WIP310 Fails To Re-Register.

[juunda]

Customer has several WIP310 connected wirelessly to an accesspoint and then to a internal PBX Tribox V2.6.22. Using Teliax ITSP.

The phones work great for a while but randomly fail to re-register. The only way for it to work again is to power cycle the device.   Customer has tried three diferent access point in order to elimate the possibility of bad wireless connectivity. Has latest firmware 5.0.11

Please advice in any way possible thanks in advance.

[BriainWilson]

Hi

I have no issues with my VoIP phone (attached to the Draytek); it is rock solid 100% reliable. I bought my mother a Siemens Gigaset DECT VoIP phone and there are no problems with that, either. The issue with the WIP310 seems to be the firmware (it locks up almost daily) and/or the 802.11 (it drops out even when you are next to the WAP). The thing is that I don't want a DECT phone as I've a top range WAP (ironically, a Cisco 1252) in the house and I want an 802.11 phone!

After having these problems right out of the box, I did hang on for almost a year for the current firmware, but it made not one bit of a difference. I'll wait and see if anyone comes back with anything new (I've not been on this forum for ages) but if not, I think I'm going to contact the supplier; though it's now out of warranty (I should have sent it back ages ago) we are fortunately covered in the UK by the sale of goods act in that a product has to be fit for purpose. This has never worked and thus I think it falls well into that category.

As I say, I'll look here for another couple of weeks and see if anything new comes up; I do like the phone and would prefer a fix for it!

Bri

[danilew]

I have upgraded to the 5.013 and have seen a significant improvement in the registration and dropped call issues.  Since updating the phone about 3 days ago, it has not lost registration once and only dropped one call (which I suspect was because the microwave was turned on).

I did a full factory reset, flashed the new firmware, did another reset, then set my SIP and EXT1 settings.

[BriainWilson]

Hi

I've tried several factory resets and also reloading the latest FW, but unfortunately it's not getting me anywhere. The phone works, and you can receive several calls, then it just drops registration or wireless (as I've pointed out in a previous post, I suspect the call dropping issue is caused by a wireless dropout). When this happens, it won't re-register (it did with the previous FW) and a reboot sometimes enables re-registration, but not always. After the latest FW update and factory reset, it worked for 2 days (and about 6 calls) but today it was showing as connected and registered, but it wasn't even associated with the WAP (the 1252 shows a blue LED when a client is associated, but it was showing the green LED indicating no attached clients). I rebooted the phone it it's now associated to the WAP okay, but it wont register with the SIP provider at all. I've just tried yet another re-boot and still it won't register. The problems of dropping calls is not any better with the new FW, but this complete registration failure issue is new; the previous FW at least permitted a fast recovery from the failures (I didn't have to factory reset it after a call drop, but I do now).

I have sent an email to the supplier (www.broadbandstuff.co.uk) to ask what they can do to help me (it's still in warranty; just). I'd be tempted to ask for a replacement as I do like the phone, but it would seem a bit pointless if it has this inherent problem. I wonder if the hardware has changed since I bought it in March last year? If it has, maybe a new one will help, but if not, I'm guessing I need a refund.

Bri

NB As stated previously, the WAP is a Cisco 1252 and is only 20 feet (with a clear line of sight) from the WIP-310. I use a tablet, a PDA and iPad as control points for my Linn DS music system. These are very fussy about continual wireless connection (particularly the PDA) and these devices have never shown any problems on my wireless network. I also have wireless surveying software and the signals are very high with reasonably low instances of other WAP's on the channel I use, so I doubt the dropping of calls are due to interference, and in any case, this new complete registration failure problem has nothing to do with that.

[danilew]

Brian, is your PBX on the LAN or is it hosted?  If it's hosted, have you forwarded the ports correctly?

Have you used an WiFi analyzer while making calls to find out if there is any noise?  Voice/VOIP is very finicky.You mentioned that you did a scan and it shows no interference, are you running this scan while making a call?  Bluetooth, microwaves, 2.4ghz phones, etc.. all can give out intermittant interference.  Also, there are only 3 real channels, 1, 6 and 11.  So if there is alot of noise on the other channels inbetween, then it could be interfereing with your channel.

As I stated above, I have flashed the new firmware and have seen a significant improvement in the phone.  My WIP310 associates via WPA2 to a Cisco 1142 AP.  The 1142 goes to an ASA5505.  The 5505 is set to hold a specific DHCP address for the WIP310.  This IP has my SIP providers registration port staticly NAT'd by the 5505.  Since flashing the new firmware I have not lost registration once.

I did however, have the phone shutdown on me.  I hit "send" "send" to redial the last number and then I hit the speaker phone button right away (I think before the call was placed) and the phone just shut off.  I'm trying to recreate the issue to see if it the was send send speakerphone combo or if it was just a coincidence.

[BriainWilson]

Hi Folks

Some good news for Draytek users; there is new firmware (3.3.7) for the Draytek routers (mine is a 2820vn). This new firmware sorts the registration failures that happen when using a Draytek (so I no longer need to set it to reboot itself every couple of days). it also sorts out some other issues (it no longer shows DNS unreliability problems when using DNS Benchmark). NB Check any open ports are still working after updating it. Mine were fine, but there are reports of another two people who had to reset (using the rst FW version) and reconfigure the Draytek to get them open again (I ended up doing that anyway, just in case there were any other odd issues).

As to the WIP310, it still drops calls after a wee while (this varies between 20 seconds or a couple of minutes). I've tried changing the router (using an old BT Voyager I had kicking about) and also changing the WAP (to another Cisco 1252) but the dropout issue remains the same. The call lasts so long, then drops out, then about 30 seconds later, the phone's RF signal strength meter drops to zero, reappears after a few seconds then the phone re-registers itself.

I have raised a support issue with Cisco and received an e-mail (14 days ago) letting me know I'll be sent another e-mail when a support case has been raised.

Bri

[Martin.Griffiths]

Thanks for the heads up on that Briain!

I now have a different issue however...

Each morning so far (2 mornings on the run) when I come down, the phone screen has frozen with "Trying to register" on the bottom.. Turning it off and on cures it and it registers fine again..

Any ideas?

Cisco do seem to be dragging their heels over the issues with these phones!

[aaronsells1]

My WIP310 is showing a new failure mode--it now randomly crashes with a black screen and is unresponsive to any key presses.  The only way to recover is to remove and reinsert the battery.

The pain of using this phone has now exceeded any benefit I recieve from using it.  I will be tossing this phone into my box of electronic junk and viewing this experience as a $200 study in how Cisco is unable to support their WiFi VoIP products.

[Martin.Griffiths]

Well, I have switched my network kit completely.. I now run a Cisco ASA 5505 along with 2 x 1252 AP's.. Guess what.. I STILL have a problem with the phone failing to re-register..

AAAARGH!!!

This phone sucks - please Cisco fix it so that it is at least usable! I have to resort to powering it down and back up to make outgoing calls. As for incoming calls, it's pointless giving the number out, since the phone will have invariably de-registered itself!

Are Cisco still looking into this issue, or have even they given up hope of solving it?

[BriainWilson]

Well I've been experimenting with many things since I last had a moan here, so I thought I'd post an update!

Basically, I changed my Cisco WIP 310 settings as below (I'm a Draytel customer, so I'll just use the Draytel examples):

Old:

SIP Port: 5062 (and port 5062 opened in my router)

EXT SIP Port: 5062

Proxy: draytel.org

Outbound Proxy: nat.draytel.org

New:

SIP Port: blank (and no ports opened in my router)

EXT SIP Port: blank

Proxy: draytel.org

Outbound Proxy: nat.draytel.org:5065 (that is the Draytel recommended setting for devices behind a NAT)

This made very little difference to the main problem that I was having (50% of incoming calls drop out after between 20 and 40 seconds, and the best I can ever get is a few minutes). That said, it didn't lose registration for several days at a time, so it was a little bit better than before (it used to drop every couple of days).

I got so fed up with it all that I tried an Android SIP client, but the hassle was that though it worked beautifully, the echo (at the far end) was horrendous! After much reading, I discovered there are problems with some Android phones (I'll not go into them all here) and my one (a Sony Xperia X10) was particularly bad. Whilst doing all this research, I also discovered that Apple's iPhone use hardware echo suppression and that it was meant to be really good, so I bought an old 3Gs from eBay (one that had no mobile service, but with working Wi-Fi) and updated it to iOS 5.1.1 (foolishly as I then had to jail break it before I could set it up).

The results are very interesting! The iPhone 3Gs works astoundingly well (and I bought one of these Powermat wireless chargers, so you just dump it onto the charge mat between calls; no wires to plug in) and it's coverage area is massive compared to the WIP 310 (as I have always suspected, it wasn't an interference problem that caused coverage problems; the WIP 310's receiver is just a bit deaf). I can chat for as long as I wish and there are no call dropouts at all. It never de-registers itself from the SIP server. You can set the SIP client (I'm using Media5) 'Keep Wi-Fi Alive' to 3600 seconds and it never misses a call (I must try it set even longer). So basically, the old iPhone makes a really excellent 802.11 VoIP phone!

Now here is the odd part, since adding the 3Gs with Media5 to the network I've not used my WIP 310 to make (or answer) calls, but it's sitting in the spare room as an extension to let me hear when the phone is ringing. It's been there for several weeks and has never de-registered itself; most interesting! I keep meaning to answering some calls on it and see if it still drops them after a few seconds, but to be honest, the old 3Gs is performing so well that I've just not got round to doing so (when I do, I'll let you know how it goes).

Bri

NB The other odd thing about the WIP 310 is that though it all works okay, the web server goes to sleep after a short while (so you have to reboot the phone to access the settings) but my guess is that this might be a clever battery saving feature in the Cisco firmware.