My question is: Has anyone experienced problems using VoIP through the VoIP ports on the routers? Specifically random reboots, locking up etc.

Obviously there’s a back story to this, and I’m not convinced my problem is as straight forward as the question implies.

I’m using a 2860Vn-plus. Yes I know it’s ancient but it’s been working fine up until now. I’ll eventually upgrade but probably hold off spending the money until I’m certain of this problem.

Up until recently I have had an ADSL2 line. Not fast broadband so as soon as CityFibre enabled this street I signed up. Have only taken the 160 Mbps service, although intend to upgrade to the gigabit service.

I’ve been using the two Voip ports on the Vigor for years, actually the one physical Phone 1-2 port with a splitter dongle. This has worked well. Occasional Voip problems but I don’t think related to this port.

After connecting up the CityFibre service (Wan2) at first I ran it with the two WANs, and the two Voip connections, without any other changes in the router configuration. Other family members complained of ipad locking up, as in loss of internet connections, random stuff but all seemingly Wifi related. My usage is almost entirely cabled PC and I did not have any noticeable problems. I did notice a few times that I could not access the Dashboard on the Vigor – my browser refused to connect. Rebooting the router always solved everyone’s problems.

I went through a spell of only using one WAN connection at a time, alternating for a few days on each. The above random problems continued.
I factory reset the router and configured everything from scratch – WAN, LAN, Vlans, Wireless Lan, and the VoIP. The above random problems continued.
I replaced the PSU. The above random problems continued.
Noting that Firmware had already been updated to latest 3.9.6_BT .

I then factory reset the router again, but this time did not configure the VoIP, instead using an old ATA adapter for that service. The above random problems went away.
I’m presently using a Gigaset N300-IP for the VoIP which is working very well.

So to get back to this story, it seems to me the problems were related to using the onboard VoIP port on the Vigor router. But that is hard to understand, as my problems were more Wifi and general internet rather than VoIP.
I’m just perplexed that trying to analyse and problem solve has thrown up questions that seem to be unconnected.

It’s not the end of the world, but if anyone has any thoughts on this, I’d be happy to hear them.

Probably not a great deal of help, but for what it's worth I had a 2860Vn-plus working experimentally with Sipgate for a while and it didn't show any of the symptoms you have observed.

Had the VoIP version of the 2927 been available in the UK (easily) I might have stuck to that approach but instead I went for a Gigaset solution.

I only had one WAN connection (ethernet) with my 2860Vn-plus as it was behind another 2860 that was in "normal use".

With the main 2860 and two WAN connections (1 VDSL & 1 Ethernet similar to your City Fibre) I found all sorts of "funnies" which seemed to be related to the load balancing and I quite quickly sent certain devices out of each WAN.

This might be worth a try in your case although you may not be easily able to force the internal VoIP adaptor to use a particular WAN.

Thanks for that, Markhawkin

That's interesting.
I do have access to a Sipgate account which I might bring into the mix here as well.

I had not played about with the load balancing. That's something I should do. Everything takes time though.
Appreciate the input.

Hi clyde123,

This sounds like a load-balancing issue to me, also, the age of your model.

It’s hard to say what may be available to you now, due to firmware releases where features are added but, the manual for your model definitely doesn’t list the load-balance ‘Advanced’ options page, so possibly it was never added, or even possible, on your model.

In later models there is an advanced option page, for load-balancing, that allows you to exclude certain services from being affected by the load-balancing service. SIP 5060 is a default entry in that page.

There is a related factor that could also be causing your issue and that is the load-balancing mode, which can be ‘IP-Based’ or ‘Session Based’.

The explanation in all the DrayTek manuals is not entirely clear, but the best way I think of it is, an IP-Based balance will maintain the same WAN connection once a handshake has happened between two devices via a particular WAN and they are now communicating, so say, your device to a website for example. In that example, if you were to open another tab in your device’s web browser and establish another connection to the same website the router will use the same WAN. In Session-Based mode, the second tab/connection will be re-evaluated by the load-balancing service and may be given a more preferred WAN connection. The mode you choose can affect the internet connection for certain devices to a point where they may even lose internet connection completely for a period of time.

Hi, I have seen a similar problem to this with my 2862ac  (probably not voip related for me) - I switch from ADSL to full fibre (with Plusnet), disabled the WAN1/dsl interface and set up the WAN2 with the same settings as the dsl used to be, ie PPPoE and the same credentials connected to the ONT.  It works and everything is fine for a while, then the WAN2 inteface drops.  I am normally remote from the router (and connect via web and VPN) so when the link drops I cannot easily make checks to see what is wrong and cannot connect to the web interface because of lack of internet connection.  I do have voip connected via a Grandstream HT802 on a wired eth port but cannot see how that could cause the WAN2 to drop, also cannot see how it could be load balancing problems as there is only one interface operating.  I have connection detection set to PPP - not sure if this is the right setting but cannot easily change it due to a 30 mile trip to change it when the connection is dropped. Does this sound like a similar problem or should I raise a distinct post for this?

Hi SteveM84,

How do you reset it once it has dropped, do you have to do the 30 mile round trip, or can someone locally reboot it for you?

Maybe a scheduled reboot might help you out as an interim solution.

I have a 2862ac also running WAN2 only (on Virgin Media) with WAN1 disabled and it is the most stable Draytek model I have, in a collection of about 10 models at various sites, most of which are later more current models.

I do not use PPPoE settings on the Vigor router though, as Virgin doesn’t require that. This would be the only major difference in your setup to the 2862ac I am running.