It's been a while since I sent a fax from our Vonage line so my memory
is murky; however, I could never get our fax to work on our vonage line
until I stumbled across an obscure kb article from their site that
suggested dialing a prefix prior to sending a fax.  It was something
like *77 or *23 (that's the part that's murky).  Their techs insisted
that it was no longer necessary, but I couldn't get it to work otherwise
so the term "necessary" seemed to fit the situation.  Anyway, I would
try that first.  I would also suggest port forwarding / nating all the
SIP ports to your ATA -- I know that Vonage will tell you it's not
necessary any more, but my voice quality was awful until I did (see
above for Vonage's interpretation of necessary).  

Here is my nat table for vonage:

 WAN  	 UDP  	 5061   	 10.10.10.200
(ext.: edited out) 	5061  	vonage1  	
[edit rule]
	
		WAN 	UDP 	10000 - 20000 	10.10.10.200
(ext.: edited out) 	10000 - 20000 	vonage2  	
[edit rule]
	
		WAN 	UDP 	123 (NTP) 	10.10.10.200
(ext.: edited out) 	123 (NTP) 	vonage3  	
[edit rule]
	
		WAN 	UDP 	53 (DNS) 	10.10.10.200
(ext.: edited out) 	53 (DNS) 	vonage4  	
[edit rule]
	
		WAN 	UDP 	69  	10.10.10.200
(ext.: edited out) 	69  	vonage5  	
[edit rule]
	

If you need me to do the legwork for that kb article, let me know and
I'll dig it up this weekend.

jason

-----Original Message-----
From: David W. Hess [mailto:dwhess at banishedsouls dot org] 
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 7:40 PM
To: m0n0wall at lists dot m0n0 dot ch
Subject: Re: [m0n0wall] Trouble with VoIP and AC Nielsen's Homescan
consumer panel

Vonage is suppose to support the various modem and fax data standards
when run in 90 kbit/s mode and at least for some types of calls is
suppose to automagically switch to this mode.  Personally, I have never
been able to NOT use the 90 kbit/s mode so fax and modem connections
have not been a problem for me.

You can dedicate a specific amount of bandwidth to Vonage by using a
second set of traffic shaper queues but from your description it sounds
like the problem is with the cable ISP.

On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 09:46:56 -0700, you wrote:

>A bit after I switched for DSL to cable (8Mb down, 1.5Mb up--w00t!), I 
>also switched my phone service to Vonage.  Good price, but I've been 
>having some problems with sound quality.  Half the time when we are 
>talking to someone they say that it sounds like we are talking under 
>water, and we've been having some trouble transmitting from our 
>Homescan handheld device.  For those who don't know (most everyone) AC 
>Nielsen (the same people who do TV
>ratings) have a program called the "Homescan Consumer Panel".  In this 
>they send you a handheld bar code scanner, and you scan everything that
you buy.
>On the body of the scanner there is an acoustic coupler speaker cup, 
>and to transmit you call their 800 number, press the speaker against 
>the phone's microphone and press OK.  It than makes a standard modem 
>type connection, and transmits all the data that it has collected since
it last transmitted.
>We usually don't have a problem with transmitting, but lately we just 
>haven't been able to get the data through.  At first I thought it was 
>because a Bit-Torrent client was running on our network, but even with 
>all the computers turned off, we still can't get it through.  I already

>have traffic shaper going, but I was wondering if it would be possible 
>to partition off a specific amount of bandwidth for the Vonage adapter
itself?
>I have the call quality set at 90 Kbps and Vonage is heavily preferred 
>(weighted at 100 with the highest anything else being at 13).
>
>Any suggestions would be great--I'll send out my config file in the 
>next two e-mails (30000 bytes limit).
>
>Thanks--
>
>Richard