Has the Ooma Hub been kicking my modem offline?

[pmrp]

Hello,

I was having issues with my Cisco DPC 3000 modem getting kicked offline repeatedly throughout the day. I thought it was a Comcast issue and on many occasions had them troubleshoot just about every angle they could (modems, lines, connectors, etc). After all their visits, I was still having the same sporadic issues. Then I started to suspect the Ooma hub as the culprit for my problems. Up until today, my setup was as follows: Modem > Ooma hub > Airport Extreme wireless router > Computer etc. I had the Ooma handling QoS/NAT and my router was simply acting as a bridge.

I then began to research the forums and noticed many people had instead placed the Ooma behind the router. Although my router does not have QoS, I read my faster speeds (DS: 15–20mbps, US: 3–5mbps) may make it a moot point. So today I tried Modem > AE router > Ooma + Computer and so far (past 6 hours) the modem has stayed online. The router now shares a public IP address using DHCP and NAT. Was this the cause of my problems and how so?

The only issue with this setup is I can no longer access the Ooma's settings (setup.ooma.com no longer works and I can't seem to log onto its new 10.0.1.x IP either). Is this a proper setup or have I made a mess of it all and should revert to something else? Please advise; I just want a consistent and secure connection.

Thanks in advance,
—Peter

[murphy]

Hello,

I was having issues with my Cisco DPC 3000 modem getting kicked offline repeatedly throughout the day. I thought it was a Comcast issue and on many occasions had them troubleshoot just about every angle they could (modems, lines, connectors, etc). After all their visits, I was still having the same sporadic issues. Then I started to suspect the Ooma hub as the culprit for my problems. Up until today, my setup was as follows: Modem > Ooma hub > Airport Extreme wireless router > Computer etc. I had the Ooma handling QoS/NAT and my router was simply acting as a bridge.

I then began to research the forums and noticed many people had instead placed the Ooma behind the router. Although my router does not have QoS, I read my faster speeds (DS: 15–20mbps, US: 3–5mbps) may make it a moot point. So today I tried Modem > AE router > Ooma + Computer and so far (past 6 hours) the modem has stayed online. The router now shares a public IP address using DHCP and NAT. Was this the cause of my problems and how so?

The only issue with this setup is I can no longer access the Ooma's settings (setup.ooma.com no longer works and I can't seem to log onto its new 10.0.1.x IP either). Is this a proper setup or have I made a mess of it all and should revert to something else? Please advise; I just want a consistent and secure connection.

Thanks in advance,
—Peter

To access setup.ooma.com you have to connect a computer to the Ooma's Home port. If it's a wireless laptop, you also have to disable the wireless radio. There is a "trick" to access it from the Ooma's WAN side but even though I came up with it I now think it's a bad idea because too many people have installed the "trick" and then later moved their Ooma back in front of their router and left the "trick" in place which exposes the Ooma setup page to everyone on the internet.

[Rebel]

After 6 months of good service from ooma with Comcast I decided that there was no way I was ever going back to DSL so I may as well stop spending $5/mo to rent my modem and bought a new DOCSIS 3.0 Motorola SB6120. Immediately my ooma hub freaked out and the service became very unreliable. Everything was installed exactly as it had been before with modem->ooma->router->computers.

The ooma would run fine for a few hours and then loose contact with the mothership. Not only that, but it would stop forwarding traffic to my router/computers. Probably 5-7 times over a 10-day span I had to reboot the modem and the hub, sometimes several times, in order to regain connectivity. I though for sure it was my new modem. I made several calls to Comcast and each time of course they claimed it was NOT their fault and that my modem was working perfectly well.

Alas, I ended up plugging the ooma hub into the router (modem->router->ooma/computers) and all the problems disappeared. After 5 days of excellent service I plugged things in the old way and the same frustrations returned.
Bottom line is, if you Comcast and a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, you’ll probably have better reliability with the ooma hub behind a router. On the rare occasion that I need to access setup.ooma.com I just plug my PC directly into the ooma.

BTW, I have not found that that I needed any QOS enabled on my router to maintain clear phone calls on my 15Mbps/3Mbps connection, even when doing very heaving downloading (torrents, etc.).

[murphy]

Connect a computer to the Ooma Home port
Connect to http://setup.ooma.com
Click on Network
Click on the radio button for Use built in MAC address
Click on update
Turn off modem, ooma, router.
Turn on modem and wait for sync with Comcast (Top 4 lights on solid)
Turn on Ooma and wait for boot completion
Turn on router.

[Rebel]

Connect a computer to the Ooma Home port
Connect to http://setup.ooma.com
Click on Network
Click on the radio button for Use built in MAC address
Click on update
Turn off modem, ooma, router.
Turn on modem and wait for sync with Comcast (Top 4 lights on solid)
Turn on Ooma and wait for boot completion
Turn on router.

First thing I did when I tried troubleshooting was to search this sight and I came a across this "fix". Unfortunately it did nothing for my problem.

Comcast DHCP was spitting out 2 different IP addresses. Whenever I got one of them ooma wouldn't sync. The other one would sometimes work, sometimes not. Both always worked without any problems on my computers. There is definately a minor bug either in Comcast's firmware (intentional?) that they push onto the modem when they configure it or in the ooma hub. Things are rock solid with the hub behind the router though.

[pmrp]

Excellent answers everyone. Thank you. I'm glad to hear that the modem->router->ooma arrangement seems to be ideal for my situation. And yes you're right: in the rare chance I need to go into the ooma settings, I'll plug my laptop into the Home port. Speaking of ooma settings, now that it's behind the router, should I disable the upstream QoS or leave it as-is?

I'll keep a close eye on this and post any updates were needed. This forum rocks . Thanks again,
—Peter

[Rebel]

QOS on the hub won't do anything if it isn't passing traffic anymore. You can disable it or leave it as is. Either way it won't make any difference.