Sipgate Service Down ?

Hi

I have 3 numbers with Sipgate, however for the last 12 hours I have only been able to register one line, I can't make out going calls and incoming calls have no audio. I am also unable to get to the http://www.sipgate.co.uk website.

I get no ping response from www.sipgate.co.uk, sipgate.com or stun.sipgate.net, and emails to support get no response, does anyone have a clue what's going on ?

Kev

Working for me - sounds like a problem local to you (could be a router out somewhere in between you and them).

Dean

Hi Dean

Yes a false alarm, seems to be a DNS problem, I had been using BT DNS Servers, but have now switched to some others and all is working fine again now.

Kev

I've got 3 sipgate numbers and they are all playing up! Two have one way transmission and the third won't complete the sip peer! I at present use the BT dns servers but have also tried open DNS in the light of Kev's comments above, still no joy! Also can't get to sipgate.co.uk. Any suggestions?

Steve

Still all working fine for me.

What do you see when you try and traceroute to it?

It gets there!

Quote:

traceroute to sipgate.co.uk (217.10.79.23), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets 1 www.routerlogin.com (192.168.1.1) 0.862 ms 0.661 ms 0.550 ms 2 esr11.kingston5.broadband.bt.net (217.47.66.142) 9.956 ms 10.881 ms 10.186 ms 3 217.47.66.13 (217.47.66.13) 10.715 ms 13.241 ms 10.658 ms 4 217.41.217.1 (217.41.217.1) 11.790 ms 10.615 ms 10.710 ms 5 217.41.171.66 (217.41.171.66) 11.226 ms 10.557 ms 10.282 ms 6 217.41.171.134 (217.41.171.134) 12.139 ms 11.096 ms 10.503 ms 7 217.41.171.54 (217.41.171.54) 12.380 ms 10.859 ms 10.773 ms 8 217.47.89.50 (217.47.89.50) 10.905 ms 11.299 ms 12.484 ms 9 core1-pos6-1.kingston.ukcore.bt.net (62.6.40.74) 12.139 ms 11.557 ms 10.743 ms 10 core1-pos0-8-0-7.ilford.ukcore.bt.net (194.74.65.113) 14.146 ms 13.068 ms 12.256 ms 11 core1-pos9-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net (194.74.65.114) 11.933 ms 11.787 ms 11.262 ms 12 LINX1.LON-2.uk.lambdanet.net (195.66.224.99) 13.160 ms 12.302 ms 12.250 ms 13 FRA-1-pos313.de.lambdanet.net (82.197.136.25) 28.906 ms 28.325 ms 29.256 ms 14 FRA-3-eth100.de.lambdanet.net (217.71.96.70) 29.362 ms 29.287 ms 29.222 ms 15 FRA-8-pos000.de.lambdanet.net (217.71.105.46) 30.143 ms 29.823 ms 29.704 ms 16 bellaxa-2-FRA.de.lambdanet.net (217.71.104.206) 28.662 ms 32.023 ms 30.018 ms 17 217.118.18.34 (217.118.18.34) 29.830 ms 29.894 ms 29.190 ms 18 sipgate.co.uk (217.10.79.23) 29.003 ms 29.797 ms 28.747 ms

and telnet to port 80

Quote:

[root@stelor steve]# telnet sipgate.co.uk 80 Trying 217.10.79.23... Connected to sipgate.co.uk (217.10.79.23). Escape character is '^]'. get UNKNOWN 400 Bad Request Server: thttpd/2.23beta1 26may2002 Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:22:42 GMT Last-Modified: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:22:42 GMT Accept-Ranges: bytes Connection: close

It also works from a DOS prompt on the windows box!

Steve

stevebc1 :

... but have also tried open DNS in the light of Kev's comments above, still no joy! Also can't get to sipgate.co.uk. Any suggestions?

My LAN points to openDNS servers and I have three SIPGate accounts configured on my PAP2v1 units. They have been working just fine to receive incoming calls and placing outgoing calls to SIPGate members as well as its peers.

mazilo :

stevebc1 : ... but have also tried open DNS in the light of Kev's comments above, still no joy! Also can't get to sipgate.co.uk. Any suggestions? My LAN points to openDNS servers and I have three SIPGate accounts configured on my PAP2v1 units. They have been working just fine to receive incoming calls and placing outgoing calls to SIPGate members as well as its peers.

I have changed to OPENDNS but this made no difference!

Suddenly Sipgate all started working, I checked my settings against my original settings (unchanged).

Then it stopped again!

Now its been back on for two days.

Conclusion?

Its one of those sipgate things!

BTW Sipgate has a call forwarding service, do they charge for forwarding to another sipgate number?

Stevebc1

It stopped working again this morning. I raised a ticket with sipgate.

But tonight I rebooted the router and sipgate works again!

From my Dyn-DNS updater logs i have deduced the following.

86.132.x.x sipgate works (falls into 86.128.0.0 /13)
86.153.x.x sipgate doesn't work (falls into 86.148.0.0 /12)

maybe co-incidental but worth noting!

Stevebc1

We have resolved the problem with some help from an engineer so I thought you might like to know the solution as several forums suggest that this happens quite a lot to other users on BT network with Sipgate services:

Symptoms:

1. no incoming voice from Sipgate calls
2. incoming calls but no outgoing calls via Sipgate
3. access to www.sipgate.co.uk resolves correctly using tracert and ping but browsers (firefox and explorer) timeout when attempting to display the webpage.
4. email to sipgate support works perfectly using a third party hosted mail server.
5. access to sipgate.co.uk is possible via www.anonymouse.org
6. http to the IP address resolved from the traceroute (http://217.10.79.23 at the time of this incident) works perfectly but links to sipgate.de, .co.uk and .at timeout.
7. ALL other webservices including VoIP from other network providers works faultlessly

Solution:

1. We have a Netgear DG834G ADSL router which is currently configured to use "Get Automatically From ISP" , using a Linksys PAP2 via 8mbps BT Broadband service.
2. on the router, change DNS to "Use These DNS Servers"
Primary DNS ... 194.74.65.68
Secondary DNS ... 194.74.65.69
(note: these are BTs current core DNS servers, IP addresses may change in the future)
3. Reboot the Voip gateway to flush its' DNS and then all Sipgate services will start again including website access.
4. Restore original DNS setting back to "Get Automatically From ISP" and reboot the Voip gateway again.

Summary

There seems to have been some corruption of the DNS within the Netgear gateway which gets flushed by changing the DNS setting back and forth. It is not clear why this only affected the SIPgate service and why the forums only report this problem on BT broadband services, so far this has only happened once to us in the past 2 years and no network changes were implemented prior to the fault occurring so it appears to occur spontaneously.

Hi Walkhigh

How spooky was that, the same problem had just reoccured when you posted a reply !

I have tried what you suggested and it works a treat, Sipgate service and numbers all up and running again, thanks for your help.

Kev

Hello walkhigh,

My Sipgate service also went off on Friday morning 29 Feb 08 with identical symptoms to the ones you mention - I too have Netgear DG834 via BT broadband. Phone is Linksys SPA942.

I used ping and tracert to test stun.sipgate.net and checked this from 2 other internet connections in addition to BT broadband. The BT connection was the only one that didn't work. On BT Broadband, ping timed out and tracert stopped one hop short of the destination:

Tracing route to stun.sipgate.net [217.10.79.2]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
...(hops 1 to 14 removed)...
15 343 ms 52 ms 50 ms 217.118.18.34
16 56 ms 55 ms 55 ms r10-2-4.netzquadrat.net [217.10.68.210]
17 * * * Request timed out.

I used your method of changing the DNS servers to resolve the problem and now everything is back working again. Now tracert goes one more hop to 217.10.79.2 although interestingly the earlier part of the route through BT has changed slightly.

Have been scratching my head for a couple of days to resolve this so many thanks for your help.

Analysis:

This fix suggests that it is somehow a DNS related problem. However, stun.sipgate.net was resolving to 217.10.79.2 on all 3 of of my test systems and still resolves to this IP address after the fix. In that case it would seem that the DNS lookup hasn't actually changed and I'm intrigued to understand what is causing this - Perhaps there is another problem with the router that somehow gets reset when it updates the DNS server config.

Would appreciate if you can you post a link to other forums describing this as I did a search but didn't find anything.

Glad it worked for you too ... It's a mystery why it only appears to affect the BT / Netgear gateway combination and only singles out the Sipgate service to stop working.

We also have BT VoIP and Voipfone both of which were unaffected and DNS does continue to resolve perfectly however the Netgear gateway blocks the service traffic - so possibly its a firewall issue rather than a DNS issue and as you suggest is coincidental that it is reset by changing the DNS server settings.

I've passed the details to Sipgate hopefully they can assist other customers but perhaps someone from Netgear might also have a clue (or preferably a firmware patch to fix it !) Interestingly once I got to speak with a senior BT engineer, he 'guessed' we had a DG834 almost instantly so call me cynical but I reckon this is a known issue.