MagicJack Disconnects Randomly - but like clockwork!

manual · Post by **manual** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:31 am

For the first 6 months using MJ, it worked flawlessly(In fact, I went ahead and purchased the 5-yr deal in late Nov). But since early to mid-December, it started disconnecting calls, anywhere from a minute to, if I'm lucky, 15 minutes into the calls, regardless of who initiated the call. What's strange, is the people on the other end say my voice begins to fade and they begin hearing music, then nothing. On my end, it just quits, and if I try redialing, the dial tone doesn't go away when I input the numbers, until the MJ has rebooted itself.

Is anyone else having this problem? I've talked to customer service, and we've tried most everything...changing USB ports, phones, with/without USB supplied extension, reinstalled software. Nothing software or hardware-wise has changed on the host computer.

Interestingly, this started happening around the time I changed my DSL connection to a dry connection...so I was wondering if AT&T had figured out a way of making it not work dependably. However, I've gone back to having a landline (hoping this would change things) with my DSL service, but nothing has changed.

Any help would be appreciated. FYI - I'm using the OKC 405 area code.

Manny

hsweiss · Post by **hsweiss** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 12:37 pm

I'd suggest you try changing your proxy server. It makes an amazing difference. But your mileage may vary..... I had been homed on the NY proxy and it was horrible. So I blocked it and had great sound quality. Last night after a reboot, I had choppy voice after blocking the NY proxy. Turns out I was homed in on the Miami proxy - bad news! I unblocked NY and the sound was good again. Overloaded proxy's are notorious for dropping calls.

You could also be having network issues causing the drops. I don't know what you mean by changing to a "dry" connection?

manual · Post by **manual** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 2:31 pm

Dry loop refers to no landline telephone service, just DSL coming in on the phone line. AT&T just started offering it here late last year.

How do you change proxy servers?

hsweiss · Post by **hsweiss** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 3:07 pm

Thanks for the explanation of dry connection.

See the following to 'block' proxies which forces MJ to find a different one. Sometimes however, the "new" proxy may be as bad as the old proxy so you have to block that one too (I had to do this last night to block the Miami proxy).

http://www.phoneservicesupport.com/mj-w ... t4651.html

manual · Post by **manual** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 7:24 pm

Thanks for the input. I decided to load MJ on my laptop, using the same DSL connection that I use for my desktop, and lo and behold, made a call to my other phone line and it never skipped a beat...it lasted more than 30 minutes until I hung up the connection.

With that done, I opened up my desktop, blew out all the dust that's accumulated over the last year, and will try MJ back in that computer later. Since I did get an embarrassingly amount of dust out of the CPU fan/heatsink, along with other dust from the power supply, I'm now wondering if I was having an overheating problem that was making the whole system a little intermittent. If the MJ is as sensitive to the power level as I've been reading here, this could possibly be the culprit. I'll let you know what I find.

Thanks for your help. Keep your fingers crossed. It sure is nice to have my MJ working again!!