This is just my experience, YMMV as they say…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In April of 2022 my VOIP home phone<\/a> stopped receiving incoming calls. I could still dial out, but nobody could call the house. I received warning emails from Skyetel<\/a> every 3 hours that my SIP endpoint was unreachable by their servers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since nothing had changed on my end, I suspected that something changed with my provider: Comcast\/xfinity. Similar to my experience with British Airways<\/a>, I found that xfinity has now automated everything<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I understand that automation helps if someone just needs to reboot their router, or forgot their wifi password. But for those who need genuine help getting shit done<\/em>, it presents a huge barrier. It took me 9 calls and 3 trips to the xfinity store to get this resolved…<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I phoned tech support to explain that port 5060 (for SIP service) was being blocked on my connection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The first guy I talked to said they won’t open up that port unless I subscribe to xfinity’s VOIP service. Honestly, I didn’t want to talk to this guy anymore. He was obviously from India. No offense, but he sounded more like a scammer than a helper. I wanted to talk to someone who actually<\/em> works for xfinity in the US, that actually<\/em> knows how their network is set up. Before I hung up I got the phone number for Advanced Technical Support. It’s 888-780-8571<\/a>. You’re welcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I called that number and magically wound up speaking with an actual technical rep based in these United States. BTW, this won’t happen every time – I’ve yet to figure out what automation magic I did to skip past the overseas nonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I mentioned my issue he referenced this page https:\/\/www.xfinity.com\/support\/articles\/list-of-blocked-ports<\/a> which I had also been looking at, noting that port 5060 isn’t in the list. He said I might need to do some configuration in my modem’s settings to forward that port.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the Netgear CM1000<\/a> isn’t a combo modem\/router. It doesn’t have a firewall or port forwards or anything. It just passes all connections on to my OpenWRT router<\/a> which has firewall\/forwarding\/wifi\/etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the tech guy suggested I try an xfinity-supplied cable modem (at a rental fee of $15\/mo) to see if that solves the problem. I wasn’t thrilled with the extra cost, but he said it’s pro-rated and might be worth seeing if it fixes the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I went into my nearest xfinity store, went home with a new cable modem, and set it up. Then, to my dismay, when I went into the port forwarding settings on the modem, I consistently got this error:<\/p>\n\n\n\nApproach 1 (trying to fix the problem directly)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Approach 2 (playing the game)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n