VoIP Spear Blog: News & Noise
Dec 7, 2008

Some Users Have Been Experiencing 100% Packet Loss

VoIP Spear has only been live for a few weeks, yet we're seeing good numbers of users signing up for service. It's nice to see the fruits of our labours.

One nice thing about going live is that we're finally seeing how real people use VoIP Spear. A few problems have come to light, the most common of which is that our VoIP testing isn't working for some users -- the MOS for their endpoints is always 1.0 (the lowest possible score). We figured out pretty quickly that this is happening because their router or firewall is blocking ping/ICMP traffic, resulting in 100% packet loss. VoIP Spear servers use ping/ICMP for running the tests to all of the endpoints.

The solution to this problem is to ask the affected users to unblock ping/ICMP traffic. This certainly works, however we decided it was time to implement a support/help section in the web site. It took a few days to create this and enter the content, however we're finished now and pleased with the results. We also think our users will appreciate having a resource to help solve their problems rather than having to email us.

sapphire yew says: Posted on Dec 20 7:48am
their router or firewall is blocking ping/ICMP traffic, resulting in 100% packet loss. VoIP Spear servers use ping/ICMP for running the tests to all of the endpoints. How to solve "The solution to this problem is to ask the affected users to unblock ping/ICMP traffic."? Can you tell step by step ?
admin says: Posted on Dec 20 6:01pm
A step-by-step solution really depends on your router. However, I can certainly provide more detailed instructions right now. Step 1: Log into your router. To do this, you probably have to surf to http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1 Step 2: Look around your router's config. You will find something referring to "ping" or "ICMP". I think Linksys routers talk about "blocking anonymous traffic". Step 3: Turn on ping (or allow the anonymous traffic). If you find that you still need specific instructions, send us an email and include your router's make and model number. We'll look up the instructions and provide guidance.

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