Ooma Ports

Got something else to discuss that is not covered by the previous forums? Post it here!
Post Reply
glashoppah
Posts:3
Joined:Mon Apr 09, 2012 10:23 am
Ooma Ports

Post by glashoppah » Mon Apr 09, 2012 10:36 am

New Ooma Telo user here. Very impressive voice quality.

I monitor my network quite closely and have spent some time on this page:

https://www.ooma.com/support/knowledgeb ... vice-ports

comparing the ports with what I see. I'd like to mention that the Ooma is very reasonable, bandwidth-wise. It appears to use no more than 60Kbps inbound and out during a call. Very nice.

Anyway, in addition to the ports listed, today my Ooma opened a POP3 connection (TCP 110) to the following IP address:

38.114.132.204

Since POP3 is not listed as a port required by Ooma, and this IP address isn't in the range my Ooma usually uses for connection (208.83.244.0/24), I'm wondering what the purpose of this is.

H.


glashoppah
Posts:3
Joined:Mon Apr 09, 2012 10:23 am

Re: Ooma Ports

Post by glashoppah » Mon Apr 09, 2012 10:59 am

I know what POP3's general purpose is, of course, and I'd already looked up that destination, which looks like a Cogent co-lo. I'm just wondering why my Ooma Telo is opening POP3 communications with that server and if the Telo needs to be able to do POP3 outbound, why it's not listed in the required ports on the page for that purpose.

H.

glashoppah
Posts:3
Joined:Mon Apr 09, 2012 10:23 am

Re: Ooma Ports

Post by glashoppah » Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:49 am

First of all, this has received no activity - if this is the wrong place to ask these questions, please let me know. I would really like to try to understand this behavior, given that it's not published in the help files.

Anyway... here are some more stats for this POP communication from the Telo. When there are no calls, the Telo appears to make a POP connection once every four hours. The POP communication is represented by the brown spikes:

http://web.me.com/glashoppah/filechute/ ... escent.jpg

Here is the overall graph for the Telo's behavior. The previous link is a zoom of the relatively quiet area of this graph, the spikes are during calls:

http://web.me.com/glashoppah/filechute/ ... -graph.jpg

Zooming in on a spike, note that the Telo starts and maintains the POP connection during the entire call:

http://web.me.com/glashoppah/filechute/ ... -spike.jpg

As this zoom in on the actual transaction shows, this connection is maintained to the server for the duration:

http://web.me.com/glashoppah/filechute/ ... ll-pop.jpg

So my questions are, again,

1. What is the purpose of this POP connection and,
2. Why is this POP communication not listed as a required port in the Ooma online documentation?

Thanks again,

H.

User avatar
Bobby B
Ooma Moderator
Posts:1457
Joined:Mon Feb 18, 2008 8:41 pm
Location:Palo Alto, CA
Contact:

Re: Ooma Ports

Post by Bobby B » Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:58 am

The Telo uses TCP port 110 for logging, which is why you see more activity on this port when the call starts. I'll update the article in our knowledgebase so that the port is included there.
Bobby B

dknyinva
Posts:268
Joined:Sat Feb 07, 2009 7:21 am
Contact:

Re: Ooma Ports

Post by dknyinva » Tue Apr 10, 2012 12:38 pm

Hi,

I also noticed my Telo is attempting to communicate to the server 38.114.132.204 with dstport 110. Similar to the OP, I have the FW rule drop the packet because it was not listed as a required service port for the Ooma to communicate.
2012:04:09-01:31:54 xxx ulogd[4192]: id="2001" severity="info" sys="SecureNet" sub="packetfilter" name="Packet dropped" action="drop" fwrule="60002" initf="eth2" outitf="eth0" srcmac="0:18:61:x:xx:xx" dstmac="0:10:18:xx:x:xx" srcip="192.168.50.150" dstip="38.114.132.204" proto="6" length="60" tos="0x00" prec="0x00" ttl="63" srcport="56773" dstport="110" tcpflags="SYN"
Why using a known port, which is POP3 for logging? I thought the service port use by Ooma for system logging is UDP 514.

Thanks

User avatar
Bobby B
Ooma Moderator
Posts:1457
Joined:Mon Feb 18, 2008 8:41 pm
Location:Palo Alto, CA
Contact:

Re: Ooma Ports

Post by Bobby B » Tue Apr 10, 2012 1:04 pm

The Hubs still use UDP 514 for logging, but the Telo recently changed to use TCP 110. I believe the POP3 port was chosen because it was more likely to not be blocked by a firewall, since it is a well-known port.
dknyinva wrote:Why using a known port, which is POP3 for logging? I thought the service port use by Ooma for system logging is UDP 514.
Bobby B

dknyinva
Posts:268
Joined:Sat Feb 07, 2009 7:21 am
Contact:

Re: Ooma Ports

Post by dknyinva » Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:14 pm

Thanks for the clarification. I've now included port 110 in the FW rule.
Bobby B wrote:The Hubs still use UDP 514 for logging, but the Telo recently changed to use TCP 110. I believe the POP3 port was chosen because it was more likely to not be blocked by a firewall, since it is a well-known port.
dknyinva wrote:Why using a known port, which is POP3 for logging? I thought the service port use by Ooma for system logging is UDP 514.

Post Reply