3G Microcell loss of connectivity issue

The MicroCell needs to communicate on ports 123 UDP, 443 TCP, 500 UDP, and 4500 UDP. You didn't mention port 500. Do you see traffic on that port? If not, that could be your problem. If those ports are open and the line quality is sufficient, there should be no difficulty in the MicroCell creating a secure VPN to the servers.

Putting a hub between the MicroCell and the router will probably cause more problems because the fewer the connection between the MicroCell and the route/modem, the more stable the connection will be. The are other routines that go on inside the MicroCell to establish and secure the VPN so knowing what the ip addresses are would be of little use.

Your router should detect the MicroCell and assign it an IP address via DHCP. You can see what that address is by viewing the DHCP table in your router. What I do is assign the first available address in my set address ranges and then assign that ip address to the MAC address of the MicroCell. That way, if there is ever a power outage or I have to reboot my router, as soon as the MAC address is detected the router will assign the pre-assigned address to it.

Don't expect Frontier to help you at all with the MicroCell because they probably haven't a clue as to how it works or what it needs, and if its not their product, they won't support it and blame any issue on the MicroCell.

You need to make sure that the four ports I listed above are open, DHCP in enabled, IPSec Passthrough is enabled, Block Fragmented Packets is disabled, the MTU is 1492, and only one device is handling the NAT duties (the router or the modem, not both). You also have to have a line clean enough for VoIP (the VoIP test results) and speeds that are stable and don't fluctuate much. Download speeds, that are consistent and stable above 3.0Mbps are fine. All of this is covered in the Tech Guide.

I have had a microcell with att begining in febuary. have had nothing but trouble, dropped calls. loss of siginal, others not being able to hear you, have to reset the cell at least 3 times a week,, i am now in my forth microcell. my service is att dsl, my speeds are well within limits, the network tech with dsl monitored my line one day said my service stayed strong but the packets from the cell was sporitic the cell tech first off blames the dsl, have had several tickets to fix my problem. every time they find something different, now they have no idea, so they started just hanging up on me, they are tired as i am of not knowing whats wrong, so good luck getting att to fix your problem,

Did you ever come here and ask for help? If the "att dsl tech" said that you were dropping packets then yes, you will have connection issues. How far are you from the CO? Distance for DSL will make a difference. Especially if there are line condition issues like bridge taps etc. I have DSL (not AT&T) and my MicroCell hasn't missed a beat in four years. But then again I'm only 3800 copper feet from the CO. If you'd like to see if there is anything we can do, then gives us more information on your setup, speeds, etc.

Voip quality test results here:

http://208.80.13.33/myspeed/db/report?id=100817

I think.

Got home tonight and my wife reports that the microcell has not been showing any problems.  I've been watching it for a while and it seems solid.   Obviously I didn't do anything so maybe Frontier did something in their network to rectify the situation.  I went ahead and set up port forwarding and set the DHCP lease time to 60 days, since I couldn't see how to set the router to give a static address to the microcell.  I figure 60 days is good for the DHCP address to never change.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I've never paid any attention to the DHCP lease. I just leave it at default because that's always worked well for me. If you can do port forwarding then you should be able to set a static IP address. Do post back.

Well, something weird happened last night.  The Microcell lost connectivity again, and when it came back it had acquired a different IP address.   I checked the DHCP settings and they were set to a 60 day lease period so what I think happened was the previous 24 hour lease expired and it acquired the  new address.

Anyway it still seems to be losing connectivity, just not as often.  When it did it just now I was able to see in the NAT table that it made connections on all ports 123, 443, 500 and 4500, so the port forwarding seems to be working.

I still can't figure out how to set a static IP address in the router.

Everytime your connection is lost, for what ever reason, your router will assign it a new IP address within the range of IP addresses your router has been assigned. For a lot of routers, that's usually assigned by default. In other words, your router could have a range of 50 IP addresses it can use to assign to various devices. I've narrowed my range down to 10 because I would never have more than 10 devices connected to my router (wired and WiFi) at any given time. I've assigned the MicroCell the first or second IP address in my table. You'll have to contact the router's mfr for instructions on how to  assign a static IP address. Or, if it is a fairly common router, someone here (Avedis53) may be able to walk you thru.

The MicroCell will lose connectivity from time to time, usually at night, if AT&T is performing maintenance (location verification, updates, etc) which will cause the MicroCell to reboot. Quite often, the user is not aware of it because it happens very late at night and in the morning all is fine.

What is the make and model number of your router/gateway? 

Setting a static IP address to a MACID is preferable to extending DHCP lease times IMHO.

Says it's a V10000W running Frontier code FRONTIER-31.60L.10

Frontier has their own management front end to the beastie and I haven't been able to find a way to set a static IP...just restrict the range of the DHCP scope.

Sorry...V1000W