SunRocket Gizmo Troubleshooting

Not long ago, I spent a couple hours on the phone with SunRocket. I had their InnoMedia Gizmo and the VOIP light just wouldn't come on. I had a newer SpeedStream DSL modem there and a Netgear RangeMax router also connected. In my attempts prior to calling, I followed their suggestion to connect the Gizmo(that's what they call all of their VOIP appliances of which I'm told they use Innomedia, Linksys and others for this purpose) directly to the DSL modem. I also tried it on the LAN side of the RangeMax. In all cases, I had a couple of laptops connected wirelessly to the RangeMax and they could get on the internet just fine.

The quick-install brochure said I should power off all other devices and power on those devices starting from the outside of the site(i.e. Modem first, then Gizmo, then my router). This is what you should do in general since inside devices usually get addresses from those on their WAN side. Anyway, as I turned on the Gizmo, its power light was green, its run light would start out flashing green then shifted to flashing orange and finally flashing red. This meant the gizmo was not able to register with the SunRocket servers. As I said, the VOIP light wouldn't come on. The LAN and WAN lights were amber indicating that those intefaces were functional. Rubber? Meet road: I had no dialtone :(

So I just wanted to go through a couple of tactics used in troubleshooting this device. The first was of course to reboot everything in sight. After that didn't work we swapped the position of the Gizmo versus the router and also plugged the computer in directly to the modem to verify that we had an internet connection(see above).

Then we logged into the Gizmo at 192.168.251.1 with username 'user' and password 'welcome' and went into the IP settings and PPP something or other to program in the dsl username and password so the Gizmo could login for me. Now, this particular DSL modem - like many I see - has the capacity to save the username and password within which is great. It means after setting up the DSL service, connecting a computer or router is as simple as making sure it's using its DHCP client(the default for most devices). It also makes it so DSL is as easy to deal with as most cable modem connections.

That's why I found that part of the strategy confusing...if the internet was working and the Gizmo could clearly get on the internet, why try to have it take over the PPP authentication? Being a good soldier I did what I was told after expressing my doubts a couple of times. Finally I got to a very helpful Level 2 tech who had me try a few things and concluded the device was dead and sent out a new one. I'm still awaiting a conclusion on this problem so wish and Sunrocket luck!

If you're in SunRocket's tech support, don't hate me. I'm just trying to save people some time and give them a strategy to get you out of the script. All too often tech support reps are not working with the customer as much as telling the customer what to do and that needs to change. One way to change it is to train reps to listen and ask more questions to guage the technical competence of their customer.