Billion router and Telkom

[edk]

Hi yotch et al

Success (i think)

There was a combination of two settings
1) you mentioned that the outbound proxy address had to be blank and you were right.
2) There was an option in the sip settings to "register to outbound proxy" and it 's default was "no"

I selected yes and voila.... the voip light is now on and its reports that its registered ok. I'm not out the woods yet as I'm still not able to make any telephone calls with either the soft phone or my normal telkom line so i'm still stuck

Soft phone:
I can dial an 021 number and it rings but I can't hear when they pick up and they can't hear me.

PSTN line
If i pick it up I can hear a dial tone but when I dial an 021 number I get a tone that sounds as if the other number is engaged

I don't know anybody with an 087 number so I can't try that function.
Very frustrating.

Yotch: I haven't tried your virtual machine options as I thought everything was working with my VOIP line.

Any other ideas that I can try?

regards
edk
Ps: thanks for all your ideas and suggestions so far. I wouldn't have gotten this far without you guys

 

[Roman4604]

I selected yes and voila.... the voip light is now on and its reports that its registered ok.

Most SIP servers will give a positive registration result even though the auth credentials are wrong. This is to prevent harvesting of accounts by trial & error.

Registration is not a login, just a mechanism for the proxy to understand how to route inbound calls to you. Each outbound call attempt is authenticated independantly irrespective of what happened in the registration process.

Soft phone:
I can dial an 021 number and it rings but I can't hear when they pick up and they can't hear me.

PSTN line
If i pick it up I can hear a dial tone but when I dial an 021 number I get a tone that sounds as if the other number is engaged

You're dealing with two seperate problems here.

On the softphone it seems like the proxy is putting the call through (ringing) therefore your auth/config settings are right. The fact that you cant hear anything once picked up is probably a NAT/firewall issue where RTP ports are being blocked/misunderstood.

I would suggest you concentrate on the Billion as there is no NAT involved in this communication (SIP/RTP ports sit on ADSL interface), but turn off the firewall at it may still be blocking ports.

On the PSTN (I assume handset connected to Billion FXS ports) your problem is most likely your auth/config setttings are not correct (as per above). Three pieces of information have to match up ...

Username (UserID/AuthID) - usually your 087 number (must be in right format)
Password - as supplied by provider
Realm - picked up from Registrar/Outbound Proxy settings (can be IP of proxy, DNS of proxy IP, or domain proxy sits in - DNS SRV records)

Most likely the problem here is the Reg/Out proxy settings, asumming user/authIDs are correct. The reason why this is so important is because SIP uses the realm setting as part of the key to enrypt the password being sent to the proxy.

Some proxys accept encrytion based on its IP or the configured realm, but some may not. What you have to find out is exactly what the Telkom Communicator uses, most likely in its configuration of reg/out proxy or realm.

Hope this sheds some more light.

 

[edk]

Hi roman4604

I think i understand your technical terms and I'm acting on them. I can't find any settings in the softphone in its properties so I had to go to the manual and the one thing thats worrying me now is that in the manual there is an ip address as follows
196.43.17.116 45000 to 65635 UDP Bi RTP for voice

it mentions "RTP for voice" which might be one of my problems as I can't find anywhere on the router that wants me to input such an ip address.
I've only entered the 196.43.17.141 ip with port 5060 address.

Where can I enter that 196.43.17.116 address?

I'm going to try the disabling the firewall and see where that gets me.
I'll report back my findings.

 

[Roman4604]

Where can I enter that 196.43.17.116 address?

You probably dont have to enter it anywhere. I'm guessing its Telkom's SBC (session border controller) or PSTN media gateway, used to relay RTP streams to interconnects or the traditional voice network. The SIP protocol will instruct you client (within the Billion) to send RTP streams to that IP if need be, all you have to make sure is that its not blocked.

So I would say use the following ...

Registrar & Outbound Proxy Address = 196.43.17.141
Register to Outbound Proxy = yes
UserID & AuthUserID = your 087 number
Password = what was supplied

Most other setting should be ok at defaults.

 

[edk]

ok. I've done that and everything is set exactly to specs. I've made all the rules in my firewall "not active", effectively switching it off. There is one more thing I have to do before I give up and go to voipraider or elsewhere.

I logged onto the telkom website to check my credit balance so that I can make calls to numbers other than 0872xxxx. the message i get was that some of their databases are not working properly.

When I phoned and reported it they were as surprised as I was and proceeded to generate a fault report with its reference number. It transpires that they were busy with an upgrade last week and assumed it was working they will get back to me.

In the meantime I'm busy investigating skype and voipraider as i'm pretty sure my side is now as correct as it'll ever be.

I'll report back any new developements.

Thanks again for your help

 

[Yotch]

@edk: I would also try the settings that Roman4604 has suggested. I am hoping that you manage to get it to work - several other people (me included) might also be interested in the free 087200 Voip number provided that this can be reached from outside.

You are correct about the database problem. I am a Telkom Do customer and have been trying to get a Telkom Communicator Voip number since Friday with no luck. When I try to re-register it says I'm registered and when I do a lost password request it says I'm not. It is quite possible that the entire service is not working at the moment and it's a long weekend ...

Telkom is using a standard soft phone from SJ Labs. The domain or realm address seems to be hidden as you mentioned above. The Telkom 200VWR router definitely appears to be a Billion product after looking at the manual so I would think that it should be possible to get this product to work on the Billion 7300VGP. You could also try to download a very simple soft phone like PhonerLite to see if you can get that to work with your settings. Do you get the same response when you dial a 021 number as the Telkom Communicator soft phone or not? This should indicate whether or not the registrar address is correct.
http://www.phonerlite.de/download_en.htm

Out of interest have you tried to call your 087200 number from a Telkom phone to see if the soft phone on the PC can receive calls? I see that Telkom does have a published rate for Telkom calls to 087200 numbers although Telkom Communicator does not mention the possibility of off network calls (see summary above). The last figure is the any time per second rate including VAT - ~85c per minute!!!
Telkom Internet (087 200 to 201) 0.570 0.650 0.01233 0.01406

Also take a look at www.bopcall.com - their rates are not as low as many of the Betamax companies but you can pay in Rands for the service - I think the minimum purchase is about R35. This might be a good starting point. If you want to use a Betamax Voip service from your router then it will probably work out cheaper to look at www.lowratevoip.com or www.voipstunt.com. Take a look at www.backsla.sh/betamax to compare rates. You also need to compare the number of free days - some services offer 90 while others give 120 etc. The free local calls with Voipraider and 12Voip are only available from their softphone. It might be possible to get the free rate by running the soft phone on a PC on the network in the background and using the Voip router to make the call but this could be very inconvenient.

Keep us updated on your progress ...

 

[edk]

Hi yotch
Glad to hear that I'm not the only one struggling to make the telkom 0872xxx number work.

I'm pretty sure that my modem is working correctly now so I'm waiting on telkom to sort out their side. I used most of romans suggestions and i'm ready to go.

I've looked at all the sites that you suggested. voipstunt and lowrate look almost exactly like voipraider. I get the impression that they're the same company as they use almost the same words when explaining the same questions.

I've tried dialing the 0872xxx with my mobile but the call just gets dropped.

I'm pretty sure that the telkom side is the problem. the softphone manual mentions that one can dial 225 and your prepaid balance is returned. When I dial it the call just gets dropped.

quote:Do you get the same response when you dial a 021 number as the Telkom Communicator soft phone or not? This should indicate whether or not the registrar address is correct.unquote

I have tried dialing with the softphone, and the 021 rings but I can't talk to them and they can't hear me. If I try and use my PSTN phone going through the router I just get an engaged signal

I'm going away for the next couple of days so won't be able to do any more testing until I come back on the weekend so watch this space.

oh by the way. I've been getting dll errors on my softphone so I tried uninstalling it. It keeps telling me that I don't administrator rights. Is this a vista problem?

 

[edk]

Just a quick update.

I phoned telkom re: my prepaid balance and they logged the call as a fault.
When I go to the website now and try and logon this is the message that appears

Customer Notice

Dear Voip Customer
Please note that we are experiencing a technical problem at this time.
Technicians are busy resolving the problem. We apologize for this.
Your Voip Technical Team.

I think I've broken the telkom voip site

Its been like that for a week now.

 

[Stoepa]

Hey

Okey the first thing is your annoying and do not have any common sense. VOIP needs a fast and steady connection and I'm reconning your using a Landline? Right go buy yourself a 3G USB Dongel from Vodacom Problem Fixed??? Or am I Missing something?