Tag: ALG

Why your brand new router may cause your VoIP to stop working

 

Important
This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared on a blog called The Michigan Telephone Blog, which was written by a friend before he decided to stop blogging. It is reposted with his permission. Comments dated before the year 2013 were originally posted to his blog.
I quote directly from Voip-Info.org:

Many of today’s commercial routers implement SIP ALG (Application-level gateway), coming with this feature enabled by default. While ALG could help in solving NAT related problems, the fact is that many routers’ ALG implementations are wrong and break SIP.

The article goes on to explain why the implementation is broken, and how to disable it in several brands of routers.  Certain VoIP adapter manufacturers also recommend disabling this feature if you are having problems with SIP registration, not being able to receive a call or one-way audio.  But note that this issue can affect any type of SIP-based communications, regardless of hardware or software used.

EDIT (May, 2018): For information on another issue that may cause problems when you switch routers, see this DSLReports thread: SIP registration times.