My new Ooma Telo died

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nitrousbird
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Joined:Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:22 pm
My new Ooma Telo died

Post by nitrousbird » Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:37 pm

Just purchased / installed the Ooma telo on 11/13/11 from Best Buy. On a Time Warner 10Mbps down / 950k up connection - my connection has been pretty solid over the 2.5 years we have been at our house.

Have it in front of the router. I did log into it after having some slow-down issues and setup the QoS in it, which seemed to resolve that at the time. I tried doing QoS with it after the router previously but it didn't work (I later read you need to use a different MAC address than what is on the unit to do that, but never messed with it further). We ONLY use the unit so my wife can call her family in Canada, so it's only been used a few times.

Regardless, my wife was using it today, and after 29 minutes of use, the call would drop, as would the internet. A couple minutes later, everything came back up. Happened a couple more times today (I was gone all day), and said after 29 minutes, it would die. She said it would work fine at first, then slowly the internet connection would get slower and slower until everything died, then come back minutes later (PC's are all hardwired, so not a wireless issue). Modem looked good every time she checked, but all my stuff is in the basement, so by the time she got down to check all was back up.

The last time it never came back at all, without even the busy signal from the unit, no PC light from the modem. I get home, and still no PC light. Power cycle the Ooma, same issue. The green light on the ethernet port would come on, with random blips from the orange light. Red Ooma symbol was on. Hooked my router straight to the modem, good to go. Hook the Ooma to my router, still no go (with different ethernet cables too).

At this point it looks like the Ooma is toast. How should I go about replacing it? Just exchange it at Best Buy? What BS will I have to deal with in order to swap the unit on my account and keep our phone number (Ooma provided number). Are these things so finicky that I should just go to Vonage or back to Time Warner's VOIP? I can tell you I refuse to hook it back up in front of my router, so what MAC address do I need to do to setup QoS through my router (Cisco E3000)?

thunderbird
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Joined:Mon Nov 08, 2010 4:41 pm

Re: My new Ooma Telo died

Post by thunderbird » Fri Nov 25, 2011 7:38 pm

nitrousbird:
No matter how you do it, same phone number, etc.

If you decide to exchange your defective Ooma Telo at Best Buy, after you get your replacement Ooma Telo, you just have to call Ooma Customer Support and explain that what happened, and have them transfer the new Ooma Telo information to your Ooma profile, before you can use it.

Or you can contact Ooma Customer Support and tell them what happened. After some troubleshooting, and if your Ooma Telo is within the one year warranty period, they will send you a replacement Ooma Telo, shipping prepaid, and also send you a return prepaid shipping label to ship the defective Ooma Telo back. You just plug in the replacement Ooma Telo and it works immediately without you having to call Ooma Customer Support for activation.

Customer Support
Email: support@oomacare.com
Phone: 1-888-711-OOMA (6662)
Monday-Friday 7am-7pm PST
Saturday-Sunday 8am-5pm PST

tommies
Posts:862
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Location:Atlanta

Re: My new Ooma Telo died

Post by tommies » Fri Nov 25, 2011 8:15 pm

It's best that you return it to Bestbuy, and then call ooma CS to register your new telo with your current phone number (do not activate it on the web like you did it with the previous one.) I have not call ooma CS for a long time, so I cannot comment on this, but I'm expect it to be a routine call.

The telo has two MAC, one for the INTERNET port, one for the HOME port. The one for the INTERNET port is the one you need. After you'd done calling ooma CS, follow these steps:
  • temp. connect the telo HOME port to your pc/laptop with a network cable, and then power it up.
  • point your browser to http://172.27.35.1; this is telo's setup pages.
  • click on the internet link on the left to go to the internet setting page
  • near bottom of the page, their is a section name INTERNET Port MAC Address, select 'Use build in' and click update
  • take note of the build in MAC, this is the MAC you need.
optionally you can go to Advanced page, and then turn off QoS of the telo by change both numbers to 0(zero).

You can also add a port forwarding rule: forward port 80 (TCP) to 172.27.35.1 (it's the HOME port ip). This will allow you to access telo setup page wihin your LAN without have to connecting a network cable. Just point your browser to the ip of which the router assigns to the telo. It's practical to give the telo a static ip so you can bookmark it and don't have to guess/remember it. Some router does not use static ip but uses reserved ip.

Now you can remove the network cable from the telo HOME port and connect the telo's INTERNET port to one LAN port of your router. Then connect your phone etc...

PS
the port forwarding rule is a convenient way to access telo's setup page for people install the telo behind (and protected by) the router. It shall not be done if one connect the telo directly to the modem.
tommies

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Davesworld
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Re: My new Ooma Telo died

Post by Davesworld » Sat Nov 26, 2011 9:06 pm

Like tommies said, don't put your Ooma between your modem and network unless you love having your Ooma dealing with traffic and trying to deal with voip at the same time. As you saw, it overheats. Contrary to what some say here and their rather unscientific claims that they got rid of voice lag by putting the Ooma in front rather than behind the router, there is no benefit whatsoever by having your Ooma in front of your router. It simply does not have the power to deal with a lan full of heavy users all feeding through it with a fast internet connection. It's an ATA, let it stick to dealing with VOIP only that and let it run cooler. As a matter of course, carrier grade as well as the better consumer grade ATA's do not have a modem and home port, just a single network port to be connected to a lan behind a firewall/router.

The main reason why both ports exist on these devices is A:) Misguided design choices made by marketing people. B:) The assumption that everyone has only one computer in their household connected directly to a modem. Worse yet is the fact that their first setup option they call preferred is their worst in real use and would have been fine in 1998 if you had something other than dialup. In this day of wifi everything and multiple networked devices including TV, Bluray, and Network Radio streaming devices and even refrigerators much less your cellphone's wifi, not having a firewall/router makes no sense.

nitrousbird
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Joined:Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:22 pm

Re: My new Ooma Telo died

Post by nitrousbird » Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:23 am

Seems my Telo might be okay.

- Not sure why the ethernet port stopped working for a little while, even after a quick reboot. Leaving it unplugged overnight seemed to resolve the issue. Dave was right in that the unit was pretty warm, though I never had checked it previously to see how warm it normally ran.

- Discovered the internet dropping for a few minutes was not the Ooma box, and looking like it may be the modem. Seems that every 1/2 hour the modem reboots itself...it isn't a few minutes, but seemed that way because it was going through the Ooma unit first, as it is actually less than a minute. This is with great receive/transmit/snr levels and good cabling throughout as well. I'll be swapping modems on Monday. I am 100% positive this goes along with a new bin file being pushed to the modem after dropping VOIP phone with Time Warner, as this modem has worked flawelessly for a number of years until after this happened.

- All hooked behind the router now, with it's own static internal IP, correct MAC setup to run QoS through the router. I guess I'll monitor it until about the 10th to see if it is good or not before deciding to exchange the unit.

thunderbird
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Joined:Mon Nov 08, 2010 4:41 pm

Re: My new Ooma Telo died

Post by thunderbird » Sun Nov 27, 2011 9:05 am

nitrousbird wrote:Seems my Telo might be okay.

- Not sure why the ethernet port stopped working for a little while, even after a quick reboot. Leaving it unplugged overnight seemed to resolve the issue. Dave was right in that the unit was pretty warm, though I never had checked it previously to see how warm it normally ran.

- Discovered the internet dropping for a few minutes was not the Ooma box, and looking like it may be the modem. Seems that every 1/2 hour the modem reboots itself...it isn't a few minutes, but seemed that way because it was going through the Ooma unit first, as it is actually less than a minute. This is with great receive/transmit/snr levels and good cabling throughout as well. I'll be swapping modems on Monday. I am 100% positive this goes along with a new bin file being pushed to the modem after dropping VOIP phone with Time Warner, as this modem has worked flawelessly for a number of years until after this happened.

- All hooked behind the router now, with it's own static internal IP, correct MAC setup to run QoS through the router. I guess I'll monitor it until about the 10th to see if it is good or not before deciding to exchange the unit.
After adding a new piece of equipment to you Modem's connection, some times the Modem will "remember" the old connection values and will become unstable. You can try doing a factory reset of the Modem, and many times it will correct itself without any more problems, reference your Modem Owner's manual.

Note: Some Modems contain a battery that must be temporarily removed while doing the Modem reset, for the reset to take place.

Ooma Telos run cool with just a slightly warmer area where the lights are, if the lights brightness selection is turned up fully. If you press the lights symbol on the face of the Ooma Telo to off, and after a period of time there is still quite a bit of heat coming from the Ooma Telo, then some thing could be wrong with your Oomo Telo.

nitrousbird
Posts:3
Joined:Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:22 pm

Re: My new Ooma Telo died

Post by nitrousbird » Sun Nov 27, 2011 4:52 pm

thunderbird wrote: After adding a new piece of equipment to you Modem's connection, some times the Modem will "remember" the old connection values and will become unstable. You can try doing a factory reset of the Modem, and many times it will correct itself without any more problems, reference your Modem Owner's manual.

Note: Some Modems contain a battery that must be temporarily removed while doing the Modem reset, for the reset to take place.

Ooma Telos run cool with just a slightly warmer area where the lights are, if the lights brightness selection is turned up fully. If you press the lights symbol on the face of the Ooma Telo to off, and after a period of time there is still quite a bit of heat coming from the Ooma Telo, then some thing could be wrong with your Oomo Telo.
Modem's don't "remember" connections. The CMTS, not the modem, provides external IP addresses to anything hooked up. Most cable providers have limits on the number of IP addresses provided to each subscriber (typically 3-5 dynamic IP's), or Static IP's can be purchased which are assigned to whatever MAC address is setup by the cable ISP. That said, modems are known to sometimes have issues with allowing the CMTS to push new IP's and require a power cycle to resolve.

Modems that contain batteries (mine doesn't) are are typically VOIP capable modems, known as EMTA"s (Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapters - though Time Warner incorrectly refers to them as MTA's). Mine being an older unit does not have battery backup. There is no "Factory reset" to be done on a modem/EMTA unless it has a built in router, in which case you can set the router back to defaults. All other settings are part of the BIN file in the modem; the reset button is nothing more than another way to power cycle the modem.

Since my Ooma Telo did get hot and the ethernet ports stopped responding, I decided to exchange it at Best Buy (also helped I was going around there anyway and the price went down $20 so I had them price match at the same time).

My Ooma customer service experience was so-so. Better than I expected based on Amazon reviews. CSR's from India, but their English was pretty decent. For some crazy reason, I couldn't just swap numbers to my new unit. They required me to activate another account, then transfered the number to the new account, then they deactivated my old account and the temp phone number I setup. A lot more work than necessary, but they were able to care for it tonight. Only good news is this reset my Premier trial period, so that will save me a few bucks as we need to keep it, as we only have Ooma for calling Canada.

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