Common glitch on Sonic's HT801 phone adapter?

Fusion Voice service, features and help.
6 posts Page 1 of 1
by tyrodom3 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:44 pm
One of my clients has Sonic's resold ATT fiber, alongside a
Sonic-branded Grandstream HT801 analog telephone adapter.

A few days ago, she had a PGE outage, and when everything
came back on, the HT801 had no dialtone and its blue LED for
her line was off (its other two LEDs were on). I had her reboot
he gateway and the HT801, but the problem was unchanged.

I then visited and booted both devices simultaneously, to study
them. The HT801 looks for an internet connection, and if it fails to
find one after about 2 minutes of trying, it stops trying and stays
unconnected even when an internet connection does become
available. However, the gateway (probably a Pace 5268ac) takes
about 3 minutes to fully boot and get an internet connection. So
in the case of simultaneous booting, these two devices are
incompatible.

(By the way, if the HT801 is powered on by itself, it connects readily
to the internet if the gateway has been on for at least a few minutes.
Then after a later loss of connection, the HT801 reconnects to the
gateway. So the obstacle seems to arise under the specific
circumstance: the HT801 fails to connect in the first 2 minutes
after it powers on, then gives up permanently (that is, until it gets
rebooted).)

To compare, I connected my Grandstream HT802 to the same
gateway and booted all three devices. My HT802 also failed to
connect during the gateway's boot-up (of course, since the
gateway wasn't yet live), but here's a crucial difference: the
HT802 continued to try and it succeeded soon after the gateway
finished booting itself. This is the expected behavior.

Sequential booting (booting the gateway, waiting 3 minutes, then
booting the HT801) sidesteps the problem, but the default
customer behavior of standard (non-sequential) booting will
predominate because:

(A) the era of required sequential rebooting ended everywhere
else in about 2007 (good riddance) and thus is off the radar of
nearly everyone under 40, and

(B) even if a non-technical end user can be guided to reboot
sequentially, they'll likely forget to use that technique in the
future (or a fellow resident won't know to do that).

Some possibilities about the Sonic-branded HT801:
• my client's particular H801 is permanently defective, or
• all Sonic-branded HT801's are permanently defective, or
• a Grandstream firmware upgrade will fix an HT801 that
has this problem

I talked to Sonic tech support about this today. They suggested
sequential booting (and they hinted that they suggest it to other
customers with the same problem). But that's a work-around:
Sonic should come up with a blanket solution for all customers
who are using HT801's with this problem.

Sonic tech support also told me that, regarding HT801 firmware,
they believe that the HT801 is programmed to automatically
download and install new firmware when available (either from
Grandstream's website or Sonic's website).

Please comment on what I've written.

And if you have Sonic's resold ATT fiber and a Sonic Grandstream
HT801, please see if you can duplicate the glitch that I describe.
by amayfield » Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:53 am
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are looking into ways to resolve the issue. In the mean time folks should continue to use the sequential boot method.
Andrew M.
Community & Escalations Manager
Sonic
by gorins@sonic.net » Tue May 12, 2020 10:32 am
Hello, Sonic.

Our household continues to have this problem, exacerbated by PSPSs (Public Safety Power Shutdowns). This week, the UPS to which I have the ATA connected failed. I forgot that I needed to reboot the ATA. This resulted in lost phone service without my knowing. So this is a significant problem for me.

The fix to this problem should be a firmware update for the HT801. This message string says that it would automatically be installed in my ATA if it were available, but the problem persists. Before this week, my last reboot was 1-Mar-2020.

I read in this message string that the HT802 does not have this problem and is otherwise compatible. Would you fix my problem, please, perhaps by your supplying an HT802 unit for me to swap for my HT801?
by pboggini » Fri Jul 03, 2020 3:14 pm
As someone who is getting one of these HT801's in a few days and FTTN in a couple of weeks I certainly hope Sonic is working with Grandstream to make sure that these HT801's become smart enough that if the internet is down they sleep for a bit and then retry. You know, like every other IP connected device including all the other ATA's made by Ooman, Obihai, etc.

For some of us, "landline" is critical and something we use.
by apl » Mon Jul 06, 2020 12:19 pm
It seems the web interface for the ATA has been turned off, but I found a manual online which has instructions for checking the settings via phone. I discovered:
- Firmware Version (***16) is 1.0.11.6, which is NOT the latest version (1.0.17.5)
- Firmware Upgrade (***17) is set to "Always Check"
- Firmware Server address (***13) is set to a sonic address.

Can sonic make the latest firmware available to see if this fixes this problem?
(Alternatively, one could reset the Firmware server address to point to Grandstream's site, but I don't want to risk breaking something.)
by pboggini » Tue Jul 14, 2020 4:23 pm
Replying to this thread too. I upgraded from bonded DSL using a Pace 5268ac modem but before ATT came out I plugged tine HT801 ATA in and tested it. When I power cycled the Pace and the ATA the ATA would never connected because it came up first and seemed to get an IP before the internet connection was up. So I replicated this exact issue multiple times.

Yesterday, ATT came out and upgraded me so now I'm officially FTTN and they gave me an Arris BGW210-700. When I power cycle this modem and ATA it looks like the Arris does not bring up the LAN ports or give out a DHCP address before the internet comes up (based on the activity I see with the internet and phone lights) and so I cannot replicate this issue with the Arris and the HT801. I'm interested to see if others with the Arris modem also cannot replicate this issue and if those who have it have a different modem.
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