Saturday, January 28, 2006
Vonage troubles
I have been having a hard time for the last couple of days with my home internet connection. I stopped being able to access Slashdot (and Sourceforge) and some of the pages on Rediff. I also could not connect to the Google cache and Google connectivity became erratic. I tried a couple of things myself, without luck.
I called up Vonage and spoke to a couple of their support people in India. They tried their best - changing DNS settings, rebooting the machine, rebooting their router etc. But nothing worked.
Finally they put me through to some guy here in the US who asked me to do pretty much the same things. But when I told him that the ping round-trip times are 60-odd seconds when I connect the computer directly to the cable modem, but 90 seconds when I connect through the Vonage box, he gave up.
He said the Motorola Vonage box is most likely the cause of trouble and he can do nothing about it whatsoever. Plus, the box is out of warranty and a new box would cost $100. And that they can't do anything until Monday morning.
Conclusions:
- If you're using Vonage, try this asap: First, connect your computer directly to your cable/DSL modem and ping google.com. Record the round-trip time. Then, connect your computer to the Vonage router and the Vonage router to your cable/DSL modem, and then try pinging google.com again. If the round-trip is significantly more (90ms vs 60ms, for example), contact Vonage and get your modem replaced asap.
- Vonage's Indian customer service operation is good but not very experienced; US customer service operation is smart, but rude
I have gotten rid of the Vonage modem right now. But I still can't connect to Slashdot or Sourceforge. Wonder what's wrong there.
