[Asterisk-Users] Vonage Linksys Router - Life after Vonage

[Greg Hill]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, GP wrote:

> I've read that someone was able to do it by contacting vonage and getting 
> instructions for clearing the router of the vonage information.  Does anyone 
> have the instructions for completing this or is this something that only the 
> vonage people can provide. 
> I've spent the last 2 hours and 30 minutes in the vonage phone system trying 
> to get to tech support to find out how to do this without any luck.  Their 
> phone system and indeed their customer support in general is really lacking.

on the Cisco ATA-186s which they used to use (before Cisco EOL'ed them) 
Vonage had them configured to use a (64-bit?) RC4 key to encrypt the 
configuration and programmed a random password to each device. Every time 
an account change prompted an update to the ATA's configuration, it would 
be encrypted with a new RC4 key and get a new password. So don't expect to 
find a universal back-door password, I doubt you'll find one.

I too have heard of people persuading a vonage tech to provide the 
password to log into and factory reset their device, but I get the 
impression that it is an uncommon occurrence.. you'd be lucky, basically.

> (On top of which, they charged me a $40 termination fee to terminate my 
> account - just a parting shot I guess).

yup.. That right there was the primary reason why I skipped over them in 
the beginning. It's buried in their terms of service somewhere, along with 
all their other over-restrictive junk..

> If anyone has any suggestions, or the instructions for clearing the MTA on 
> this linksys router, I'd be very greatful.

you could try faking out the box by setting up some DNS and network 
spoofing to make the box think it is talking to vonage when in fact it is 
talking to your * box. If you use autocreatepeer in sip.conf then * will 
accept connections from the PAP2 even though you haven't added the 
credentials in sip.conf. This is quite a kludge, however..

When it comes down to it, I think Vonage thinks it is better to make 
people throw equipment away rather than allow it to be reused.

Greg