Sometimes, provided our very stable internet connection is working, people want to use VoIP services. The clients blessed with more money tend to use a FRITZ!Box WLAN with VoIP capabilities. However, the vast majority of the people living in my village tends to use a small box called HandyTone 286 ATA.
In theory, the box should be able to download its firmware upgrades via HTTP or TFTP from a server the user can specify. Most of the time (this is my personal opinion based on very few users), this does not work. To install a new firmware (which should "squash" some bugs), we had to set-up TFTP servers in the client's local network.
Since most people tend to use Windows, we are normally equipped with Windows tools when updating an ATA-286. A great free TFTP server is Tftpd32. Once downloaded, all we do is download the firmware from Grandstream, place it in the TFTP server's directory and configure the ATA-286 to use our local TFTP server. It is advisable to check whether Firewall rules are blocking TFTP traffic.
After a reboot, the ATA-286 should download the new firmware and install it...finished. So why doesn't it work if the ATA-286 is configured to retrieve its updates via HTTP? Even analysing the traffic with Ethereal didn't provide me with a clue. Can you solve the mystery?