Computers & Electronics

Recommend a wireless router $80-120 range

  • Last Updated:
  • Sep 20th, 2016 3:19 am
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Mar 3, 2002
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Kintaromk2 wrote: I have contacted fongo support but they haven't been very helpful so far, telling me to switch settings in the app which don't do anything
To help you better understand what's happening, incoming RTP packets are not reaching your iPhone.


What setting? Settings-->Advanced Settings-->Troubleshooting-->"Alternate Fongo Connection"? This is the only setting that might help in the app. It's purpose to try to circumvent SIP ALG in routers. I'n not sure that's going to help without also port forwarding using your router. You can try it though.

Just ask them to please force proxy audio for your account. Ask them to check your account.
Probably won't help, but it's worth a shot.

I'm guessing when you're using cellular data, you have two-way audio, right?

Most likely it's a buggy SIP ALG feature that's enabled in your router: https://community.linksys.com/t5/Wirele ... d-p/331478

https://kb.intermedia.net/article/3009

In Asus routers, SIP ALG is called SIP Passthrough. It's found under Advanced Settings-->WAN-->SIP Passthrough
SIP Passthrough is enabled by default, but in my experience, having it on or off does sweet nothing with Fongo Mobile. Fongo Mobile just works with Asus routers.
Last edited by Guest1284983 on Sep 20th, 2016 1:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Jan 15, 2016
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Vancouver, BC
Webslinger wrote:
Kintaromk2 wrote: I have contacted fongo support but they haven't been very helpful so far, telling me to switch settings in the app which don't do anything
To help you better understand what's happening, incoming RTP packets are not reaching your iPhone.


What setting? Settings-->Advanced Settings-->Troubleshooting-->"Alternate Fongo Connection"? I doubt that's going to help.
You can try it though.

Just ask them to please force proxy audio for your account. Ask them to check your account.
Probably won't help, but it's worth a shot.

I'm guessing when you're using cellular data, you have two-way audio, right?

Most likely it's a buggy SIP ALG feature that's enabled in your router: https://community.linksys.com/t5/Wirele ... d-p/331478

https://kb.intermedia.net/article/3009

In Asus routers, SIP ALG is called SIP Passthrough. It's found under Advanced Settings-->WAN-->SIP Passthrough
SIP Passthrough is enabled by default, but in my experience, having it on or off does sweet nothing with Fongo Mobile. Fongo Mobile just works with Asus routers.
They told me to look for a 'low bandwith codec' setting but it doesn't exist on the app. I have tried alternate settings but it does nothing.

Yes with LTE everything works fine. And like I said earlier, other router's at other people's homes everything is working fine.

what does force proxy audio do? it is enabled by default?
thanks again for the help
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Kintaromk2 wrote: it is enabled by default?
With FPL (freephoneline), they don't, AFAIK, automatically proxy audio at the switch. I suspect they do for Fongo Mobile.
So, making the request may be pointless.

Sometimes people get the RTP audio stream sent
to their LAN IP (192.xxx.x.x, for example) as opposed to their public WAN IP, so that basically the audio gets sent into oblivion.
Faulty SIP ALGs can also cause something similar to happen.

So, in that case, forwarding ports does nothing, because the RTP packets aren't even reaching your router.

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Routers+SIP+ALG
voip-info.org wrote: SIP ALG problems
The main problem is the poor implementation at SIP protocol level of most commercial routers and the fact that this technology is just useful for outgoing calls, but not for incoming calls:

Lack of incoming calls: When a UA is switched on it sends a REGISTER to the proxy in order to be localizable and receive incoming calls. This REGISTER is modified by the ALG feature (if not the user wouldn't be reachable by the proxy since it indicated a private IP in REGISTER "Contact" header). Common routers just mantain the UDP "conntection" open for a while (30-60 seconds) so after that time the port forwarding is ended and incoming packets are discarded by the router. Many SIP proxies mantain the UDP keepalive by sending OPTIONS or NOTIFY messages to the UA, but they just do it when the UA has been detected as natted during the registration. A SIP ALG router rewrites the REGISTER request so the proxy doesn't detect the NAT and doesn't mantain the keepalive (so incoming calls will be not possible).
Breaking SIP signalling: Many of the actual common routers with inbuilt SIP ALG modify SIP headers and the SDP body incorrectly, breaking SIP and making communication just impossible. Some of them do a whole replacing by searching a private address in all SIP headers and body and replacing them with the router public mapped address (for example, replacing the private address if it appears in "Call-ID" header, which makes no sense at all). Many SIP ALG routers corrupt the SIP message when writting into it (i.e. missed semi-colon ";" in header parameters). Writting incorrect port values greater than 65536 is also common in many of these routers.
Dissallows server side solutions: Even if you don't need a client side NAT solution (your SIP proxy gives you a server NAT solution), if your router has SIP ALG enabled that breaks SIP signalling, it will make communication with your proxy impossible.
Kintaromk2 wrote:Yes with LTE everything works fine. And like I said earlier, other router's at other people's homes everything is working fine.
Okay, then, yeah, don't bother sending in a ticket. Just use a router that works. I, personally, don't care what brand or model router you use, as long as it works well for you: it should allow you to disable SIP ALG and have a strong QoS function.
Please do not PM me for tech support. I help out on the forums when I can. Thank you.
OBi200/202 Freephonline PDF guide (version 1.60) can be found here. OBi200 info can be found here. For OBi202 info, click here.
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Just to let you know, I am using Freephoneline at one place on my ac68u and at another place with my ac87u without issue. I've never had to forward any ports or disable any firewalls etc. I am, however, using Merlin's firmware but it should not matter if you use the stock firmware. BTW, back in the day I had a wrt160n running Freephoneline without issue but mine was a V1 running dd-wrt. If you feel adventurous, you could flash it with dd-wrt and see if that helps. The instructions are here.
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All these SIP servers, configurations, firewalls, and nonsense. You guys should just install Fongo on a smartphone and be done with it. Or TextNow. Or one of the many other options out there.
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SickBeast wrote: All these SIP servers, configurations, firewalls, and nonsense. You guys should just install Fongo on a smartphone and be done with it.
:facepalm:

Kintaromk2 is using Fongo Mobile over Wi-Fi. And if you don't think Fongo Mobile is using SIP, please tell us what protocol you think it's using.
(I'll give you a hint: it's SIP). SIP is one of the most common VoIP protocols used. Changing apps (or services) isn't going to change the fact that SIP ALG is buggy in that router, and there's no way to disable it without switching to third party firmware.
Kintaromk2 wrote: since switching to Fongo on ios, I've noticed a problem where incoming calls will not come through and have narrowed the problem down to my current router
Last edited by Guest1284983 on Sep 20th, 2016 12:31 am, edited 5 times in total.
Please do not PM me for tech support. I help out on the forums when I can. Thank you.
OBi200/202 Freephonline PDF guide (version 1.60) can be found here. OBi200 info can be found here. For OBi202 info, click here.
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Chookman wrote: Just to let you know, I am using Freephoneline at one place on my ac68u and at another place with my ac87u without issue. I've never had to forward any ports or disable any firewalls etc. I am, however, using Merlin's firmware but it should not matter if you use the stock firmware.
Right. It doesn't matter. Asus' SIP Passthrough (which is SIP ALG) feature doesn't break Fongo Mobile, Fongo Home Phone, nor Freephoneline.
BTW, back in the day I had a wrt160n running Freephoneline without issue but mine was a V1 running dd-wrt.
Yeah, dd-wrt doesn't have SIP ALG.
Please do not PM me for tech support. I help out on the forums when I can. Thank you.
OBi200/202 Freephonline PDF guide (version 1.60) can be found here. OBi200 info can be found here. For OBi202 info, click here.
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Jan 15, 2016
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Vancouver, BC
Thanks for all your replies. went and got the RT-68u today and everything works fine with fongo on ios receiving calls through wifi.

Although an unintended side effect is that my old samsung R522 (wireless N) is now acting funny with the new router. whenever you try to load a page it times out. I'll disconnect and reconnect, and then pages will load slowly, and eventually start to time out again. I'm guessing it is this laptop, since its pretty old now.
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Good choice for the original RT-68U. I am using a poor man's RT-68U, a modded refurbished ea6900 with modded cfe and XWRT-VORTEX which is a port of Asuswrt-Merlin by vortex. Very solid.
Jr. Member
Jan 15, 2016
159 posts
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Vancouver, BC
Kintaromk2 wrote: Thanks for all your replies. went and got the RT-68u today and everything works fine with fongo on ios receiving calls through wifi.

Although an unintended side effect is that my old samsung R522 (wireless N) is now acting funny with the new router. whenever you try to load a page it times out. I'll disconnect and reconnect, and then pages will load slowly, and eventually start to time out again. I'm guessing it is this laptop, since its pretty old now.
after some googling, I found out that if you disable NAT acceleration, everything turns out okay. so that was apparently the problem with the 2.4ghz signals with my Laptop (wireless N). I also downgraded the firmware to 380.3264 initially but that did nothing. So NAT acceleration was doing something funny with 2.4GHz

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