Symptoms
Your phone shows NR and/or loses registration periodically. Often a reboot resolves the problem for a while.

Note: this guide assumes that you have been able to make and receive calls using this phone for a while. If this is a first time installation there may be other issues; please consult the user manual or email support.

Common mistakes
1. Unless you are using the Voipfone Virtual PBX, two phones cannot be simultaneously registered on one account. They will cause random unregistration, see:
http://www.voipfoneuserforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=1083

2. Another thing to check quickly is that registration expiry is set to 60 seconds; many phones are set at 3600 seconds as default.

On Rant
Unlike some other VoIP companies, we run an open network and allow our customers to bring their own SIP based hardware to connect with us and try to provide support for it no matter how awfull some of it is. As a consequence we get blamed for all sorts of NR problems; almost always they are down to poor phones or firmware, incorrect configurations, bad internet connections or local router and LAN issues. It is not beyond possibility that our network is at fault but if it is we will have thousands of telephones suffering not just yours - so blame us last!
Off Rant.

Check you telephone
Power down your phone and your router. check the Ethernet cable is properly plugged into both the phone and the router, then reboot them; router first. Keep your eye on the phone for an hour or two, sometimes this is enough to clear the problem.

Test your access network.
First, check that your Internet connection is working normally by checking your email or logging into a web site. If it isn't working, you may need to contact your Internet Service Provider or check that your LAN and routers are operational.

Assuming you have good access to the Internet, you need to check that your network can see our network by 'pinging' one of our servers. From your Windows PC:

Click the Start button
Click Run
Type cmd or command
Click OK
When the Windows Command Prompt box opens
Type ping sip.voipfone.co.uk and press return

If it says "could not find host", or "request timeout", your computer/network can not connect to our service and the problem is almost certainly in your own network.
(In the unlikely event that the Voipfone network itself is down we will be posting information on our forum boards here which are hosted on a separate network http://www.voipfoneuserforum.com )

You should get pings of less than 50ms, if you're in the UK it will normally be below 20ms. You should also get zero packet loss. If you see long pings (over 100ms) and any packet loss you have a network problem. [Note: it is normal to get an occasional long ping which will show up in the 'worst' column

For a more definitive test we recommend you use the free trace route programme, WinMTR, http://winmtr.sourceforge.net/

Install the software. Enter sip.voipfone.co.uk into the box marked 'host'. Then click start. Allow the programme to run for about 100 cycles then check both round trip times and loss.

Any packet loss [you should receive as many pings as you sent] or regular long round trip times shows a possible problem and you should talk to your ISP. [note: it is normal to see large numbers in the 'worst' column, the average column is the one to look at.]

Update your firmware
Make sure you have the most up to date firmware for both your router and your phone. (Netgear routers in particular originally shipped with some problematic firware and see Grandstream below)

Get your configuration right
To work properly on our network your telephone or adapter must use our optimal settings. You will find many of these for the most popular devices along with set-up wizards on our website under support here.
http://www.voipfone.co.uk/IP_Phone_Setup.php

If your phone is not listed there, you will need to use the general configs here:
http://www.voipfone.co.uk/General_Phone_Setup.php

Known problems:

Grandstreams are very cheap and popular phones. Unfortunately, the firmware has known problems which cause them to un-register.

They have issued a new firmware for the GXP2000 to solve this:
http://www.grandstream.com/y-firmware.htm

Release notes are here
http://www.grandstream.com/BETATEST/GXP ... 1.0.13.pdf

Snoms are the most reliable phones we know but there is an issue with their v5 firmware. We ship our Snoms 3xx with v7.3.30 at present. This version works well.

Check also that your 'proposed expiry time' is set to 60 seconds and that, if 'support broken expiry' is not greyed out, that it is set to 'on' (both under Line 1, SIP tab). Under the Advanced line in the yellow side bar, confirm that 'Challenge Response on Phone' is set to Off.

Draytek 2600V routers are SIP aware but they often cause us problems. If you use this router and are experiencing NR please check for firmware updates. At the time of writing, they also require a TFTP procedure to set registry expiry time to 60 seconds.

They occasionally do strange things with DNS. A power down and reboot often resolves this.

Asterisk & Asterisk@Home users can find set up details here:
https://www.voipfone.co.uk/index.php?action=Asterisk
Some users have NR issues; you may find solutions in our Asterisk User Forum here:
http://www.voipfoneuserforum.com/viewforum.php?f=14

We've recently seen a user solve an unregistering problem by adding
RTPkeepalive=60
in sip.conf

If other efforts fail - a total fix is to ask us for IP regsitration - email support with your details.

If you have had NR problems and managed to fix them please post your fix for others to use in this thread.

Sorry, but your post cover just a amall part of issues that can cause problems and is a post directed to newbies.

Other issues can arrise if you have boxes behind routers/firewalls, if you live outside the UK (many hops between you and voipfone), etc.

mikelima wrote:Sorry, but your post cover just a amall part of issues that can cause problems and is a post directed to newbies.

Other issues can arrise if you have boxes behind routers/firewalls, if you live outside the UK (many hops between you and voipfone), etc.

Feel free to add to the knowledge base

I use a PAP2T ATA, since recently updating the firmware to version 5.1.1.10(LS) (downloaded from the Linksys UK website) phone registration is solid...... or is it just coincidence ?

"2. Another thing to check quickly is that registration expiry is set to 60 seconds; many phones are set at 3600 seconds as default. "

This was posted a while ago - just wondering if it is still the case and curious as to what are the advantages of having such a short registration expiry compared with the more normal 3600 secs.... Thanks.

We do indeed require a 60 second registration period. This is to allow our PSTN fail over diverts to work. If we don't see your phone online for a couple of minutes we activate the divert.

If you are using a Grandstream GXP2000 and have exhausted all the usual solutions, try changing your power supply. 5v units aren't widely available in the shops but you can get them online (v reasonable). I had never really been able to use my phone as the connection was so unstable. Just got a new power supply and it has been stable ever since. The old power supply would look like it was working fine and power up the phone but there was obviously some power loss that caused it to deregister and try to reboot.