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September 17 2021 Voip.ms down for second day

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Any one in same situation? Any thoughts for compensation for loss of phone and vulnerability of not having access to 911?

31 REPLIES 31


@BearFBI wrote:

@Nezgar wrote:

I setup my parents home phone on voip.ms. Family trying to reach them on Friday for potential emergency situation and couldn't get through. Now my parent want a real POTS line again at any price. Sucks to be the one the fingers are pointed at.


Fongo man....... 

 

Weren't they with Fongo in the first place ?


I wonder if Fongo/FPL will be the next target for these hackers

@barrascuk 

Yep you're right....I just went searching and they no longer list my "number" nor the service on my account that was there for years. I guess they changed that sometime in the last year.

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Just checked.....no number. And when they call me they always call my mobile number which used to be Telus. 

@barrascuk 

Log into your telus account. It should list your phone number.

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Actually I have 2 lines to run the Internet and does have a number for each line.  I have tried a phone in the ADSL jack...no work.  I assume you are saying my Telco jack has a number too.....I don't see why it would though. 

@barrascuk 

If you have telus optik tv and internet you have a telus landline.

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@Nezgar wrote:

@BearFBI wrote:

Weren't they with Fongo in the first place ?


I have an aunt still with Fongo home phone, but my parents using voip.ms for features that aren't in fongo home phone ... like caller ID with name display, IVR simulating "call control" for unknown callers, connect computer and phone apps to ring simultaneously with ATA, voicemail to email with text transcription, etc..

 

Meh.. there was underlying issues.... some could notice the extra "latency", so this was just the straw that broke the camels back.

 

If they switch back to a telus POTS line they can still use a voip service for voicemail and stuff. Better they switch than me be "responsible" for any further glitches.


Like I said I am not a spring chicken but am fairly well up to date with technology. But don't make your parents use 2 phone numbers. I see Telus landline is $20 or $40. Now I kind of wish I had negotiate the $5 rate with them.  All of our friends are on the $5 permanent rate. 

 

I am leaning to "trying" a PM plan with a Panasonic link2cell phone set.  Our current set only has 50 call blocks and I believe the new sets have 500. But on link2cell I imagine I can block on the iPhone that I would use. 

 

As of right now....still no land line and Zoiper won't work on Toronto1 2 or 3.  


@BearFBI wrote:

Weren't they with Fongo in the first place ?


I have an aunt still with Fongo home phone, but my parents using voip.ms for features that aren't in fongo home phone ... like caller ID with name display, IVR simulating "call control" for unknown callers, connect computer and phone apps to ring simultaneously with ATA, voicemail to email with text transcription, etc..

 

Meh.. there was underlying issues.... some could notice the extra "latency", so this was just the straw that broke the camels back.

 

If they switch back to a telus POTS line they can still use a voip service for voicemail and stuff. Better they switch than me be "responsible" for any further glitches.

BearFBI
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

@Nezgar wrote:

I setup my parents home phone on voip.ms. Family trying to reach them on Friday for potential emergency situation and couldn't get through. Now my parent want a real POTS line again at any price. Sucks to be the one the fingers are pointed at.


Fongo man....... 

 

Weren't they with Fongo in the first place ?

Now call your cell phone to find out the number.

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Uh yes. And there will be a mysterious Telus number waiting for me? Watcha getting at?

@barrascuk

 Do you have a phone jack? Try plugging a phone into it.

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

The saga gets more interesting as time goes. 

Me…..still without land line.  

.. might be related with a ransom demand?   There was such attack couple weeks ago with two UK VoIP operators..

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@Nezgar 

 

Changed Zoiper to toronto3. Zoiper shows registered but does not show online.  

Zoiper won’t call out or accept calls. Perhaps because I have call forwarding. 

Will just wait it out.  

Definitely will consider another option.  

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@Nezgar I changed server settings on Zoiper x 2 and they registered....thank you. 

 

Optic TV rebooted router...nothing. 

Checked TV #3 and it worked.

Rebooted TV box #1...and issue resolved. 

 

Lots of bad weather last night will be my conclusion. 

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Thanks. I am not a spring chicken and while pretty good with technology there are probably some things that I would not delve into. And I have to think about...what if I am not here....what mess would I leave my wife?  While I still don't accept that voip.ms could have avoided this and please notice there is a pre screening to log into our account now. I'll change Zoiper over to Toronto1 and see what happens. 

 

This morning not optic TV. Sound only no picture. 

Anonymous
Not applicable

 @barrascuk : They are being victimized by a targeted attack. This is not their fault. Their customers are the collateral damage of the attack. We've all experienced servers down when something popular happens. It's the same effect. It's why Google has massive server farms spread throughout the world to avoid the possibility of users overwhelming their servers. Or DDoS attacks. Voip.ms ain't no Google.

But indeed, there's still something to be said for a real copper landline.

I have the Telus WHP like the Koodo one you're looking at. I have the Telus Optik tv and internet. There's a bundle deduction for having the two pieces of business that makes the WHP free in effect.

@barrascuk switch to toronto1, working great for me since yesterday. Latency seems the same, since all their PSTN trunking probably goes through Toronto anyway...

 

It's annoying that having the cell phone as a backup was "not enough" in my parents opinion, so whatever. Other non-VoIP options are basically only a wireless home phone adapter, but if you're looking for redundancy, having a cellular based home phone is not redundant either. (Ie a ZTE WF721 with a SIM card - Public Mobile or anyone else)

 

 

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

I am on Vancouver 1 or 2. Still down. 

@barrascuk well, my parents may switch back to a POTS line, but I'm fine with it myself. It's not very cool to leave them over this IMHO, they've been rock solid for 10+years prior to this.

 

They can still use voip.ms for cheap long distance and voicemail (with no answer transfer and busy transfer)...

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Me too, I am looking for an alternative. I believe they will have a slow but steady exodus over this one.  I pay $13 a month and can easily get a Telus land line for $5. But have some other ideas based on cellular. 

Their vancouver3 server is still down... finally got it going by manually reconfiguring devices to toronto1...

 

I setup my parents home phone on voip.ms. Family trying to reach them on Friday for potential emergency situation and couldn't get through. Now my parent want a real POTS line again at any price. Sucks to be the one the fingers are pointed at.

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@Anonymous I can’t believe that DDOS is not preventable. 

Never the less 3 days with no phone is not acceptable. 

Thanks for your input. 

And thanks to others for great ideas. 

I like the Koodo option. And $5 a month would give me a $6 savings that would offset half the cost of the box. 

When the Koodo goes up to $30 then use a PM Sim on a $25 or $15 plan and work the rewards to reduce cost. 

Anonymous
Not applicable

@barrascuk wrote:

And there is no preventive steps?


 @barrascuk : No. How can there be? The servers are open to the internet. A bunch of computers on the internet, whether by an army or bots, make their attempt to connect to that (those) server(s) hammering them with a constant stream of packets. The server can't reasonably serve all those connections and so the packets back up thereby denying service to legitimate connections. The servers have only so many virtual connections in too. So they all get jammed.

It's the same thing that happens when real people are really trying to legitimately connect to a server for something all at once ie. vaccine passport and you hear about how the servers get overloaded and people have to wait. Same thing.

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

And there is no preventive steps?

 

In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to the Internet. Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled.[1]

Anonymous
Not applicable

barrascuk
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Thanks and down for day 3. 

 

Not sure of what DDOS is really but if they left the door open somewhere I have no pity for them. 

 

I pay $13 on average and if I went back to Telus I could pay $5 for a copper or optic line. 

 

Once I research the Panasonic Home Phone with link2cell I may just get a 3rd PM account and work it that way. 

 

I will have to wind done my balance at Voip.ms though and will look at my stats since day one for average outbound calls. 

 

While there are some advantages for having Voip.ms, I think we could get used to not having their service. 

 

 

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

 @barrascuk : I came across a mention somewhere that it's a sustained DDoS attack.

It does give more weight to keeping an old copper landline around. Although now so rare to have a need for it but sometimes you just never know. It's a lot money to pay every month for that rare possibility. It takes a lot to bring down a cell system.

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