Phones

I must say Jack, I like your story. I agree, support should be provided by the manufacturer and any company involved directly with a specific device.
As a matter of fact, it should be the LAW.
Just as microsoft should have to patent there technoligies as apposed to copyright there artwork.
(technology can be passed from person to person>patent law..!) (art is the creation of one individual>copyright law...!)

Besides if a company is not willing to bend over backwards for those who buy their products, then they should at least give us what we need to make their products work for us.
That would be like buying a car that has the hood sealed shut and we can't repair or maintain it. And when it dies, they say buy a new one... Talk about NOT going green, throw away technology, landfill suppliments...

For the longest time I am using tringotel pap2 voip service because they are so much cheaper than any other service, and the shipping charges are absolutely free and I guess tringotel have merged with Sunrocket.

I signed for Vonage this summer - I have the Linksys WRTP54G Device and it NEVER works
Called Comcast to see if they have my modem connected not too far from the cable outlet, I'd get a signal faster into the modem then into the router... nada!
I'm soo frustrated that I'm thinking about simply having COMCAST as my VoIP provider!
Yikes

I'll preface my comments with the statement that I have an MS in COmputer Science and have experience writing Linux kernel extensions in grad school. I've been a professional SW Engineer for the last 10 years.

I am on my 3rd LinkSys WRTP54G, and each one has failed for some reason. The first 2 worked fine for about 3 weeks, and I was happy with Vonage. NOw that the 3rd one is flaky "out of the box", I'm about to give up on Vonage. I love the idea of VOIP, and it makes much more sense than the 100 year old phone system, but after 100 years POTS makes sense and is reliable.

Anyway, this device is a disaster. If you look around on the web you'll find that there are some details about the internals of this gizmo that allow moderately skilled linux folks to hijack your device, if they can find it, by reflashing the firmware. Source code for the embedded Linux kernel is publicly available on the net, which means that someone could theoretically (and it's not much of a stretch) creat a new kernel image that does whatever and flash it to your new WRTP54G. In fact that's exactly what a Vonage tech will try to do when you call them and tell them you no longer have a dial tone.

I don't know whether (any of the 3 of) my WRTP54G was hjacked but they sure started acting strange after a while, and the Vonage advanced support techs seemed to be as confused as I was about it.

I thing Vonage and LinkSys attempted to create a device that could ahve it's firmware updated remotely, and the succeeded in this. But they also created a device that ~anyone~ with moderate hacking skills could also update remotely. And they are doing it.

For all I know, my latest WRTP54G may have had new firmware loaded on it by Joe Cracker when somebody else owned it, then that Vonage customer returned it to Vonage, they checked it and sent it out to me without knowing that the firmaware had been altered, because it will not respond to the standard username/password given in an attempt to reset the voice part to factory defailt settings. How's that for a strange turn of events? Of course, I can't verify that that's what happened, but it makes for a good story, no?

Oh, well, technology contiues to be fascinating.

Let me preface the discussion with the fact that I was a network administrator for about 8 years and have continuing experience with networking products since transitioning to application development.

The following are my experiences with attempting to get the Linksys WRTP54G router to function. I originally purchased it at Best Buy because the rebate program seemed to make it almost a no brainer with the rebates totalling more than the cost of the device.

After opening the box:
I read the agreement. An item to note is the nearly $40 cancelation fee that is charged by Vonage unless you send the router back to Vonage.
I read the rebate requirements, which state A WIRELESS router must be sent in, whereas Best Buy stated that any router could be sent in.
I read the manual cover to cover before attempting anything.
I used the installation software to configure the router, however, the internet could never be reached at the end of the configuration process when using the configuration software.

After a lot of trial and error attempting to manually configure the router using the built in administrative web pages, I realized that I could not use the administrative pages unless the router was disconnected from the internet. Every time I connected the WAN/Internet port, I would receive an "internal communication error" message when trying to access the administrative pages. This occurred with both a wired and wireless client. I also disabled all firewalls to eliminate all potential points of conflict. Once I got that error on the router, I would have to restart the router to get it to work with the internet again.

When trying to configure the wi-fi portion, I was not able to configure the router to disable SSID broadcasting and have a client (a Linksys WPC54GS) connect. Whenever the SSID broadcast on the router was disabled, the link lights on both the router and the wireless adapter card would flash extremely rapidly. It seemed as though some sort of flood was occurring. A wired connection would not work at this point either.

I called Linksys support. I spoke to an initial call taker, was transferred to a supervisor and was then supposed to get an expert. Instead I sat on hold for an hour. All this on my cell phone since my "land line" was supposed to be implemented by this device.

I browsed the internet some and saw that some people had been provided updated firware revisions. I was running on 1.00.18 and it appeared that there might be versions as high as 1.00.29, yet there were no firmware updates available for device on the linksys web site. Currious.

I decided I would give Linksys a call again and give them one more chance to resolve the issue. This time, the wait times were shorter but was stil transferred up to a third person. Rather than try to go through a long resolution on a marginal cell phone connection to India, listening to the echo of my voice, I simply asked if there was an updated firmware version I could try to resolve my problem. The tech said that if there was, it could only be provided by Vonage. I explained that I was concerned by the fact that they did not provide firmware for the device that they manufacture and he said. "It would be easiest to exchange the device for a new one since it is only two days old and should function out of the box."

Experience has taught me to never purchase equipment where you are unable to obtain firmware from the original manufacturer. Linksys/Cisco have been in business for a long time, I trust that I will be able to get firmware for some time to come. Vonage is a completely new company, if they go away, support for the device goes away. With two companies, it is too easy for the customer to be caught in the middle of finger pointing when there is a problem.

My personal opinion is that this device was an endeavor poorly executed by both companies. Either the manufacturer should provide all support for the device, or both companies should provide equal support (ie. firmware obtainable from either company). The product, from my perspective, was also brought to market before it had been adequately tested. All considered, I have no confidence in this product and I am returning both of my wireless products and will research my options more carefully.

I am a longtime owner of a Linksys BEFSR41 router that has met my needs well for the past 4 years or so (it's been so long I can't recall when I specifically started using it). This isn't a case of any prior dissatisfaction with Linksys.