Overview

The following diagram represents the typical configuration for a residential user’s VoIP phone service. There many hardware brands for each of these devices that will work. However, some brands work better than others. TinCanTalk supports the following router brands: Net Gear, LinkSys, and D-link. All members of the TinCanTalk technical support team must understand all the features of our recommended hardware and how the functionality of that hardware may impact the overall quality of VoIP services that our customers experience. In addition, all TinCanTalk Technical support people are trained to troubleshoot problems that users might have with any hardware recommended by TinCanTalk.

All these various devices must communicate successfully from one to the other and back again. Different protocols are used to carry the messages in channels from one device to another.



COMMUNICATION AND CONNECTIVITY FLOW:

• The source telephone number and the number being dialed are sent to the ATA device.
• The ATA channels these to the router
• The Router channels this same information to the cable or DSL Modem
• The Cable or DSL modem connects with the Internet to send these numbers to the VoIP PBX
• The VoIP PBX verifies that the source of the call is a legitimate number and that the number being dialed is not an unauthorized international number.. (These numbers are recorded via the TinCanTalk OSS at the time the customers register.) Whether or not a customer may dial an international call depends upon the information in their prepaid International account information located in the TinCanTalk OSS.
• If all is well, the PBX sends is authorization back through the internet, cable or DSL modem, to the router.
• The router then communicates the authorization to the computer and to the ATA device.
• The telephone conversation begins and then ATA coverts the messages from the telephone from analog to digital packets which can be stored in the computer and in the VoIP PBX. What the customer, receiving a connection, hears is the voice of the party who was dialed.

TinCanTalk Policy on Troubleshooting/Supporting the various hardware devices in the VoIP configuration.

We provide immediate support for the brands we recommend.
There are many brand of routers, It is close to impossible to know all of their various features and to troubleshoot them all completely. However, the TinCanTalk policy is to train our technical help desk personnel extensively in trouble-shooting techniques for those brands that we recommend our customers use in their VoIP Local Network Configurations. Thus because our training focus in on a few brands, our Technical personnel will be able to answer and/or identify solutions to problems with these routers most often in a matter of seconds if not minutes.

We provide problem solutions for the brands we don’t recommend.
While it is true that we can more quickly solve router problems arising from one of our recommended brands, It’s not that we say to the customers who have other brands: “Oh forget it, you have a brand of router that we don’t support.” However, in many cases it may take us a little longer to solve those problems as our technical personnel must research these solutions on an individual basis. That’s the bad news. The good news is that any problem solution, regardless its brand, device, or customer issue will be recorded in our searchable TinCanTalk troubleshooting database. The next time another customer may have this problem with this brand, it will be solved in a matter of seconds.

Troubleshooting