You know, sometimes you really do have to dumb it right down to ID10T level – that im afraid is a lesson that I should have remembered from my old company when I was working with some of the people there.
I guess sometimes I look at things far too technically – for example for the past 4 days I’ve been trying to unlock a TA612V Netgear VOIP adapter as I found a couple on eBay cheap. I suggested to the silver fox that he should get one to replace his dodgy ATA device that has been playing up.
While the TA612V is a old bit of kit, I have had one sat in my comms room linked up to my Sipgate service running with no problems for years.
So, 2 TA612V`s turn up for me to find that they are brand new and locked to Sipgate. Not a problem as that is who I want to use it with. Sadly they no longer support the TA612V and have no config files or L2 passwords for them. OH!
So I spend time looking for a way to unlock them. I went searching for a way to get a L2 password and found a few instructions how to get them. I spend the next 2 days researching and soldering wires on the the pcb to establish a com connection, only to find that I had the wrong cable.
So new cable ordered I thought I would leave it for a bit, but then found a 3rd TA612V in my broadband equipment box, which amazingly was unlocked.
I configured it to use the details of the Silver Fox`s VOIP connection, which took a few tries as it seems the specifics were different from mine. Finally I got it configured and it went off and connected. I tested a phone call but found that I could not hear the other end.
So I changed IP addresses and put it in place of my box and plugged the phone in and turned it on. My firewall was set to point certain traffic to my TA612V so I guess that was the issue. After it connected I made another phone call and got the same problem. So I compared configs to make sure that nothing was different, but they were exactly the same. I then changed the settings back to my account and tried that – still the same problem.
I then put my box back on and let that boot up, only to find that the same problem was happening! How could that be, as I had not changed anything on my TA612V.
So, what the hell was wrong? Maybe the TA612V was blocked as I had been swapping 2 of them around?
I left the TA612V to `settle down` for a few hours but it made no difference!
I left the TA612V off all night but it made no difference!
Maybe my firewall had got confused – rebooted it but no different!
I then spoke to the Silver Fox who told me that his TA612V worked fine, not only could he hear other people and they hear him but he had his working behind his firewall with no ports open??
By this time I had lost the plot and was ready to go back to the fast food industry, when I had a thought – let me try the landline phone on the TA612V instead of the phone i have plugged into it.
The rest you can guess!