Telo - 15 minute boot time

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Jeff Liebermann
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Telo - 15 minute boot time

Post by Jeff Liebermann » Thu Jun 09, 2022 7:51 pm

I've had a new Ooma Telo functioning fairly normally for about 10 weeks. In general, almost everything works as advertised. However, it takes 15 minutes (I just timed it) for the Telo to boot and to produce dialtone from a cold (power off) start. If I leave the power to the Telo connected, and unplug the ethernet connection for about 2 minutes, it takes about 5 minutes for the Telo to reconnect and provide dial tone. Therefore, the bulk of the boot delay is due to the Telo box doing something.

Is this normal? What is a normal boot time?

Here's an article from 2014 complaining that their Telo takes 7 minutes to boot. Mine takes twice as long.
viewtopic.php?t=18232
I don't have any DECT HD2 or HD3 handsets, so reloading the DECT code mentioned in the article is not involved.

What is the Telo doing? Even the most disgusting slow booting Xfinity gateway takes less than half this time to boot. Is it doing the worlds slowest POST (power on self test)?

Is there some way to access the log files so I can see what the Telo is doing?

To prevent chronic 15 minute outages every time the power flickers, I installed the official $35 battery backup. It's not the best, but seems good enough for now.

Any clues or direction?
Jeff Liebermann http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond, CA

domm
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Re: Telo - 15 minute boot time

Post by domm » Fri Jun 10, 2022 5:29 am

I am having the same issue with one big difference, my telo takes hours not minutes to reconnect after the internet disconnects. I started a thread " Telo takes hours to reconnect?" here. Good luck in trying to solve this & please let us know if you find a solution. Thanks

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Jeff Liebermann
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Re: Telo - 15 minute boot time

Post by Jeff Liebermann » Sat Jun 11, 2022 8:51 am

Looks like I'm on my own for solving this problem. In the next week or three, I'll try:
  • Tinkering with the Telo's embedded web server (setup.ooma.com) which is currently not accessible.
  • Swapping my current Asus RT-AC66U router for some other routers. I have plenty.
  • Direct connection to Arris SB6183 cable modem eliminating the rest of my network.
  • Moving Ooma Telo from Xfinity cable to AT&T DSL at a friends house.
  • Reset Ooma Telo to defaults and re-activate.
  • Analyze Telo ethernet traffic with Wireshark, Zenmap to check if Telo is doing something disgusting, like downloading new firmware or inventorying my network.
The basic idea is to eliminate potential culprits that do NOT point to a defective Telo, Omma server problem, or a firmware bug. This will take some time, especially if I have to wait 15 minutes between tests. I was going to suggest that you try some of these experiments, but if a reboot takes hours, that's probably not practical. I'll probably call support at some point. Progress and digress reports as time permits.

Meanwhile, could someone please provide me with either how long their Telo takes to boot, or how long they believe it should take to boot?
Jeff Liebermann http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond, CA

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Re: Telo - 15 minute boot time

Post by Jeff Liebermann » Sat Jun 11, 2022 11:16 am

Progress, maybe.
I reconfigured my LAN, moving the Ooma Telo to the WAN (internet) side of my router:
  • Cable Modem -> Ooma Telo -> RT-AC66U Router -> PC etc
Instead of 15 minutes to boot, it now takes 5 minutes. That is still quite long but is tolerable. My various SIP phones and VoIP services generally boot and login in less than 1 minute. For example, I just tried a Yealink T21P E2 phone and Future-Nine Asterisk server: 62 seconds. I also noticed that my Asus RT-AC66u router was complaining about not having a IP address on the WAN side for all but the last 30 seconds(?) of the 4 minute boot time. Even the slowest commodity home router is faster than that, which makes me wonder what the Telo is doing for 4.5 minutes?

This test suggest that my router is the likely culprit. I'll be sniffing traffic with Wireshark and digging through mountains of router log files looking for someone or something to blame. In any case, the slow boot is NOT an Ooma or Telo problem but more likely something in my router or LAN. I really don't like leaving my LAN in this configuration simply to solve a boot delay problem. The Ooma Telo really belong on the LAN side of the router, not on the WAN side.
Last edited by Jeff Liebermann on Sat Jun 11, 2022 7:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jeff Liebermann http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond, CA

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Re: Telo - 15 minute boot time

Post by Jeff Liebermann » Sat Jun 11, 2022 3:28 pm

"That which is most obviously correct, beyond any need of checking, is usually the problem".

My Telo now boots reliably in 5 minutes. My mistake was to install a cable from one of the router LAN ports into the Ooma Telo Home jack, instead of the Internet jack. Despite this being obviously wrong, it amazingly worked, if I was willing to wait 15 minutes. Why it worked on the Home port is currently a mystery.

Despite indications to the contrary, I'm not quite as stupid as I might appear. For penance, I offer some lame excuses:
  • I'm in the habit of installing wireless routers setup as access points by plugging them into the wireless routers LAN jacks, instead of the WAN (internet) jack, in order to avoid dealing with double NAT (network address translation).
Thank you for tolerating me and hopefully this will be helpful for those Ooma Telo users who are having similar long boot time problems.
Jeff Liebermann http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond, CA

mbmb
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Re: Telo - 15 minute boot time

Post by mbmb » Tue Jun 14, 2022 6:58 am

Interesting sequence of events you went through.

My Telo takes 10 to 12 minutes to do a cold boot until the light turns blue. It also goes through a long sequence over that period of time from red to flashing red to flashing off/blank to solid red, etc., for three cycles of this until eventually becoming connected (blue light).

Since my home LAN and internet connection are 1 Gig and 400 Mbps respectively, I absolutely do no want to put the Telo first in line after the cable modem because it only is 100 Mbps (huge bottleneck). Plus the ASSUS router is one of their best, so it has to be far superior to the Telo. So it's modem, router, then Telo.

Typically I do not leave any of the equipment on at night, mostly for security reasons, so everything gets a cold boot in the a.m. Since the modem is fully booted in 60 seconds and the router about 40 seconds after that, the Telo is still booting long after a working internet connection is provided.

I'm thinking of turning off the router in the Telo to see if this helps the boot time. It should, but I'm wary of introducing a new variable into something that seems to work, albeit slowly.

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Re: Telo - 15 minute boot time

Post by Jeff Liebermann » Wed Jun 15, 2022 7:22 am

When I ran my test, where I moved the Telo to between my cable modem and my router, I was rather surprised by how quickly it booted. I originally posted that it would boot in 4 minutes, but then changed that to 5 minutes to conform to later results, when I connected it via the Internet port, instead of the Home port. I assumed that I made a mistake remembering the boot time. Maybe I didn't. I'm busy today, but will repeater the test when time permits.

I suggest that you try the same experiment. Plug the Telo Internet port into your cable modem, and any random computer into the Telo Home port. The DHCP assigned IP address delivered by the Telo to your computer will likely be in the range of 172.27.35.xxx with the router/gateway IP at 172.27.35.1. No need to connect your router. Just check if you can browse a web site, and you're done. For timing, I suggest the Windoze 10 stopwatch (search for Alarms & Clock) and the Android 11 Clock app. Taking the phone off hook and waiting for dial tone to re-appear, might also work. If you see a large improvement in boot speed, then I suggest you experiment with various router settings or replace the router.

For my home phone, boot time is important. I live in a forest, which in 2020, reminded us that trees do burn, and that the local electric power infrastructure is old and vulnerable to fire. The usual result is that if a tree falls across a power line fed by the local sub-station, there will initially be a momentary loss of power until the recloser at the sub-station automagically restores power.
https://www.eaton.com/us/en-us/products ... osers.html
With a 5 minute boot time, that means I have to wait 5 after each power interruption before I can use the phone.

I purchased the battery backup sold by Ooma:
https://www.ooma.com/telo/home-phone-wi ... ry-backup/
https://talentcell.com/lithium-ion-batt ... 0-usb.html
That's a big help, which eliminates the time it takes for the Telo box to self test and only requires a 1 to 2 minute wait for the Telo to connect to the Ooma VoIP server and login. 5 min boot is tolerable, but I think the Telo could do better. I have a collection of VoIP ATA adapters and SIP phones and can run some boot time tests to see where Ooma stands. A quick boot time is normally not a requirement or specification, until it becomes important or excessive. I don't know what the local PSAP (public safety answering point) will do if it takes 5 or more minutes to restore and return a disconnected emergency call.
https://firefighternow.com/accidentally ... 1-do-this/
Jeff Liebermann http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond, CA

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Re: Telo - 15 minute boot time

Post by Jeff Liebermann » Wed Jun 15, 2022 5:35 pm

Some numbers for Telo, ATA adapter, and SIP phone boot times.
Min:Sec --------- Config --------------------- Notes
15:00 Modem -> Asus RT-AC66U router -> Telo (incorrectly using the Telo home port)
4:55 Modem -> Telo(internet port). No router.
4:50 Modem -> Asus RT-AC66U router -> Telo (internet port) <- Recommended Ooma Config.
1:30 Modem -> Asus RT-AC66U router -> ATA adapter (Linksys/Cisco PAP2, PAP2T, SPA2100, etc with no internal router)
1:20 Modem -> Asus RT-AC66U router -> SPA112 (ATA with built in router)
0:65 Modem -> Asus RT-AC66U router -> Yealink W52P cordless DECT phone.
0:61 Modem -> Asus RT-AC66U router -> Linksys SPA942 SIP desk phone.
0:47 Modem -> Asus RT-AC66U router -> Yealink S21P T2 SIP desk phone.
0:40 Recovery time after unplugging only the ethernet cable in recommended config.

300 second boot time for the Telo, when compared to 47 to 90 seconds boot times for everything else, seems a bit excessive.

I found some weirdness when running these tests. If I tried to boot with the phone off-hook, it would never finish booting. Oddly, this happened with some of the ATA adapters as well as the Telo. Sometimes, the Telo would never finish booting and required a second power cycle in order to get it to finish booting.

Drivel: Typical ATA adapters and SIP phones:
https://wiki.voip.ms/article/ATA_Devices
https://wiki.voip.ms/article/IP_Phones
Jeff Liebermann http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond, CA

mbmb
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Re: Telo - 15 minute boot time

Post by mbmb » Thu Jun 16, 2022 5:23 am

After going through the web portal items with a direct connection to the HOME port on the Ooma Telo and disabling DECT and DHCP, the boot times here are about the same as yours. The modem boots to fully functional in about 60 seconds. The Asus RT_AX88U another 30 seconds after that. The Telo cold boots in a total of about 4 min. 30 sec. Since one of the items in the settings in the Telo refers to "tunnel" this must mean the Telo is establishing a VPN tunnel to an Ooma server.

Apparently 4 min. 30 sec. is what we have to live with, but as you and any number of others have commented, that seems an excessively long time to do a cold boot. At least since it's so slow, the modem and upstream router have had more than enough time to boot up so that the proper boot sequence as suggested is modem, router, telo so that all the correct handshaking occurs.

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Re: Telo - 15 minute boot time

Post by Jeff Liebermann » Thu Jun 16, 2022 8:12 am

About 25 years ago, in the dark ages of home networking, some network devices had difficulties initializing if the downstream devices were not previously functional. At the time, the work around was to power on in sequence, starting with the network device that connects to the ISP (MPOE or modem) and moving sequentially through the LAN to the desktop. After a few years, programmers discovered an amazing concept called "retry", where if an attempt to find a DHCP server, or some other handshake ceremony had failed, the software would take a short coffee break and try again until it succeeded. Unfortunately, old firmware and ancient devices remained in service for probably 15 years, requiring the continued use of the original work around. With reasonably modern hardware, and up to date firmware, methinks it is now safe to turn everything on and off at the same time.

One common screwup, which I managed to reproduce during my testing/tinkering, is forgetting to power cycle the modem when the connected router changes. Note that this is only a problem if you have a separate modem and router. The ethernet interface between the modem and router needs to only handle one MAC address -> IP address pair. This is a good assumption for most home networking systems. If I leave the modem power turned on, and change routers (such as between my Asus router and Ooma Telo's Internet or Home ports), there's a good chance that it won't work because the modem still thinks it is connect to the previous ethernet device or port. Power cycling the modem resets the ARP (address resolution protocol) table and solves the problem. I suspect that some of the continued use of the original sequential power on work around is a side effect of this problem.

Anyway, thanks for running the test. You reminded me that DECT was enabled. I thought it would be a good idea to disable it and anything else that wasn't in use. I have "Allow access to this website over the INTERNET port" in the advanced settings enabled, so I just connected to the Telo via its LAN IP address[1]. The first thing I discovered was that Ooma had disabled changing the password from the INTERNET port. So much for doing remote admin from the internet. Argh. I then disabled DECT. The Telo became unresponsive and initiated a reboot, which took about 90(?) seconds. After I made sure everything is still working, I ran another timed cold boot. 4:48min or about the same as before I turned off DECT. Oh well.

[1] To find the LAN IP address of the Telo, it's displayed in the top of the "Status" page. If you've enabled INTERNET port access, you can dump the ARP table in your router. Look for a MAC address that starts with 00:18:61. That seems to be the only OUI/MA-L used by Ooma:
https://maclookup.app/macaddress/001861
Jeff Liebermann http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond, CA

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