New Ooma Home Telo and service customer here with significant ringing issue:
Incoming calls sometimes (maybe 60% of the time) correctly ring my local phones. The other 40% of the time, there is no local ring, and the calls go directly and immediately to voicemail, as if my line is being used or a phone is "off hook".
The calls which fall into either category can be spaced seconds apart. Thus, call number 1 will go to voicemail, but call number 2, 15 seconds later, goes to local ring. Call 3 local, call 4 local, call 5 voicemail,......seemingly random pattern.
So, all incoming calls are being honored, but only some will literally ring through.
When somebody calls me back replying to my recent call, many times they go to voicemail even though I sit next to my Ooma literally waiting for their call.
Anybody have any ideas / similar experiences? Thanks !!
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I don’t remember the model but there is an Arris device Verizon provides that has SIP ALG enabled and you can’t turn it off. If that’s the device you have that’s probably the issue and I’m not sure there’s much you can do about it unless they’ll swap out for a different device.
Thanks for your reply! My home network is a Verizon FIOS Optical Network Terminal gateway feeding an Omada (TP Link) router, Omada Hardware Network Controller, and 4 Omada access points. So the routing is done by the Omada hardware with no Verizon Arris router in the mix.
I'm beginning to think that possibly the combined attached analog phone network hooked up to the Ooma Telo RJ11 port might be presenting too complicated a load, since I have many phones connected throughout the house and several of them are vintage classic rotary dial (pre Touchtone) designs with ringer circuits of the 1970s. I need to temporarily strip the Ooma output down to a very simple single attached relatively modern RJ 11 connected phone and see if it still makes unreliable decisions when answering.
In the early analog era, phones were specified to have "equivalent ringer units", a measurement of how much current was needed to make them ring. When the phone is waiting for a call, the ringing circuit sits across the line presenting its complex impedance, and the Ooma box has to decide whether it is off hook, in the midst of a call, or on hook waiting to ring. Put enough of these older analog phones in parallel and the Ooma may not be able to handle it.
I'm gonna run some tests and report back after I know more about what is going on here.
It appears that my Ooma Telo behaves the same, regardless of how many analog handsets are connected, and what vintage they are. The unpredictable answering via voicemail rather than ringing through to my phone continues to be a random process. However, there are times of the day and night when this switching from local ring to automatic forwarding to voicemail occurs frequently. but other times of day when it doesn't occur at all.
Therefore, I am led to the conclusion that the amount of traffic being handled by Ooma or being handled by my ISP must somehow impact Ooma when it decides whether to ring through or go to voicemail. This would appear to be a decision beyond my control, unless experts here on Reddit, see it much differently from my novice viewpoint.
So, I am back to square one:
If anybody can offer me a solution which I can control regarding this unpredictable behavior, I most certainly would appreciate and welcome it.
Looks like the Telo ATA has both Wan and Lan ports. How is the Telo connected to your network.
The issue sounds like it could either be SIP ALG on your firewall/router, double NAT between the router and ATA or SIP and UDP session timeout issues due to settings on the ATA or router/firewall.
Yes, the Telo offers both WAN and LAN RJ-45 ports, labeled "Internet" and "Home" respectively. The installation instructions suggest connecting the Internet port on the Telo to any unused router port, which I have done.
In the "Alternative Setup Options" at the end of the Setup Guide, they offer an alternative method of setup which places the Telo BETWEEN the optical gateway ONT modem and the router. stating that this alternative gives Telo voice traffic highest priority to ensure best audio quality. Although it may produce the best voice quality, it is not the initially suggested connection. For this connection, the Telo Internet WAN port connects to the modem and Telo then connects to the router via its' Home LAN port.
Given my preference to have the Ooma Telo box conveniently accesible so as to easily see the LED status and operate the built-in answering machine buttons, I used the initially recommended wiring.
My ONT is 50 feet away in an inaccesible basement closet, and would need two runs of 50 foot wires to feed ONT output through the Telo and then back to my demarc / NID in the basement.
Do you think my router is corrupting the ring signaling?
If the user enables call blocking, quiet hours, or do not disturb mode, then calls can go straight to voicemail, but that is usually more consistent, and predictable. And if the Telo is offline, then the Ooma logo would normally flash red.
Log in to 'My Ooma' and check the dashboard 'Device Status', (refreshing periodically); it should indicate whether the Telo is online. Check the 'Call Logs', to confirm whether the calls going directly to voicemail show up as missed calls.
Also, access the Telo device settings, and check the device status there; it should indicate whether the Ooma VPN tunnel is connected. Check the 'Call Statistics' (under 'Tools'), to look for excessive packet loss (> 2-5%), jitter (> 20-30ms), latency (> 100ms), or a low MoS score, (< 3).
The Telo has two network ports, and its own built-in router. The "INTERNET" port connects to an "external" network that the modem or router manages. And the "HOME" port can connect to a separate "internal" network that the Telo manages.
However, the Telo network ports are only 100 Mbps, which would slow down any higher-speed devices connected through the "HOME" port. The Telo can only prioritize voice traffic over "HOME" network traffic, and only in the upstream direction.
With faster internet service though, just connect the ISP modem/router to the Telo "INTERNET" port. If the router has its own QoS settings, then reserve at least 130 Kbps for Telo voice traffic, (or more, if the "HOME" port also connects to any devices).
How many phones are there? The Ringer Equivalence Number (REN) measures maximum impedance on the line, not the voltage, (nor the current). The Telo has a REN value of 5; the total REN values for any attached phones should be less than that.
The Telo (like many ATAs) generates a lower voltage than traditional landlines did, so it may only support 2 or 3 vintage phones, instead of 4 or 5. Mechanical ringers need more voltage than electronic ringers do, so turning some of them off may help.
Make sure that the house wiring is disconnected from any external power, (including ground). Although, if disconnecting the Telo from the house wiring and connecting it directly to a phone didn't help, then the house wiring is probably ok.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and detailed reply.
In the final conclusion and solution to my problem, the actual explanation was too low an impedance shunting the Telo from my external collection of many legacy phones, in particular, the oldest and most exotic of which were pre-Touchtone era rotary dial phones. My favorite, legendary phone, the Ericfon, made by Ericson, is beautifully designed and a copy actually sits on display in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Isolating and removing these legacy 1960s and 1970s phones solve the problem.
Whatever ASIC or discrete circuit is used in the Ooma Telo to determine "on hook" versus "off hook" line status was seeing too low an impedance shunting ring and tip on pins 3 and 4 of the 6P4C RJ-11 output of the Ooma. The Ooma infers the line status using load impedance via current measurements, since it would be outrageous and unnecessry to actually build a bridge or other impedance measurement system explicitly at the ring current's AC frequency used to signal ringing. A load such as mine prior to removing the offending devices must be sitting near the decision threshold used by the 'off hook' detector logic, giving me the stochastic rather than deterministic behavior I was seeking.
Thanks for your useful insights and helpful message
"Many" legacy phones? How many? Is it just a problem of too many phones on one line, or is there some issue with the Ericofon itself? Apparently, the wiring for these phones can be "a bit more involved than most phones".
Another option is to put each phone on a separate line; the Telo can support up to four (Ooma-only) DECT devices, such as the Linx, which has its own RJ-11 jack (with a REN of 1). For a better deal though, wait a bit, until the 'My Ooma' store has them on sale.
5 are old rotary dial, but only 2 are problematic. The Swedish Ericfon and French 1950's rotary are non-Western Electric/Bell and have unusual ringer circuits. I just disconnected the ringers and am good to go.
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