Simon J Mudd's Blog

I have been meaning to downgrade my Vigor software due to the issue I reported last month. It certainly hasn’t gone away, though I guess that’s not unexpected. So today I was planning on doing the downgrade and went off to Draytek’s site. I now see a newer version released, V3.3.5, compared to the 3.3.4.1 version I am using, so I thought I might as well try that first, hoping it would fix the problem.

One thing for the users of the Draytek routers, or at least from what I see with my model Vigor 2820N, is that there are several different versions of the firmware. That is they have different modem codes. There is nothing really I see in the general documentation which labels what each version of the firmware is for and which is best for what.  Although I live in Spain I had bought my router from the UK. The prices are better there and supposedly we now all live in a European Union with free trade. Or so they tell us. The router has been working fine for me apart from this VoIP problem I reported. When I first found this problem I tried to contact Draytek in the UK. As per their web which states If you are outside of the UK/Ireland, please contact your local supplier, the local support resource in your country or use the DrayTek International site instead I got an automated message saying they would not help. That’s helpful. I then contacted the Draytek technical support contact in Spain, Alvaco Telecomunicaciones, who told me:

Estimado Cliente:

Le informamos que no proporcionamos soporte a equipos adquiridos a distribuidores de Draytek en otros paises, no obstante comentarle que las diferentes versiones de un mismo firmware hacen referencia a distintos codec de ADSL, a no ser que experimente problemas de sincronía puede mantener esa firmware, en cualquier caso en España se recomienda utilizar
Vigor2820_x.x.x_annexA_2121501 para ADSL sobre RTB y
Vigor2820_x.x.x_annexB_215202 para ADSL sobre RDSI.

That is:If you didn’t buy your router from us we won’t support you. They did however respond to my question about which firmware was “most appropriate” in Spain with a PSTN line:  use the 2121501 modem code version.

So I downloaded Vigor2820+V3.3.5+AnnexA+2121501.zip and loaded it into my router. After rebooting the router has come up and actually seems to be working which seems good, but … I can’t get back in again. The router asks me for a login:

This login page is different to the one I had seen previously and in any case using the normal credentials does not work. So I’ve downloaded the V3.3.5 version of the 232201 firmware (the one installed for the UK) and will try and see if I can load it after factory resetting the router. If I can do that then I can load the previous configuration file back in again.

However, given the “confusion” about what each firmware version is for it would be helpful if Draytek indicated on their site something saying: Do not change from one modem code to another when changing firmware versions as you may lock yourself out.

I’ll try and use the other version of the firmware and see if that solves my problem. Will report shortly.

Update: 2010-12-01

Following on from this post 2 things happened:

1. Downgrading back to firmware version 3.3.3 resolves the problem

I downgraded back to the original firmware version I had been using (3.3.3) and all of a sudden my SIP registration problems have gone away. That’s good news from the point of view of my problem being fixed.

2. I was contacted by Alvaco

I was quite surprised to be contacted by Alvaco given their original response to me. I had nevertheless responded to them saying it was not clear why they would not provide support, given that Draytek.co.uk would not either, and had referred me to my own country’s support site. I also referenced this blog when responding.  To be honest my second message was one more of frustration of not getting through than anything else.

They seemed concerned that I had singled them out, so to be fair below is the response I received from Draytek.co.uk in response to my request due to the SIP registration problem with firmware version 3.3.4:

From: <info@draytek.co.uk>
To: <sjmudd@pobox.com>, <info@draytek.co.uk>
Subject: xxxxxxxxx / SIP (registration) connectivity problems after upgrade to 3.3.4 ()
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:09:12 +0100

[ Automated Message ]

Hello Simon Mudd,

Your query has not been passed onto a UK post-sales support technician as
they would be unable to assist you currently, based on the information
provided.

The most common reasons for this are as follows :

- You are not using a DrayTek product (service is for existing owners
only)
- You are outside of the United Kingdom (or CI/NI/Eire)
- Your query does not relate to usage of a DrayTek product.
- It is an OEM product; specialist support is provided directly by the
supplier.
- You did not provide any information about your product and your query.
- You did not provide adequate details, e.g. model, firmware, serial no.
etc.
- Your query was otherwise inappropriate.

If you still have a valid technical query regarding a DrayTek product,
please submit a new report via the web page, providing the appropriate
information and we'll try to help.
If your query was pre-sales, please contact info@draytek.co.uk and we will
reply promptly.

Best Regards !

http://www.support.draytek.co.uk

Many support requests require you to enter the support case via a web page and then respond to you without showing you the original comments. Later it’s hard to show what you said, but I’m pretty sure I gave sufficient details of the fact that I had purchased the product from a UK provider which was why I was contacting them. I gave serial number and other information, but the response above is all I received. From my point of view it’s not helpful at all.

So that email is to show the other request I had made. The response was less helpful than Alvaco’s.

In any case and after speaking with Alvaco it becomes apparent that many companies only want to provide support to their clients, and do not generally sell to the public. They expect the purchaser to contact their original supplier who in turn will contact them. That seems to be the case of Alvaco, who appears to be a wholesale distributor not a normal retailor. Their website does not make this clear, but I understand their position, and would hope that this is clarified as it would avoid misunderstandings. I have no idea as to Draytek.co.uk’s position as I’ve not actually managed to get any sort of human response. Again not helpful and somewhat frustrating.

That said, and given the technical nature of the problem I was facing, perhaps I should have clarified what I was actually expecting.  SIP is a complex protocol and reporting and resolving problems using it traversing an ADSL router which has firewalls / NAT / QoS etc configured is something which many people can not do. I think I’m quite technical and frequently follow open source mailing lists where if you provide useful feedback about problems the developers find this helpful. If you can do it well it may enable them to fix the problem and improve their product. From that both the developer and the user gain.  That said I’m not a SIP expert and also do not have a huge amount of time to experiment with different settings as my router is in use 24×7 and doing so disrupts other activities.

So my intent with Draytek had been:

1. To report the problem and give as much diagnostic information as I could.
2. To hope that this would reach someone who could understand it and perhaps recognise the cause
3. Hopefully to get a fix
4. If the fix were not possible to at least have tried

My situation may not be typical but if the feedback does not get back to the developers then they will not be able to fix it. If they do not fix it then I still have a problem (I can not upgrade my firmware version without having problems). Perhaps others experience the same issue.

So when companies like Draytek provide country local web sites if technical issues like this should be dealt with centrally then perhaps this should be made clearer. I am going to try and contact Draytek.com and repeat the whole process again and hope the message gets through, and perhaps at some later stage I will be able to update my firmware to the current version without the issues I have been experiencing.

Finally to conclude, I should mention, that while Alvaco are not able to provide support, they were kind enough to offer several suggestions to try and diagnose the problem further. I need to try to see if any of them enable me to get the newer firmware running on my router without causing the issues which I’ve experienced. So thanks for taking the time to provide that unofficial support. It’s now down to me to try some of the suggestions.

Tags: 3.3.3, 3.3.4, 3.3.4.1, 3.3.5, Draytek, Firmware, login problems, modem code, sip registration, upgrade

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 at 23:54 and is filed under Other Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.