Suresignal vs livebox

[DH123]

Dear Vodafone,

I recently acquired a Suresignal  and I am on the verge of giving up on it. 

I followed the three simple steps in the instructions (ie plugged it in) and all I get is a flashing red light and solid orange light that looks like a mobile phone in brackets. I've spoken to tech support 2 or 3 times and I've pushed the reset button and done all the unplugging of the suresignal and my router (which trashed my network of course) apparently the device has been synched (?) too.

I also received the email below, this made no sense to me and Google translate tells me this is not a recognized foreign language (sorry, gallows humour).

Dear Customer, Kindly advice your Internet Service Provider to apply the following settings to your Router First of all, please verify with your ISP that they are using PPPoA as authentication and not PPPoE as the Vodafone Sure Signal only works with PPPoA 1- Assign a static IP to the Vodafone Sure Signal Device using the MAC Address on the back of the Sure Signal Device 2 - Open the following ports Incoming Outgoing for the Sure Signal assigned IP Address Port 50- TCP UDP Port 500 - TCP UDP Port 4500 - TCP UDP Port 123 TCP UDP Port 8 - TCP UDP Port 1723 TCP UDP if with BT 3- Make the Vodafone Sure Signal IP Visible 4- download speed is minimum 1MBPS and the upload speed is 0.37 MBPS. Kind Regards, Vodafone

I did ring my ISP and they were completely at a loss and completely useless, I don't think they have the Suresignal in India.

I can tell you the router is using PPPoA and that I have adequate upload/download speed, otherwise I'm lost. I did fiddle with the ports on my router per another VF forum post and all that succeeded in doing was taking me completely off-line with all my devices and I had to reset to defaults and reboot everything ....again

If you have any idiot-proof magic way of making this thing work then great.. or do you have a wi-fi version? that might be a nice simple fix?

Assuming all is lost can I de-register the device and take it back... 

thanks,

D

[Easegill]

Hi,  what they are banging on about is port forwarding on your router. you have to go into the advanced fetures of your router, set up a new "device" then open up the ports as listed with either TCP enabled or UDP as per the unfathomable e mail.

If you look on one of the top posts from vodafone there is a link to portforwarding.com that will guide you through this set up for your router.

Good luck ( you're going to need it)!

[Easegill]

Ammendment; the port forwarding guide set up is at www.portforward.com then click on screen shots, this will then let you select your router

[grolschuk]

A quick question.

What make/model is your router, and who is your internet provider?

There are lots of threads around giving solutions (or still trying to find solutions) for various devices.

The port forwarding could be simple to implement, or a nightmare depending on your setup (and that may not even be the problem)

[DH123]

Hi there all,

yes, my router is an inventel livebox C368 according to it's admin page and the provider is  wanadoo, no sorry, Orange, no sorry, Everything Everywhere.

I have found the portforwarding site which appears well written and informative. I started on the process of gettting a fixed IP which was aparently a pre-requisite for my issue to be resolved, I quite quickly ran out of talent and bravery with this and bailed out.

It does appear I am doomed which is both embarrassing and frustrating. 😞

[grolschuk]

A fixed IP from your ISP is not required, although it could save problems later down the line if they change/merge with someone else again.

The problem that you may have gathered from reading the portforward site is that the router isn't expecting the traffic that the suresignal is wanting to pass through it to vodafone's servers. This is not normal web traffic, and as standard (and rightly so) the router will block anything trying get into your network unless you have requested it.

So we need to tell the router that certain types of non-standard traffic is fine to let in, and where to send it to.

The type of traffic is defined by a port number, of which there are a couple of hundred 'standard' ones, and then thousands to cater for non-standard stuff.

The only static IP you need is one assigned to your Suresignal, otherwise when port forwarding is set up and is telling the Vodafone traffic to go to what it thinks is the suresignal... if the suresignal grabs a different address it will stop working Like the postman trying to deliver your parcels if you have moved house.

There is no way to do this on the suresignal, so it is down to the router to be instructed to give the same address to the same bit of hardware every time it requests one.

So you should have an option called Address Resivation, or DHCP Leases or something that will allow you to map an IP address to a MAC address.

Once this is fixed, the portforward website may make a bit more sense at this stage.

Another thing that isn't port forward related, and not all routers do it...

Is if there is a section for the router's firewall, or for VPN, there may be an option for VPN Passthrough... (again look through all of the menus) if there is, enable it for L2TP and PPTP, then reboot the suresignal... This sometimes fixes things without the pain of allocating static addresses and creating all of the forwarding rules.

Also for testing, maybe turn the firewall in the router off to see if allows the connection (remember to turn it on again)

This isn't a device i'm familar with, so it is going to be a bit hit and miss.

Some routers work out of the box fine

Some need a little tweak to work

Some need a bit more persuation (and a swift kick with a heavy boot)

Some seem to not allow a connection at all.

Hopefully yours is not the latter, but with 100s of routers out there, and the majority get modified and changed by the ISP to enable or disable various things they don't think you require, it is all a bit of trial and error with the suggestions that have solved it elsewhere.

Hopefully that makes a little bit of sense and you manage to get things working (and didn't fall asleep reading it)

Shout back if you get anywhere or get stuck again