[marwatk]

Hi all,

I'm hoping there are some Denver UMA users in the forums who can help me figure out the extent of a problem.

Since Monday or Tuesday both of the phones on my account (mine and my wife's) started experiencing intermittant issues receiving and making calls when in UMA mode. Here's what happens:

About 20-40% of the time, after dialing an outgoing call it will say "Calling..." then just dump me out to whatever screen I was at.
A little bit higher percentage of the time (30-40%) when receiving a call I will get only the popup that I have a missed call (no ring or visible sign that a call is coming in). Sometimes I get the caller id information, sometimes I only get 'Unknown Number' (even from the same number). The caller hears only dead air, unless he waits for 40 seconds at which point my phone will finally ring and the call will come through (most people don't wait this long, however).

Initially I thought for sure it was an issue with my router/connection, even though it has worked fine in the past. However, I am able to duplicate it exactly at T-Mobile hotspots and other routers/connections.

Next guess would be the phone itself, but the fact that the same issue happened to two seperate phones at the same time seems to eliminate that possiblity.

After spending hours on the phone with T-Mobile and RIM they are stumped (but still working the issue, apparently).

Doing some network analysis I think that I can narrow it down to a link between two routers/servers on T-Mobile's side (lots of packet loss in certain circumstances) but I can't be sure since I don't know how they're configured.

So, what I'm hoping is that someone in Denver says "Hey! I'm having that same issue!" and we can tell T-Mobile they do indeed have a network issue.

If you haven't noticed issues, but want to try, these are the steps I take to reproduce:

Disable 'Mobile Network' in 'Manage Connections' (to ensure it must be a wifi issue)

1. Hold '1' to dial voicemail
2. Wait until you hear the voice 'You have ... messages'
3. If you don't get through, note what your phone does

Repeat the above 10 times (should only take less than a minute to do it that many times, though make sure you wait a few seconds between attempts to let the phone finish the call properly). I generally get between 2 and 4 failures in the 10 tries.

Make sure you re-enable 'Mobile Network' after you're done.

Thanks for any information anyone has, intermittant issues are SO FRUSTRATING.

[gatortone]

My family and I live in the Denver metro area, and for the past two weeks had issues with the TMO Linksys router. We have three phones (2 Curves, 1 Samsung) I tested the phone on the mobile network and had no issues whatsoever. My calls were crystal clear, but whenever we used the Linksys router, we'd drop several calls and had garbled audio. When I called TMO, they said to test it at a public Hotspot at Starbucks. So, I did, and the phone worked fine. So, I called back and asked for a new router. So far, our router is doing ok, but I installed it last night, so I haven't had much of a chance to test it. However, I did use the same Starbucks Hotspot this morning and my calls would not go through. It would sit at "Calling" or just disconnect after a couple of seconds. I also noticed that my wife called me twice on the road, and noticed that the phone would ring and the missed call indicator would pop up. She didn't mention to me whether or not it was router related, but it was a little weird for it to happen twice in a row. I'll report if the new router solved our issue after I test it more this weekend.

[gatortone]

marwatk - I'm able to duplicate your same issues, but it happens to me everywhere. I make a call, and it will quickly disconnect the call. It's happening to my wife with regularity. I'm going to talk to TMO.

[dajjms]

I'm in Fort Collins, CO, and have also been experiencing this issue with my 8320 while using UMA within the past week.

1) Making a call on UMA 50% of the time never connects.
2) Incoming calls ring once, then shows a missed call from "Unknown Number". If the caller calls back right away, the call comes through.

When the calls only ring once for me, the caller has told me that they let it ring for about a minute...and never get voicemail...the call just finally picks up and is silent.

Hopefully we can get this resolved.

[gatortone]

I talked to TMO on Saturday, and they haven't been getting any widespread reports about UMA issues. But, it seems to be calls to UMA users and UMA users making outgoing calls. Hopefully, TMO can fix this soon...

[gnat]

I have had two 8320's on TMBL for about 6 months. 3+ days ago I started getting exactly the same thing as you on my router (wrt310n) while using UMA. Majority of outgoing calls disconnecting with no message (4-5 tries to get through). Many incoming calls not ringing and showing missed call and "unknown number". I'm also having issue with 3rd party email accounts I've set up in bis using OWA configuration. I made changes to DTIM (2), Fragmentation (2304), RTS (2304), and Beacon (50) without any change to this problem.

I'll call t-mobile and help this along. I was actually hunting for DD-WRT firmware and other settings when I found you. Very suprised to see this may be on their end.

Thanks all for the thorough debugging.

I'll repost if/when I get solution.

[gatortone]

T-Mo called me back and left a number to call for Hotspot @Home Network support. This is very annoying and hopefully, this will get resolved soon since it is still happening for us.

[gatortone]

It doesn't sound like it's impacting any other markets...anyone outside of Colorado affected?

[marwatk]

My ticket with RIM hasn't gone anywhere yet, but the issue seems to be getting worse. (Getting dropped calls now in addition to the connection issues).

Hey gatortone, did you get anywhere with the Hotspot people? What was the number they gave you?

-Marcus

[dajjms]

I broke down and visited the T-Mobile store today. When I said that I was having these issues, they kinda laughed and said, "Yeah, we are having the same problem with our own phones. We have alerted our UMA division. Just turn off your WiFi for a couple of days until it gets fixed."

I'm glad my monthly airtime minutes just renewed, since I can't use my H@H... :(

[bajjisw]

I don't believe this is a UMA issue. When I am on EDGE, the same thing happens.

[dajjms]

My phone works perfectly while on EDGE. Only while on UMA do I have any issues.

[gatortone]

I talked to the UMA Network support people last night, and they said it's impacting the New Mexico/Colorado area. However, he did say that it's not everyone who's impacted since they seem to be getting sporadic calls about it. In any case, we replicated the problems and he sent over the ticket to the network people...In the meantime, I told my wife to keep her phone on EDGE...

marwatk - 505-843-2092 (I usually left a message)
you may need a ticket created though...

[simulator]

I'm unable to connect with calls on UMA in Maryland. Just started happening today. TMo was unaware of any issues; put in a ticket on the problem.

[gnat]

It's not the router. It's not the handset. It's not my ISP. Local rep at store (CO Mills) is having same issues, so they agree it's their network. I tested in their store, same result. I called 877-882-7177 and they (Brandy) filed ticket with "Advanced Tech Support" (tier 3). Awaiting reply from that group. Lots of tail chasing and repeat tests of areas I know are not the issue, but hoping they find something soon. I've asked what server I should run a tracert on, but haven't hit anyone who understands what I'm asking yet. Awaiting return call from them. Ugh.

marwatk - what did you run to find out about the two routers with major packet loss?

I just got a call from Dominic (505-843-2902) and he said they are getting a lot of calls on this, they consider it a critical issue, and they expect to have to apply an update one-on-one to resolve it. He's sending my ticket to the "Engineering Group" to address it. They expect to have a solution in the next 5 days.

[kEsemper]

I have noticed this as well, in the greater Chicago-land area. I am not really sure what is causing the problem at the moment since I have only had my t-mobile 8320 for a couple days, currently I am leaning towards my all in one router/modem Linksys wcg200v.2.
My issue would be I am mid call and my wifi connection drops & so does the call that I am on or placing. However my internet connection to my main PC does is still strong & unwavering. Oh and my ISP is Commcast.
Very annoying stuff but I think I need to play with my wifi settings a bit more before I can clearly rule out what it is and is not.

Best of luck to you all, I look forward to updates.

[marwatk]

My router is actually a linux machine so I'm able to watch the flow of traffic for UMA.

When making calls the phone is communicating with m010636d0.tmodns.net (208.54.6.1) which is most likely a pool of servers.

Tracing the route there yields T-Mobile-USA-Denver.so-6-1-0.ar2.DEN2.gblx.net (207.138.122.242) as the hop before it.

ping -f on the 207.x address yields negligble packet loss. The same done to 208.54.6.1 yields roughly 40% packet loss.

I'm not sure, however, the significance of this since I can watch the encrypted UDP sequence between the phone and the servers and I can't see a pattern in dropped packets (missing sequence numbers) when there are dropped calls versus calls going through. My guess is there's some issue with the load balancing on T-Mobile's side, and at some critical point the phone is getting some sort of invalid response back.

At any rate, I've stopped investigating realizing that UMA isn't ready for use as a primary phone. If there can be an outage for several weeks and I can't get anyone to even recognize it from their end I can't rely on it in the future (assuming it ever gets fixed). I dropped the HS@H service from my phone altogether and went back to a land line.

[gatortone]

I believe my issue has been resolved. I got a couple of calls from TMO UMA support during the week, and they have been working on the issue. They haven't called back since, but I did some tests yesterday and it looks like it may be working again. Haven't been able to replicate the same issues.