Sure Signal (make sure it's been connected and switched on for a while). If the unit has an IP address, see if you can ping it. If you get a reply, then it's worth asking the Vodafone tech people to do a re-sync at their end, after which you will need to do yet another reset on your Sure Signal.

One more thing, from the sound of it (four lights) your Sure Signal is a v1 (mine's a v2). The newly released unit will presumably be designated v3, but nat having seen one, I'm not too sure. Anyway, I mention this only to head off any misunderstanding about identifying the different Sure Signal units.

HTH,

Peter

[frunet]

Allegoricus,

In terms of PPPoA and PPPoE, I have read several posts from concerned Sky users (I'm not with Sky) that their WAN protocol was changing from PPPoA and that "2 million Sky customers would be upsaet by Vodafone", or something like that. Clearly that would depend on a Sky BB user having a VSS to be true, but the point is clear that VSS requires the user to have PPPoA only on their WAN.

I have PPPoA WANs on two ADSL modems which route the LAN via a dual WAN router, always have. When the Vodafone tech guy accessed a PC on my network I was proving some points to him, one that the uPNP function was active to the VSS IP, and the other that I had also configured the port forwarding as they'd requested me to (yes, it does seem pointless but I indulged him). In doing so he noticed a toggle in the Dual WAN router for a PPPoE server function and asked if it had been active previously. I let him explain why it was important and he divulged that the device uses PPPoE and so no other protocol of this type could be active on the connection. Despite my explanations that the WAN connection is via modems, that PPPoE server had always been toggled off and that it had nothing to do with the WAN connection anyway he seemed convinced that I had a PPPoE WAN and that was where the problem lay.

This piqued my curiosity and I searched around for more information. On Cnet I found two old bulletins regarding VSS, one explained about its use of a VPN PPPoE tunnel, the other went into more technical detail about the hardware and Vodafone's exploitation of a user's BB (I knew that already). I posted the statement to assist anyone wondering why PPPoA is so important, there seem to be many who are similarly curious on this forum. Perhaps it was a little too vague hence your response, so thanks for pointing that out.

For your other responses, the device has been left on for many days without interference over the past few weeks, each time I have seen nothing different and I am sure that sufficient time has been allowed for it to respond.

The device was configured with a static IP when I first got it around 2 years ago. Nothing has changed and it still responds to a ping, in fact that's always the first thing I try when comms seem to be lost.

Yes I've heard of the V3 too, but it doesn't appear to be commonly available yet. Vodafone are probably trying to clear the V2 stock before widely rolling it out. If it has an RJ45 socket on it then I might consider a new one.