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.
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.