SunRocket VoIP *Everybody is reporting that this is DEAD!* (Free phones, extra number, etc.)

[gcy]

Have had service for 2 months with the only problem when comcast went offline, had to reset everything. sound is very good and.
:beer:

 

[Robor]

Got home about an hour ago and my service was back up. I didn't do a thing since it wasn't working earlier. Maybe it's just bad luck here... :-/

 

[Robor]

Hey, I just checked the Sunrocket site to call about my phone number being from a Virgina area code and noticed they're offering 5.8Ghz phones. When did that change? I've got the 2.4Ghz phones with mine.

 

[Robor]

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Called Sunrocket and talked to their obviously foreign based (poor English speaking) tech. I explain the situation. He fails to understand either me or my problem. I try again and he puts me on hold. He comes back and asks the same questions. During the time I'm explaining the situation again we get disconnected. I attempt to call back and of course have no dial tone. I reboot my gizmo and no VIOP light. I take the other unopened Gizmo they sent me (yes - I have 2 now) and connect it. I get a flashing red Run light. I check my router settings and drop it's IP in the DMZ and reboot everything. Same deal. I connect it directly to my cable modem and same deal.

This is *NOT* a problem with my setup or internet connection. This is a Sunrocket problem.

 

[RideFree]

"The $199 deal for 2 years is still alive, and may become a staple. Perhaps soon its time to update the thread title again, Ridefree. "
Work! Work! Work!

 

[RideFree]

Originally posted by: TheTurk
WARNING Forummates;

...Sound quality is terrible.
Forget abour calling customer service, they are all deaf.

Sunrocket is CHEAP not INEXPENSIVE.

My S/R phones are so clear that sometimes the peeps on the other end have to ask, "If I'm still there?"
AND, everybody knows, I calls it the way I sees it!

The only time calls are not crystal clear for me is when I'm connected to some Packet8 folks.

The Ride don't hawk sh!t!

 

[ttown]

Robor - forgive me if you've already been through all this...

but have you tried running a speed test?
Like this, from dslreports

or pinging sunrocket.com to see what you get?

I think you've ruled out a gizmo problem -- since your trouble remains even after replacing it.
There's 3 other pieces to the puzzle:
1) sunrocket
2) your isp
3) your router

Have you tried eliminating your router from the picture? (not that you want to, but just for trouble-shooting)

When I ping sr, i get <100ms consistently. I've monitored my (old) gizmo in detail, and can imagine that significantly longer pings, or wildly varying ping times could cause problems like what you describe. If you're on cable (non-guaranteed service level) it may be that you're on a very crowded network segment (eg: all your neighbors are running multiple bittorents/filesharing services/etc).

Except for the spots of national downtime -- I (and i think most) haven't had the problems you describe -- so I'm doubting it's a SR problem, per se. I don't know the details behind the technology, but I'm guessing there's significant configuration/routing issues relating to voip in general -- so in that sense, it may very well be completely on SR.

It seems like if you can get to a point where you can definately say it's NOT isp/'internet' routing related, and is NOT your router, and is NOT your gizmo -- you can relay that info to a knowlegable (not front-line) technician at SR to get the problem fixed.

 

[RideFree]

Pinging sunrocket.com [67.133.234.53] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 67.133.234.53: bytes=32 time=96ms TTL=239
Reply from 67.133.234.53: bytes=32 time=98ms TTL=239
Reply from 67.133.234.53: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=239
Reply from 67.133.234.53: bytes=32 time=78ms TTL=239

Ping statistics for 67.133.234.53:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 78ms, Maximum = 101ms, Average = 93ms

From the Command Prompt, run the command "ping sunrocket.com >c:\sr.txt" (less the quotes, of course).
You can post the results here as per the above...

 

[SoulAssassin]

anyone else call to renew for $99/yr? My parents have SR as well and said the CSR's gave them a hard time but they got it. I have not gotten a confirmation email from billing but it is the weekend so I'm not sweating it yet.

 

[EDiT]

Quick question: the topic says 2 year deal includes phones, but the link on this page doesn't mention it. Do we have to call to get the 2 years + phones?

 

[Robor]

I don't think it's my network. I've got 10 down / 1 up cable. My download is usually a little faster than this but here's my test results...

robor007@HOME-T42-UBUNTU:~$ ping sunrocket.com
PING sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53): icmp_seq=1 ttl=239 time=39.5 ms64 bytes from www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53): icmp_seq=2 ttl=239 time=38.0 ms64 bytes from www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53): icmp_seq=3 ttl=239 time=40.6 ms64 bytes from www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53): icmp_seq=4 ttl=239 time=38.8 ms64 bytes from www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53): icmp_seq=5 ttl=239 time=39.4 ms64 bytes from www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53): icmp_seq=6 ttl=239 time=39.2 ms64 bytes from www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53): icmp_seq=7 ttl=239 time=40.1 ms64 bytes from www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53): icmp_seq=8 ttl=239 time=39.1 ms64 bytes from www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53): icmp_seq=9 ttl=239 time=38.4 ms64 bytes from www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53): icmp_seq=10 ttl=239 time=40.4 ms

--- sunrocket.com ping statistics ---
11 packets transmitted, 10 received, 9% packet loss, time 10014ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 38.011/39.374/40.604/0.802 ms
robor007@HOME-T42-UBUNTU:~$

dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-04-02 20:07:01 EST:
5422 / 924
Your download speed : 5422 kbps or 677.8 KB/sec.
That is 41.8% better than an average user on rr.com

Your upload speed : 924 kbps or 115.5 KB/sec.
That is 100.8% better than an average user on rr.com

Earlier when I was having problems I plugged the gizmo directly into the cable modem and was still getting the flashing red Run light and no VOIP. I put it back behind my router in the DMZ and nothing again. I gave up and used my cell. When I left this morning my VOIP light was off. When I came back this evening it was on. Again, I did nothing.

Also, earlier this morning I placed a call to a friend. It dropped after about 10 minutes and no dial tone when I tried to call back. The same thing happened when I called Sunrocket tech support (which couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand him). I'm pretty much ready to go back to POTS or just stick with my cell phone.

 

[ttown]

11 packets transmitted, 10 received, 9% packet loss, time 10014ms

Robor... although your ping times are excellent and you definately have the up/down capacity for voip, with room to spare -- a 9% packet loss is horrible.
To me, that explains it -- although you might have trouble doing anything about it.

Try doing a tracert www.sunrocket.com from the command line. You'll see responses back showing a "trace" of the route your pings take.
If you see " * "'s toward the top of the list -- the problem is close to you. If you see asterisks on the line that reports sunrocket.com, or the one immediatly before it -- the problem is at sunrocket.
If you see an asterisk before you see a response from your ISP's network, the problem is with your router (or other device between you and the modem).

If you see the asterisk in the middle -- the problem is mid-stream. I have no idea what I'd do at that point -- since it's neither at you isp's network, nor in sunrocket's control.
I'd guess in that case you're SOL -- but maybe an experienced sys-admin can chime in with tips on what to do next.

If you do the command repeatedly with different results, that would indicate a wire issue. Try replacing the network wire(s) between the gizmo and the cable outlet. Also, double check that all cables are firmly plugged in at every point.
The one time in my life I had packet loss like yours -- it turned out to be a failing network card. But since you've had the issue with both gizmo's -- that seems very unlikely. Unless it's your router or modem, or your ISP's equiptment.

Hope this helps.

edit: another thing to note about tracert: I can get to sunrocket in 12 hops. More hops --> bad; few hops --> good.

 

[stuman74]

quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by: Project86
Also, another question: Does Sunrocket have an option to auto forward my calls if the system is down? I know vonage and some others have it, I can't seem to find it on SR.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



They have find me, which forwards your calls to another # if no one answers at the first #

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


That's not quite the same though. I currently have Vonage for 2 years and am considering switching to SunRocket. With the outage complaints that I am reading, I think I really need this feature (that Vonage has) if the network or my cable or power goes out.

 

[Robor]

I didn't catch the 9% packet loss. That is pretty nasty. But still, I had Vonage without any call drop issues and clarity was equal to Sunrocket. Plus, I'm having issues with or without the router in place so I don't think that's the problem. I've got it in the DMZ so it shouldn't be blocking anything. Here's my traceroute...

robor007@HOME-T42-UBUNTU:~$ traceroute sunrocket.com
traceroute to sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 192.168.168.69 (192.168.168.69) 4.093 ms 1.432 ms 3.188 ms
2 10.97.176.1 (10.97.176.1) 7.292 ms 6.680 ms 12.851 ms
3 653214hfc254.tampabay.res.rr.com (65.32.14.254) 10.532 ms 7.957 ms 8.396 ms
4 pos6-0-OC-192.tampflerl-rtr3.tampabay.rr.com (65.32.8.133) 17.963 ms 8.018 ms 10.003 ms
5 pop1-tby-P3-0.atdn.net (66.185.136.57) 13.289 ms 8.830 ms 7.981 ms
6 bb2-tby-P0-2.atdn.net (66.185.136.166) 9.949 ms 8.955 ms 10.551 ms
7 bb1-atm-P2-0.atdn.net (66.185.152.186) 28.589 ms 24.026 ms 20.439 ms
8 pop1-atm-P0-0.atdn.net (66.185.147.193) 21.937 ms 23.020 ms 22.243 ms
9 atl-brdr-04.inet.qwest.net (65.112.33.129) 27.819 ms 21.590 ms 22.272 ms
10 atl-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.21.170) 21.415 ms 21.928 ms 21.523 ms11 dcx-core-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.8.222) 38.269 ms 37.695 ms 37.539 ms
12 dcx-edge-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.251.14) 48.247 ms 38.285 ms 37.371 ms13 67.133.246.194 (67.133.246.194) 39.000 ms 37.704 ms 37.908 ms
14 www.sunrocket.com (67.133.234.53) 39.455 ms 39.094 ms 39.417 ms

The traceroute looks okay. No major lag along the way. I dunno. My download speed should be about 2x that so I think I'm going to call RoadRunner and see if they can check out my signal. I'll find out and see what happens.

As always - thanks for the help!

 

[astrosfan90]

Originally posted by: stuman74
With the outage complaints that I am reading, I think I really need this feature (that Vonage has) if the network or my cable or power goes out.

Honestly, the outages are very infrequent. And it seems like the recent ones have been for the most part local, as I haven't noticed any at all (though I don't use my SunRocket every single day) in a few months.


And Robor, sheesh, that really stinks you're still having trouble. I'm glad some other folks in this thread know what all that gibberish means and can help you with it though.

Hopefully RR can help you find a solution of some sort!

 

[georgepa]

stuman74-

The feature would be nice to have, but it is not as critical or useful as one may assume.

When the VOIP provider has a network problem, the feature does NOT work. Never has, never will, for any provider. They are down completely, and so is that feature. There is lots of evidence from numerous outages - from Vonage to P8 to ATT CallVantage - as proof of that.

Power outage is a certain concern, but a decent battery backup covers you in almost any case imaginable, for hours on end. Most don't have catastrophic power outages that are crippling to the point where the battery backup would not be enough.

Leaves an ISP outage, in which case the feature would be helpful. Of course it will forward to voicemail after about 20 to 30 minutes of it going to dead-air. There are also workaround tricks such as setting up the Find-Me-Forwarding that was mentioned.

All in all not a big concern in real practice for most, but would be nice to get added as a feature, no doubt.

 

[ttown]

Try the tracert command many times. That the gizmo works for some time and then quits makes it sound like things "sometimes" fail -- but not always.

I know that the gizmo 'registers' itself constantly (~once per 40 seconds) -- so if the acknowledgment response doesn't get back to SR in time, I'll guess their network puts you on a 'device disconnected' list and quits trying to register you for some time. The gizmo may also quit trying to register if it "thinks" SR is unreachable (or gets an incomplete registration response). I've seen it adjust the registering time -- so that explains why it (eventually) comes back. (I don't remember how many seconds it gets adjusted to) I know back in the July05 outtages, it didn't take much of a delay to bring service to a halt. (or at least inconsistent) They fixed that -- i hear with upgraded network hardware -- but maybe your case is something similar.

If you don't get anywhere with RR, you could mention the results of all your tests to a "level 3" SR tech and maybe there are settings at their end (or in your gizmo's config file) they can tweak to make it less sensitive.

Seperately, does your modem ever drop off randomly? Mine did soon after I got cable -- and it turned out to be rain damage to some connection box a couple blocks away. It was very severe -- up for 5 minutes, down for 20, up for 5, etc.... A cable guy came and put a signal meter on my line -- and easily diagnosed the problem.

 

[ttown]

Seperately....

Any tips on getting the 2nd year $99 deal?

I was just shot down 2 for 2 when I called on an unrelated billing issue.
1st person, totally inept at helping me -- could only repeat my problem to me, several times.
2nd person, understood my issue, and fixed my subscription -- including a credit and change to the service plan I renewed for. (I'll see it she actually fixed it tomorrow... when I just logged in, my account still showed the wrong plan... but I'll give some leeway for processing time)

Both told me the $99 deal expired yesterday -- and they wouldn't give.

 

[plasticfish]

I am getting a 3.8 on the test from testyourvoip.com....am I going to have problems?

 

[astrosfan90]

Originally posted by: ttown
Seperately....

Any tips on getting the 2nd year $99 deal?

I was just shot down 2 for 2 when I called on an unrelated billing issue.
1st person, totally inept at helping me -- could only repeat my problem to me, several times.
2nd person, understood my issue, and fixed my subscription -- including a credit and change to the service plan I renewed for. (I'll see it she actually fixed it tomorrow... when I just logged in, my account still showed the wrong plan... but I'll give some leeway for processing time)

Both told me the $99 deal expired yesterday -- and they wouldn't give.

$99? Hold the bus, you sure you don' mean $199?

 

[georgepa]

astrofan-

You missed all the excitement. Starting Sat. morning there was a $199 for 2 yrs. deal. They also had for existing customers a $99 add-on year. I guess both ran simultaneously and both died at the same time.


ttown-

I would not worry about it too much. Expect them to run this thing again and again, at the very latest come Christmas time, but probably much sooner than that. Then you can get that extra year for $99 at that point. At least in my humble opinion.

 

[plasticfish]

just signed up today. If I did not setup a second # do I have to call to set one up?

 

[EvilYoda]

So our contract's up in May I guess...$99 for another year? If we can get that then there's no wondering what we'll do about phone service.

 

[georgepa]

HOT DEAL on a 2 Uniden Cordless Speakerphone set w. built-in answering machine:

http://www.staples.com/webapp/wcs/store...d=-1&productId=145842&cmArea=spotlight

Offer expires 4-8

$29.95 after rebate, free shipping (if you add paperclips.)

This phone is compatible with the Uniden 646s extra handsets.

Compared to the 646 this phone set features these add-ons:

- Integrated Digital Answering Machine at Base
- Base Speakerphone in addition to Speakerphone on the 2 handsets
- Do Not Disturb Setting
- Call Waiting Deluxe (at touch of a button place caller on hold, send them to voicemail or conference them into current call)
- 4-Way Conferencing (2 Handsets+ Base + Outside Call)
- Hold Button on Base
- Mute Button on Base
- New Message Waiting Indicator with Alert Tone Option
- Intercom from the base set in addition to the two handsets
- Ringer Off Option
- Record Conversation Capability (up to 10 minutes)
- Memo Record


The manual:

Manual


I just ordered this set. Can't beat the price, and it is an upgrade to the set SR shipped with the service. I have a couple of extra sets SR shipped me kindly, but they'll be fleabayed.

 

[astrosfan90]

Originally posted by: georgepa
astrofan-

You missed all the excitement. Starting Sat. morning there was a $199 for 2 yrs. deal. They also had for existing customers a $99 add-on year. I guess both ran simultaneously and both died at the same time.

Gah! How'd I miss that??? Man, I go out and have fun on Friday night, relax on Saturday, and I miss everything!

Hey, random question. Is there a way to set the Unidens as an alarm clock?