Ooma Forums

Hello,

I just received the OOMA Telo and I was very excited that I had got it working right out of the box. However, one day in and it already has stopped working. For whatever reason, the connection now is intermittent. All of the lights are blue except the logo which is always flashing red.

My current set up is Modem/Router (Actiontec MI424WR) > Switch (NetGear JGS524) > Ooma Telo device.

I think the problem is the Switch since I've connected the Telo device directly to my router and the logo turned blue. Is there a certain setup that is needed in order to have it work with a Switch? The only setting I've changed on the setup page of the Ooma device is that I enabled the "Built in mac Address". Everything else has remained the same. I tried calling customer support but they didn't seem to understand what a switch was. Any help would be appreciated.

I think your test just showed that it is indeed the switch. this is an unmanaged switch so there isn't a whole lot of information coming out of this device to work with. Do you have other things plugged into the switch like a PC, server etc?
Did you try changing ports with the OOMA and something else that (is) working? Is your modem/router providing DHCP services or is that being done by the switch (make sure you dont have BOTH of them doing it).

Cypher wrote:Everything else has remained the same.

Including the Ethernet cable? Sometimes it's the simple stuff....

The ethernet cable has remained the same.

As for the switch, I do have other devices connected to it (laptop, pc, media player). All of these other devices work correctly so the switch is atleast working in that respect. I checked the DHCP services and the actiontec router does have it enabled. I released it to see whether this would allow the Ooma device to go thru and after waiting a little while I renewed the DHCP lease on the router. No luck.

Also, I checked whether the Netgear switch has DHCP enabled but I can't find information on it online. The only thing I found was that it supported DHCP configurations. At this point, I'm greatly dissappointed in the device. After spending countless hours trying to resolve the problem, there seems to be no clear solution. Whats even more frustrating is that it was working for a couple hours and now it just suddenly decided that it doesn't want to work with the switch any longer.

A quick search here on the OOMA forums with your actiontec as the keyword shows that several other folks have this modem/router working with OOMA. So...

Suggestion 1: Unplug the OOMA from your Netgear switch and plug it into one of the other actiontec modem/router ports - your switch is only taking up one of four? of those ports right? Leave everything else connected to the switch as you've indicated and you should be okay.

I'm assuming that Actiontec, Netgear and OOMA are all fairly closely located to each other and that the above suggestion is physically feasible.

Suggestion 2: Assuming that you are a Verizon FIOS customer, take a look around the forums here (use Verizon and Actiontec and FIOS as search terms) to see how other OOMA users have setup their systems and resolve their problems.

Suggestion 3: Take a look on Google about issues with the Actiontec and NAT addressing - you may need to set the Actiontec into bridge mode due to NAT table size issues - I have a similar Verizon modem for DSL and have NOT had to set it into bridge mode to work with OOMA as I haven't found the double NAT setup (Verizon's NAT plus my in-home NAT) to be an issue for me but its an option.

Thanks for the suggestion, I've been looking around the forum but I have yet to run into someone with the exact same issue. The Nat issue is something I hadn't considered. I'll take a look into that.

I'd like look into the Actiontec setup page and see which MAC get assigned an ip. Is your telo MAC appears in the Actiontec status page (or DHCP table, or whatever it called.)

Also look into telo setup page, Status tab to see its assigned ip, which is supposely from the router. If you see any differences, this may be the cause of your problem.

Cypher wrote:Hello,
My current set up is Modem/Router (Actiontec MI424WR) > Switch (NetGear JGS524) > Ooma Telo device.

Uh huh. Forget it. Leave the Actiontec as a pass-through modem... dump the SWITCH and get a true Netgear ROUTER to hook up to the output of the Actiontec. Yes, a *router* that has PPPoE connectivity and better, more robust NAT translation. The 24 ports may look fancy, but unmanaged Ethernet Switches are just dumb-boxes and not cut out for true type of work you need. They don't know or care about DHCP either, because all they do is pass traffic.

You are only getting away with it for now because the various devices are stealing the assigned address(es). When the temp. Lease is up or somewhere gets disconnected?? Boom! Dumped out into the cold. The Ooma box is also barfing because it needs to establish a true VPN Tunnel to its servers and your current setup won't allow that for long. You want a TRUE Lan to Internet flow:

Option 1: FiOS -> Actiontec modem -> TRUE Netgear ROUTER -> 24 Port Switch (if you need more that 4 Ethernet ports) -> all downstream devices (PCs, Ooma Hub, etc.).

As an ALTERNATIVE setup, you could try and make the OOMA Box serve as the needed NAT Router, and place the fancy dumb-switch on the backend of it (through the Ooma HOME Port). That might eliminate the need for purchasing another Router box:

Option 2: FiOS -> Actiontec modem -> Ooma HUB/Router -> 24 Port Switch -> PCs, etc.

In that new setup you will have ALL your DHCP-enabled devices assigned in the same IP address-range of: 172.27.35.xxx by the Ooma HUB, but there is nothing wrong with doing that. They will all see each other just fine.

You might also need to do some extra setup with Verizon to get everything working correctly. Your data source should be a Broadband Connection over Ethernet. Then run /all/ your LAN devices off the back of the new router (PC, Ooma, etc.). Here is a FAQ thread on the Net that breaks FiOS connectivity down to a great degree:

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/verizonfi ... ntec#15990

Soundjudgement, thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to look into a True Netgear Router.

i went from the modem strait to the telo then to my switch and connected everything else to switch no problems so far