SOLVED Google Voice Outage 10/20/2014

[docgreen]

So it's now May 16th, and I'm a little ashamed to admit that I've procrastinated till the very end and still have not switched over from GV to another provider.

I fully expected my PBX to be a lifeless box... but much to my surprise, I'm still making and receiving calls without any trouble.

Why?

Did Google not follow through with dropping XMPP support? Is there some kind of glitch? Is my server still in the middle of some kind of login period, and will stop working when the period expires and needs to renew? Is it magic?

I mean... not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but I'd be more comfortable knowing what's going on.

 

[stanjohn]

Short answer no one that post to this forum knows the answer, long answer would be unverifiable speculation. If you need an reliable ride do not wait for the gift horse to die. Not sure that I have even been feeding or watering mine so guess we are on borrowed time.

 

[docgreen]

LOL, well put.

 

[Brian Simmons]

For whatever reason, Google hasn't "thrown the switch" yet. Obviously with the deadline having past, I would say you are on borrowed time. They could make the change at any time without warning now. Of course they may never actually make the chance either. But I think at this point it is better to be safe than sorry. There are plenty of super low cost alternatives out there. I realize free is better, but since the free option could change at any time, it isn't worth the risk IMHO.

 

[docgreen]

Ha! Good one.

 

[GomezAddams]

Someone pointed out in another post (I'm too lazy to search) that people may have misinterpreted Google's announcement. His (or her) interpretation was that Google was going to drop support for development of applications which interfaced with GV via XMPP rather than turning off XMPP.

That said, I've always been wary of GV. It seems a perpetual step-child in the Google suite of apps.

 

[tycho]

The Interwebs are full of misinformation about what, if anything, Google was going to do with respect to Google Voice and/or XMPP, and when. The only semi-official-from-Google pronouncement that I am aware of is the Singhal statement dated 2013/10/31 and reported by Ward in Nerd Vittles at http://nerdvittles.com/?p=7940. All that statement said was that Google had "notified (app developers) that they must stop making unauthorized use of GoogleVoice to run their services and transition users by may 15, 2014." The rest of what Singhal said was along the lines of "we're thinking of doing some other things, like Hangouts, maybe, someday."

I'm a casual, personal user. My Obi100 still works fine making free outbound calls via GV. My PIAF box still works fine making free outbound calls via GV. The callback method still works via my Python-scripted Dockstar or my myriad devices running the GV app or with access to the GV web page. I see no risk whatsover in maintaining that status quo. If/when these interconnections to GV stop working, big deal: I'll pick up my cell phone and use some of the minutes that I never get around to using, or I'll pick up my landline and switch to using another of my pre-configured VoIP carriers. Risk? Exactly the time it takes to find where I put the cell phone or select the alternate trunk at the moment that GV stops working. Benefit to the status quo? Free calls until GV stops working. Risk-Benefit analysis favors maintaining the status quo...

 

[thefuzz4]

So I came across this today. Perhaps this will be the future with asterisk and google?

https://developers.google.com/+/hangouts/telephone-oauth

Apparently this will be the official voice api.

 

[wardmundy]

For this week anyway.

 

[tm1000]

Nope. As I posted in another thread that API is only useful within Hangouts. It can not be used externally.

So I came across this today. Perhaps this will be the future with asterisk and google?

https://developers.google.com/ /hangouts/telephone-oauth

Apparently this will be the official voice api.

 

[wardmundy]

p.s. That was a feeble attempt at snarky humor only. Wasn't addressing the merits.

 

[docgreen]

I think I figured out what's going on with this. Earlier today I needed to add 2 temporary lines to my server for a client. I created a couple GV accounts, but wasn't able to get them to work with the server. When I looked at the GV settings of the new accounts compared to the settings of my old accounts which are working just fine with PIAF, I noticed that "Google Chat" isn't listed as a forwarding option on the new accounts, but its still there on the old ones.

 

[wardmundy]

*UPDATE* We've also now confirmed that, if you ever uncheck the Google Chat option in one of your Google Voice accounts, you will lose the option forever!

 

[beandata]

Thanks Ward!

 

[tycho]

The new integration with Hangouts is, however interesting. See:

http://time.com/3030966/google-voice-rising-google-falling/

From the GV web portal I selected "Hangouts" from the CALL>PHONE TO CALL WITH drop down. Hangouts opened on my netbook (effectively replacing "Google Chat" as the computer-side client) and my home phone rang. Call clarity was good at both ends.

So the trick, albeit perhaps not one of interest, would be to intercept that Hangouts API in PIAF

*edit* Nevermind. I just reread TM1000's comment above about the API.

 

[tm1000]

*edit* Nevermind. I just reread TM1000's comment above about the API.

And for clarification that's not just hear-say or assumptions. I went through the API with Josh at Digium (who wrote the original connectors for Google Voice)

 

[tycho]

*UPDATE* We've also now confirmed that, if you ever uncheck the Google Chat option in one of your Google Voice accounts, you will lose the option forever!

Curiously, that is not the case for me, or several folks hanging over at DSLR. We can all check, uncheck and recheck Settings>Phones>Google Talk without isssue.

 

[wardmundy]

tycho: It may have to do with how long the setting remains unchecked. We had an old account where we had disabled Google Chat several months ago, and now the option doesn't show up at all.

 

[tycho]

tycho: It may have to do with how long the setting remains unchecked. We had an old account where we had disabled Google Chat several months ago, and now the option doesn't show up at all.

Ah; thanks, wardmundy. Mine have either mostly always been checked on, or always been checked off, and the one that I tested toggling was over a period of mere hours in a single day.

 

[wardmundy]

Just a heads up that, in configuring a new cloud-based server with Google Voice today, we got loads of errors on the Asterisk CLI and no connections until the following ports were added to the IPtables setup in /etc/sysconfig/iptables (CentOS) or /etc/iptables/rules.v4 (Ubuntu/Debian/Raspbian). You also will need to restart IPtables: service iptables restart.

-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 19294 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 19295 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 19302 -j ACCEPT

tm1000: Errors look like this (hundreds of them):

[2014-08-10 16:38:42] WARNING[4571] res_xmpp.c: JABBER: socket read error
[2014-08-10 16:38:43] WARNING[4571] res_xmpp.c: Parsing failure: Hook returned an error.
[2014-08-10 16:38:43] WARNING[4571] res_xmpp.c: Parsing failure: Invalid XML.

Special thanks to: Jason McNeil. See also Google's new App Passwords if that doesn't fix it. New thread has now appeared on DSL Reports as well.