Cisco SPA2102 Phone Adapter with Router: Reason I have constant "Darn! You logged out" messages.

[UzerNolaski]

So when I had the "Darn! You logged out" issue at first, I had no idea how to fix it, so I maintained my registry, cleared some junk files, and even reduce bandwidth in my Second Life client, but that didn't change anything but faster performance. So then I toyed with taking things out of my internet connection hub, tried without the router nor phone adapter (straight ethernet to the laptop) and it worked, tried with phone adapter with no router, but that didn't work. So I had the idea of trying with a router but no phone adapter and it worked. So without the Cisco phone adapter I can play longer in Second Life without that "You logged out" message. The only problem is that the family still needs the phone adapter for their VoIP service and couldn't affoard to switch to a different company. Is there a way to fix the phone adapter to work with Second Life? I also heard there is a Cisco spa3102 with pstn. Think the newer model would help the problem if I can't work my current phone adapter around the problem?

[Jenni Darkwatch]

In which order is this hooked up? Cisco -> Router -> PC? If so, change it to plug the Cisco into the router instead. You may have to forward some ports to the Cisco specifically but that's rather uncommon.

Background:

Those VoIP units often come with the recommendation to plug them directly into the internet line (cable/DSL) to make sure they work fine. Realistically though that's stupid, because it means they'll NAT traffic behind them. If you only have a PC behind it, it won't matter much aside from often **bleep**ty NAT implementations. As soon as you put a router behind it, the fun begins - they have their own NAT. As a result you end up with a NAT behind a NAT.

There's two possible solutions to that.

Some routers can be switched to gateway mode where they don't do NAT. That requires a bit of routing/network knowledge.

My preferred solution is to plug the VoIP adapter into the router instead and not plug anything into the "LAN" side of the VoIP router. This works fine in most cases, in some rare cases you'll need either put the VoIP unit into the DMZ or forward a bunch of port ranges to it. If your router is halfway decent you shouldn't need to forward anything, the NAT routines will take care of that transparently.

[UzerNolaski]

The prefered solution seems to have worked. I plugged the phone adapter Lan into one of the wan ports of the router and I can have my phone with the setup I tested. Thanks ^^