Elk M1 phone communication not working on vonage

[amacphee]

I know there are a bunch of topics like this but I cannot find an answer to this problem.

I am using vonage VOIP and I am having trouble connecting my M1 to the central station. I hooked up a lineman's handset to listen in and it dials out fine and I hear the central station tones but the M1 just ignores it and keeps trying to dial. I do hear what seems like some faint humming when the Elk picks up but I am not sure if that has anything to do with it. I am not having any problems with the phones in the house that are passing through but for some reason the Elk is having problems.

My security service has sent out a guy that did the programming and he told me that they have a lot of trouble getting the Vonage phones to work. It is currently setup as "Contact ID" for the reporting format and I am up to date on all of the firmware updates.

 

[WayneW]

Got a fax machine you can test the line with?

I use Vonage and it works fine for me, but VOIP and security panels often do NOT get along. YMMV, unfortunately.

 

[signal15]

A long long time ago, I had Vonage and was trying to use it with an alarm system and it wouldn't work. I called Vonage, and they switched my voice codec from g.729 to g.711 u-law or a-law, can't remember which. This fixed the problem as it was less lossy compression. But, it also took up way more bandwidth, it went from 9.6kbps per call to 96kbps. As long as you have a reasonable connection, you shouldn't notice any issues.

Of course, they may not change your codec anymore either. This was like 7 years ago.

 

[mustangcoupe]

this is why nextalarm required voip users to purchase an abn from them

 

[amacphee]

Thanks guys. I am experimenting with some of the settings changes you discussed. I also found out from Vonage that they can adjust the packet size on their end which could effect the connection.

The part that bothers me is that it sounds like the Elk is not hearing the handshake at all. I can understand not being able to get transmission, but not even responding to a handshake is weird.

I will report back when I get it figured out.

 

[amacphee]

I was looking at that ABN box Here. Does that work for any system using the Contact ID? If it isn't something that works only for nextalarm then I might just pick one of these up.

 

[TXFlatLander]

I was looking at that ABN box Here. Does that work for any system using the Contact ID? If it isn't something that works only for nextalarm then I might just pick one of these up.

Yes, any system that supports ContactID. Only works with NextAlarm. I won't give my usual spiel on the ABN

 

[signal15]

Thanks guys. I am experimenting with some of the settings changes you discussed. I also found out from Vonage that they can adjust the packet size on their end which could effect the connection.

The part that bothers me is that it sounds like the Elk is not hearing the handshake at all. I can understand not being able to get transmission, but not even responding to a handshake is weird.

I will report back when I get it figured out.

Packet size probably won't do anything. If you're making voice phone calls and not getting jitter or drops, then don't mess with the packet size. The thing you need to change is the codec. If you can find where to change them and post the list of options here, I can tell you which one is most likely to work.

 

[Sandpiper]

Packet size probably won't do anything. If you're making voice phone calls and not getting jitter or drops, then don't mess with the packet size. The thing you need to change is the codec. If you can find where to change them and post the list of options here, I can tell you which one is most likely to work.

Signal,

Do you happen to know what Time Warner Cable does for their VOIP telephone? Whatever they do....it works very reliably for both Contact ID and SIA alarm signals. We have had trouble sending alarm signals with Vonage, Skyrocket, and other VOIP providers, but for some unknown (but would like to be known) reason, TWC does it right, for alarm signals and for voice quality.

 

[amacphee]

I was looking at that ABN box Here. Does that work for any system using the Contact ID? If it isn't something that works only for nextalarm then I might just pick one of these up.

Yes, any system that supports ContactID. Only works with NextAlarm. I won't give my usual spiel on the ABN

So there is no way to change who the system reports to? It always goes to NextAlarm?

 

[TXFlatLander]

So there is no way to change who the system reports to? It always goes to NextAlarm?

In short, no. Here goes the usual spiel: NextAlarm has Asterisk PBXs setup on their side with a ContactID module loaded on them that an Asterisk community member wrote so he could monitor his vacation home without paying for monitoring service. NextAlarm takes the Linksys PAP2T, rebrands it "ABN", and configures them to have their Asterisk boxes as the provider. When your panel goes off it, modulates the tones and sends them to the Asterisk box where they are read by the ContactID module and forwarded on to the CS. What irks me about it is they took something that was in a community and a PAP2T charged two to two-half times retail and call it ABN -- just has never sat right with me. Unfortunately, they are about the only show in-town if you want IP-based monitoring until Elk updates the M1XEP for more AlarmOverIP technologies or other CS take notice and copy the "ABN technology". There are scripts available on the internet that will bruteforce the lock code they have on the PAP2T if you want to see their configuration. You own the device, so I don't see any reason why you couldn't do this.

What hurts panels are the tones they give out are rapid and the modulation-demodulation of the codecs causes issues with the tones. So to signal's point, it matters what codec you have to how successful your panel will be due to how the specific codec "normalizes" the DTMF tones.

 

[signal15]

Packet size probably won't do anything. If you're making voice phone calls and not getting jitter or drops, then don't mess with the packet size. The thing you need to change is the codec. If you can find where to change them and post the list of options here, I can tell you which one is most likely to work.

Signal,

Do you happen to know what Time Warner Cable does for their VOIP telephone? Whatever they do....it works very reliably for both Contact ID and SIA alarm signals. We have had trouble sending alarm signals with Vonage, Skyrocket, and other VOIP providers, but for some unknown (but would like to be known) reason, TWC does it right, for alarm signals and for voice quality.

Most of the cable companies I have dealt with (as a consultant) are not technically using VoIP. They are encapsulating voice in a layer-2 frame and sending it across the network. It's all proprietary stuff. They most certainly use compression, but no idea if it's a standard codec or something designed by a mad scientist in a basement somewhere.

If you can track down the name/model of the device that has the phone jack on it, you should be able to find a spec sheet for it using the "filetypedf" keyword when doing a google search for it. Sometimes the phone gateway is a separate box inside the demarc on the outside of the house, and sometimes it is built into the cable modem on the inside of the house.