Any tried the Hitachi AH4051 Voip Router?

Every web shop seems to be selling Hitachi AH4051 VOIP Wireless ADSL Routers really cheaply at the moment. (about £20 or less!)

The specs are:

ADSL2/2+,
Wireless G,
2x 10/100 Network ports,
1x USB 1.1
2x FXS VOIP telephone sockets
1x FXO landline fallback

I'm planning to buy one anyway, as a backup device, but wondered if anyone:-

• Has any experience of them?
  
• Knows what ADSL chipset is in them?
  
• Can post a link to a review of them?
  
• Knows how flexible the configurations settings can be?
  
• Knows if they are made by someone else but rebranded by Hitachi? (and if so which make & model they are based on?)
  
• Knows if there are any issues with them?
  
• Knows if there are any firmware updates for them?
  
• etc etc

Basically any info helpful...

Thanks

Mike

It looks like you are on your own. They do not seem to be available on this side of the pond.
It does seem that a fairly large number of units have been released to the market for some reason.

Of course the worry with that, is that they might have been released cheaply in bulk because they were rubbish that no-one bought...

but equally, they might have been released because a VOIP provider that supplied them went bust, and they are perfectly good routers that just work well.

For £20 it is worth a punt anyway, but thought I'd just check in case someone said they were awful, and not even worth paying that much!

Must have been a UK supplier I guess if they are in this country only. Can't find much about them on the web...

Mike

AH4051 Wireless VOIP gateway

Still playing with mine.

Out of the box, it took me most of Saturday evening to set up my Broadband account, I realised after the fact, it just need a reboot, "my mind was hell bent on setting up my Voip account /s".
First error was the phone does not ring on Voip incoming calls and then I discover it does not ring on incoming PSTN lines either , So I spent most of Sunday making sure everything was correct.
It's even hit or miss if you switch the box off, some phones will ring others will not when being called via PSTN on it's through state.
You can only set up one VOIP service for both ports, so if you want two lines, I guess you just share the same service.
The pre-selection rules only allows you to enter numbers i.e. telephone numbers and no rules about dialling, which defeats having it as an option as you have 99 memories to enter telephone numbers in, so you could say you have the ability to enter 109 memories .
I have Searched the internet for info and found nothing apart from the fact this boxes are cheap and have been marketed from an ex Japanese VOIP provider.

A small issue just to confuse the Wife and kids when using it is you can not change the dial tone of the service so the PSTN is the same as the VOIP. In our house we always set the VOIP to European to remind us to dial internationally for our calls.

I am waiting to hear back again from my supplier, who has emailed me and to told me the port signalling problem is my VOIP provider.. That just made me smile..
As for the Wireless and Lan ports all seems ok but for how long.

Ken

ken_g0ppm :

First error was the phone does not ring on Voip incoming calls and then I discover it does not ring on incoming PSTN lines either ...

Will it be able to bridge the VoIP line to the PSTN line and/or vice versa?

Also, do you know what chipset does this device use, i.e. TI AR7? How much Flash/RAM does the device have?

xpcomputers :

1x FXO landline fallback[/b]

The phrase "fallback" after FXO tends to mean what it'll do in loss of power or net connection -- ie it'll fallback to passing your standard phone through to the BT line. ie you probably wont be able to do any lowest-code-routing to send some calls out through the BT line instead of via VoIP.

THis might not be the case ( but then they'd probably omit the word "fallback" ! )

Also this might not bother you depending on what you want to do.

Yes if you kill the power the pstn line does work, you can enable up to eight other numbers in the event of no power, I have not tried this yet, or tested it, I will try entering my mobile n0 and see if it works. I have tried to find out what chipset it has but only get basic commands from telnet when talking to it.
memory seems to be logged on as admin is 14120 and the voip is set by Broadcom Canada, VoIP Call Manager.Version: 1.6.0.1.

Hope this helps I have been looking into what other command prompts I can try into it and to see if I can find the system log on password

Thinking about it logically "fall back" is only going to work if your isp falls over
(so basically no voip). On the other hand, no power, then yes the relays click out and the pstn works.
It's a bit of a catch in this router as it already allows you to pre define numbers to switch between the voip provider and the PSTN if the voip is engaged, so I guess the fall back numbers page is just a simple bit of programming to conform to the request from the ITU over VOIP and no access to emergency services when the internet fails.

I personally think if this is the case they have missed or not under stood the point of getting VOIP providers to allow simple 3 number emergency access codes through the servers, and insuring that when, in the event of no power the ports switch to PSTN. That bit they have achieved but I think the rest is glossy programming floss

New box arrived today, set it up for voip/pstn as per the book.
And what do I find the pstn line still does not ring the phone or the Voip line either.. BEWARE ALL THAT BUY, You never get something for nothing or in this case very little.. £26 down the drain as I wanted the wireless and the VOIP. I am going back to my Wireless-less routers VOIP on the ZOOM and that does ring the pstn phone ok and ring for incoming voip calls as well.. Ken

Hiya

Just got this router this morning and started playing with it.

First thing to say is that my phone does ring on inbound PSTN calls. Haven't set up the outbound VOIP yet, not sure if that makes any difference.

In terms of the modem/broadband side of things it's OK but a bit pants in places. You can only have 10 port forwarding rules, and a DMZ machine. It identifies computers by MAC address, makes you name each MAC address, and only lets you port forward to the named computer. So if, like me, you have several virtual machines, each with a different IP address, running on the same physical computer (so therefore with the same MAC address) you can only port forward to one of these IP addresses.

This is the second router I've seen in a week that has this stupid behaviour, the other was a 2Wire one that was even more brain dead. What was wrong with setting up port forwards to IP addresses I'll never know.

It also has a dumb Java configuration console that worked once in Firefox but only works in IE subsequently. It also doesn't show you your DSL connection statistics (noise, SNR etc) that I can find, just your connection speed.

Still to play with the VoIP settings so we'll see how we get on with that...

Mike

Anyone know how to set this up for a sipgate voip number. I am currently using x-lite and it is fine, but can't get the voip port to work.

buncers :

Anyone know how to set this up for a sipgate voip number. I am currently using x-lite and it is fine, but can't get the voip port to work.

The settings for the voip port should be very similar. You need to post your current settings for us to be able to help you.