Version 3 VSS Lights (Power - flashing, Internet - off, In Service - orange, In Use - orange)

[Retired-Lee]

This thread has been created to discuss and troubleshoot the version 3 Sure Signal when the light sequence is as follows:

• Power: Flashing
• Internet: Off
• In Service: Solid Orange
• In Use: Solid Orange

Cause

This light sequence indicates the Sure Signal's not active and it has been unable to authenticate on the Vodafone network

Troubleshooting

Please restart your Sure Signal. If the symptoms continue please add the following details to this thread:

• Your speed test results from here
  
• Your ping test results from here
  
• Your external IP address from here
  
• Your Sure Signal serial number
• The results of a traceroute

Traceroute command:

On a PC:

1. Click on Start and select Run
2. Type CMD into the Run box and press enter/click ok
3. A black box will appear
4. In this box type tracert 212.183.133.177 press Enter
5. Paste the output of this command into your reply

On a Mac:

1. Open Terminal (Applications, Utilities)
2. Type 'traceroute 212.183.133.177'
3. Press Enter

This will help us get the quickest possible resolution for you.

Thanks

LeeH

[jhopkins]

SRM

Was the link she sent you to do with repairs? or  just trying to reset your Suresignal? If it was  repairs,  please  share with us all!!!

[SRM]

jhopkins - the link was to a page to enter personal info, to show/prove my identity. I've had any response from voda since

[jhopkins]

SRM

Did they say why you needed  to prove your identity?....surely having a  mal-functioning  Suresignal  identitfies  you as a VF customer....lol. Did this site have anything to do with SS repairs?...or wasn't  that clear? Maybe I should write  advertising  copy  for VF...."Vodafone, the company  that puts  obfuscation into mobile phones".........

[arukDave]

Arghh!... Now this forum times out while one is crafting a detailed reply, and I don't have the time to retype it all. Poke me as @dave_g8kbv, and we'll exchange email's so I can send you some detailed documents related to what we learnt getting ours working. The Draytek we have, is a Vigor 2860 n-plus if that helps. Very good, but at over £200 new, not cheap! You can find them second hand if you look, but I'd advise reflashing the firmware on any second hand router, as you never know who's been meddling in the past. Regards. Dave B.

[arukDave]

@HalH OK, I've retyped what I was trying to send yesterday, there is a link to the document under this posting. I don't think that the PPPoE vs PPPoA thing is relevant, as that is only the protocol used by your router to carry IP traffic over the phone line to the central office. In any case, I do know changing the router enables the VSS to work, and any such replacement device would have to use the same encapsulation as the original. Anyway, some reading for you (and anyone else.) Hope something helps. Dave B.

[arukDave]

Ok...

Having some dificulty here, attaching the document.

Trying again..   Says it's attached...

No, it doesnt work, so will have to post the full text!...

------

Getting the Vodafone Sure Signal to work.

Note!   BT's (so called) Business Hub router, is crippled in it's abilities.   Replace it with something much better.   We have a Draytek Vigor 2860n-plus device, that also has a built in VDSL modem, so it also replaces the "Outreach" modem used with the “Infinity” fiber service.   But what follows is general info that I personally have found to make these things work, where possible.

Firstly, you yourself must have a public IP address that is known to be located within the UK. You can find this out using a combination of Google, and what's known as the "RIPE Database".

Google for "whats my ip", and even without going to any of the search results, you should see your IP address shown, usually at the top of the list.   Write it down!

Now, go to:- https://apps.db.ripe.net/search/query.html

And enter the address you just wrote down.   Make sure you get it exactly right.   (You could use "copy & paste" from the "whats my ip" search result.)

And click on the "Search" button bottom right of that page.

You’re looking for something like this, in the search results.

netname:       BT-ADSL

descr:          Single Static IP Addresses

country:         GB

The IMPORTANT bit, is "country: GB".     If it says anything else, or that you have a "Non RIPE managed IP address", you must contact your ISP, to get them to assign you a "GB" known public IP address.   If they can't do that, Vodafone will never allow your VSS to work, period.

Next, you do need to go to Vodafone's Sure Signal registration site, register your particular device, and the handsets (phones) you wish it to work with.   (Vodafone 3G capable devices only of course.)

Once you have that all done, it's time to get to work.

You *Will Need* to get into your router's setup pages to make some changes.   Before doing anything else, make sure you can do that and get to its administration setup pages.   If for whatever reason, you can’t get into that, or your ISP won't let you, and say they can't do it either, you are as we say, seriously inconvenienced...   Time to change ISP perhaps, same if they can’t give you a public IP address that’s known to be located in the UK.

Just make sure you can get in there, and back out again easily.   While in there, do a backup of its existing settings. Most if not all makes/models should have the tools on one page or another to save and recall settings, to/from a file on your PC.   Make sure you can make such a backup, AND restore it again, and prove that the router still works OK. Make a safe backup of that backup file. You have the ultimate “get out of jail card” then.

On the back of the VSS itself, is a label showing it's "MAC Address", in the form of "B1:76:FB:9A:E5:F6" or similar (that example is NOT real!)   Write it down, check you have written it down correctly, as you'll need it later.   Do not yet connect the VSS to your router or LAN.

Log into your Router's admin/configuration pages, and navigate to where you can "reserve" a LAN/IP address for a device. Sadly, different router makers call it different things, but its common service name is DHCP or LAN setup.   There should be a facility where you can specify a particular LAN device by its MAC address, and set the DHCP service in the router to always give it the same IP address on your LAN. "Address Reservation" for example is what Netgear call it.     If you can find no way to do that, unless your ISP or router supplier can show/tell you how, you will need a better more capable router.

Set things up, so that your router will always assign the same "fixed" IP address, to the VSS's MAC address.

Next, take a look at the firewall settings.

Make sure that the MTU value (Maximum Transmission Unit) is ideally set to 1500, or if it won’t let you do that, as high as it will go.

Also, look for, and check any flag to "Allow Fragmented Packets" to enter your LAN from the WWW.   This is especially important, if the router will not let you set its MTU value to 1500!

This is the showstopper for many I feel.   Even if "Your" router is not fragmenting (breaking) large packets into smaller ones, something else upstream may be, so you *Need* to allow them to pass.

Make sure that no protocols are blocked.   If there is a setting for VPN Pass-through, check or enable it.

Check also, that there are no public IP address prohibitions, blocks, ban's etc.   If there are, you need to talk to the supplier of the router (your ISP typically) and get them to check that the addresses further down in this document are not so blocked.

For many routers, that is all that is needed.   But, for others it is necessary to set up some firewall forwarding rules.   Vodafone call out a load of "Ports" and protocols to "port forward" from outside to the internal IP address of the VSS.   But, doing that can break other services you might use, especially if you are running an office with a Microsoft Small Business Server, and use it's VPN technology to gain remote access to your office when you (or others) are traveling or working from home.   Sadly, the VSS uses much the same VPN technology, so you can't expressed specify ports and protocols to forward to the VSS.

However, if your router has the facility (and again sadly many do not, BT's so called "Business Hub" for one is so crippled) you can specify a range of public IP addresses that are allowed carte-balance access to one internal LAN IP address, your VSS in this case.

These are the public IP addresses and ranges for Vodafone's Sure Signal servers.

First       212.183.133.177   (mask 255.255.255.248 encompasses .177 to .183)

Last         212.183.133.179

First       212.183.133.181

Last         212.183.133.182   (This one responds to a "ping", the others do not.)

First       212.183.131.128   (mask 255.255.255.192)

Last         212.183.131.191

(Or as Vodafone say 212.183.131.128/26 The /26 indicates a 'mask' of the high 26 bits set to 1)

For completeness, these are the ports and protocols the VSS uses.

Ports   &       Protocols:

8        –        TCP/UDP

50     –        TCP/UDP

123     –        UDP

500     –        UDP

1723 –        TCP/UDP

4500 –        UDP

Anyone familiar with Microsoft PPtP VPN's will now realize why you can’t host a VSS at a site using a SBS server, and BT Business Hub!

If you setup some firewall rules to allow those address ranges (and ONLY those above) to be able to "reach into" your LAN and get to the VSS's LAN IP address, and allow all protocols to/from them, that should do the trick, and future proof it all, should Vodafone push out an update that changes the structure of the VPN(s) they use for the Sure Signal service.

Make another backup of your routers new settings.

No need to reboot your router, unless it says or recommends you have to.

Find the page in the router's admin pages, where you can see what devices are connected to it on the LAN side.   You should see at least one IP address, that of the PC you are using!

Now, connect the VSS to your router with the LAN cable, ideally directly to the router, but if you have to, anywhere on your LAN.   BUT!   It must not be connected to a "HUB".   A "SWITCH" is fine, but not a HUB.   I don't know why, but I do know from hard won experience, that if the VSS is connected to a HUB, then it never gets an IP address!   Most odd. (An anti-hacking protection thing perhaps?)     Anyway, once connected, and powered up, if you refresh the known devices page your router is showing, you should now see the VSS's MAC address, and the newly assigned IP address, that you specified for it earlier.     If not, check what you did above, as there will be some misconfiguration somewhere.   Try again, if the VSS was not connected directly to your router, with it so connected (directly.)

Doing all the above, SHOULD allow the VSS to contact its servers, and start initializing.   So long as the globe light next to the red power light, is slowly fading up/down, LEAVE IT ALONE!   It can take several hours for a new VSS to do all it needs before it's ready to use.   It will also appear to reset/restart a couple of times.   That is normal.

If it drops back to the flashing red and two orange lights again.   Check the above router configurations, just in case, as it's all too easy to make a typo somewhere.   Get someone else to check what you did, a fresh pair of eyes helps a lot at times!   Pull the VSS from the power socket, and after a short while plug it back in again.   If it still fails, try the press + hold of the reset button, and power cycling it.   That should force it to really start things from scratch.

Obviously, do not power down or reset your router etc. While the VSS is doing things, else you'll have to get it to restart its initialization.     Note too, that if you press the VSS's reset button, that seems to re-apply "factory settings", so again it needs to go through the full initialization all over again.

If all is going well, after some (a very long) time, it will eventually become ready, and you should see a strong 3G signal on your chosen mobile devices.   If not, try a reset on the phone/tablet, putting them into "Flight or Airplane" mode, then back to normal, or in extreme cases, shutdown and restart.

Our Sure Signal v3, is working very well with BT's infinity service, BUT ONLY AFTER WE JUNKED THE BT ROUTER AND MODEM!

We find, that if the VSS's power is interrupted, then when the power comes back on, it only takes at most 15 minutes to get going again.   Often much less time.

We use a Draytek Vigor 2860 n-plus (nice but expensive) modem/router and that works very well indeed with the VSS, and our LAN switch in the office.   It also gives us a true "Guest" WiFi service, that can't access any of our office LAN resources.

I also know the VSS works well at home with my Netgear N1000 series router, on plain vanilla ADSL.

Hope something here helps.

DB @ AR.

---------

[HalH]

@arukDave. Dave, I cannot thank you enough for your note, and I suspect many others will too.

I'd already done most of the things on your list with an ASUS DSL-N66U, and a TP-Link TD-W9980 (as well as the BT Business Hub 3). None of them worked could be made to work.

I've now, following Vodafone advice, de-registered the VSS3 and will give it 24 hours before registering again. They are adding the IP address to this 'whitelist', which may take 3 days.

After that , I will try both routers again. If they still fail (and I believe they will) I will either demand my money back for the VSS3 and go to Orange and UMA technology, or lash out and get the Draytek Vigor and try once more.

Either way, thanks again for your help.

Regards, Hal.

[jhopkins]

HalH,

Any reason  why you haven't  included  the O2/TU Go app in your  list of possible alternatives to the dreaded VF?...This seems  to me  like the simplest option....and unless I find  any reason why not, I'll be switching there as soon as my contract expires!

[arukDave]

@jhopkins Maybe, because the O2/TU service only works with O2 handsets? OK if you already have such, but no good if you don't. O2's coverage is not good either these days outside of built up areas, plus (from hard won personal experiance) the coverage from the other players on 1800MHz (and higher on 4G) is even worse. Note, most quote a % coverage of "the population", not landmass (area). Dave.

[jhopkins]

 arukDave

I mentioned  O2  after HalH  had mentioned that he might switch to Orange. I agree that you need  an O2 handset to use their services...but  I assume the  same applies  to Orange? Where I live,  none of the providers  offer  much of a service, so it probably  doesn't matter  which one  I throw my lot in with. VF checker  says that I can expect to make and receive calls and texts out doors  only, and no internet..the reality  is that I can't  even get SOS on my mobile anywhere.. EE also say that 2G will work outdoors ( but no internet)...after the VF expereince, what have i got to lose...lol. Mind you, before VF I was with O2....their coverage  for my  road is listed as (2G) good outdoors and OK indoors, (3G) OK outdoors , patchy indoors. The reality was that I had one upstairs  window  where I could send a text and outdoors  I didn't  even have  SOS. Mobile providers  are  the worst bunch of charlatans I have ever encountered....and this morning on the radio , when discussing the  takeover of EE by BT, their  sales person was  extolling the virtues  of the forthcoming 5G. It's  such a shame we can't  swear on here.......