Nortel 1535 Unregistering Constantly on Incredible PBX 1.8

[merlyn]

I have 3 extentions connected to a working incredible 1.8.1. 2 extentions are "local" to the asterisk box and are constantly unregistering. My third extention (a remote extention) is always registered with no problems. For example I can click register on both phones and they will show fine with a 11ms ping time for about 30 seconds. One or the other ( or both) extention will constantly change to unreachable in sip info in freepbx. My logs are filled with unregistering registering etc etc all day night. Asterisk box is directly on internet with all ports available to it with a static ip.

PBX in a Flash PURPLE Daemon Status - Version 1.7.9 Released on 110910
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
┌────────────────────────System Information───────────────────────────┐
│ Asterisk = ONLINE | Dahdi = ONLINE | MySQL = ONLINE │
│ SSH = ONLINE | Apache = ONLINE | Iptables = ONLINE │
│ Fail2ban = ONLINE | Internet = ONLINE | Ip6Tables = ONLINE │
│ BlueTooth = ONLINE | Hidd = ONLINE | NTPD = ONLINE │
│ SendMail = ONLINE | Samba = OFFLINE | Webmin = ONLINE │
│ Ethernet0 = ONLINE | Ethernet1 = N/A | Wlan0 = N/A │
│ │
│ PBX in a Flash Version = 1.7.5.5 │
│ FreePBX Version = 2.8.0.4 │
│ Running Asterisk Version = Asterisk 1.8.1 │
│ Asterisk Source Version = 1.8.1 │
│ Dahdi Source Version = 2.4.0+2.4.0 │
│ Libpri Source Version = 1.4.11.5 │
│ IP Address = correctly listed on eth0 │
│ Operating System = CentOS release 5.5 (Final) │
│ Kernel Version = 2.6.18-194.26.1.el5 - 32 Bit │
│ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

I think something is setup wrong somewhere in my network settings. I have been unable to find out what.

Things I have tried....
- disable and enable recommended stun settings from nerdvittles article ... no difference...
- tried changing port of 2nd extention to 5061 and left 1st at 5060 . If i change both the port in freepbx and the phone i cannot register if i change it only in phone i can register but i get random port 8XXX. I get the same 8XXX port if i leave all settings to 5060. the two local phones are behind a netgear router on a 2nd static ip that i have with the same provider.

I started looking at random files and found that sip_custom had the wrong external ip address so i corrected it and rebooted. This did not seem to help but this may not be the only file setup wrong.
I had to use netconfig to install since for whatever reason I could not get a valid ip during initial install. Netconfig setup (twice as usual) went thru fine and the install went on ok. But the weird 173.X.X.X ip that the install gave me before i ran netconfig was listed in the external ip. that may be a symptom of what is going on with my system.

Thru all this the system works for the most part.

Anybody have a idea where I should start looking?

merlyn

 

[ice]

I have a similar problem too and I've tried different STUN servers along with some of what you've tried with no luck. Changing the timeouts on my router/firewall didn't seem to help either.

Idea for you: instead of having 2 or 3 extensions live, see if you can afford to kill them off leaving only 1. Posts online suggest port conflicts, but if you're only troubleshooting with 1 then you won't have a port conflict problem.

Check your logs, from the time of registration to Unavailable what's the duration before it fails? For me it was always between 63-67 seconds. There's a keepalive option starting at 30 seconds so I chose 45 seconds (I thought 60 seconds was too close to the timeout): look for it as NAT Timer in your Proxy Settings.

No guarantees, but after trying everything else, setting a keepalive has me connected for over 10 minutes... I power-cycled my phone and still another 10 minutes! Here's to hoping it lasts indefinitely now.

Let us know how it turns out!

 

[blanchae]

Asterisk box is directly on internet

What do you mean by that statement? Your phones are local to it? Does that mean your phones are on the Internet too? Either you are behind a firewall protected from the Internet or exposed to the Internet which is a HUGE security risk.

 

[merlyn]

What do you mean by that statement? Your phones are local to it? Does that mean your phones are on the Internet too? Either you are behind a firewall protected from the Internet or exposed to the Internet which is a HUGE security risk.

As you said the second one exposed to the internet (wide open total sitting duck ). Do I understand the implications of this .. yup sure do ... IP tables , incredible pbx locking down procedure and long passwords is all that is protecting me currently.

But if I cannot get it working directly on the net imagine how much problems I am going to have when NAT is involved.

I have been following your many tutorials blanchae here with great interest over the years. Once i get the system working I will be interested in being more secure. So I understand your statements and respect them.

MY Phones I am not willing to put on the net so they are behind a netgear router on a different static ip. So this is where my networking skills are being tested.
lets make up a ip and say
the pbx is on 100.100.100.101
the phones and all my desktops etc are on 100.100.100.102
my gateway is 100.100.100.100 (cable modem)

I have 5 static ips available to me all coming from my providers cable modem. The cable modem has a 5 port switch in it so I have the netgear and the pbx directly plugged into the cable modem.

I had to run traveling man to get the phones to connect at all. I assumed since the phones being on .102 would be able to connect to .101 since they have the same gateway. But i still had to run traveling man to make it work.

merlyn

 

[merlyn]

update on what i have tried currently ...

- set sip_custom.conf to following
;externip=100.100.100.101 ( as per my fake example above ...)
;localnet=
promiscredir=yes
i left localnet blank since its right on the net is that correct?

- came in today and all three extentions were all on port 5060 when i checked sip info. Showed as all 3 registered and all ok. So definetly having port problems. So I tried calling at the same time 2 different numbers from both phones here and they both rang thru fine. 5 mins after that it automatically selected a 9xxx port on both phones. 3rd phone (the remote) stayed on 5060 as is still fine .

- disconnected 1 extention so i currently have one here local and one remote ... will see what that does to the port issue.

- currently when i check my now 2 extentions the remote is fine never unregistering while the local is still listed as unreachable both on port 5060 ...

merlyn

 

[blanchae]

Have you checked the phones NAT=yes settings?

 

[ice]

I don't think I understand your setup, but it sounds like you have some in-NAT and your PIAF box not? Either way, are you also using STUN servers?

 

[merlyn]

Thanks to everyone who tried to help me out.
I beat my head against the wall for weeks with this problem.

For anyone reading this if you have tried everything and your phones are still unregistering try a different router.

When I swapped to a linux distro firewall (zentyal) with a spare server i had sitting around here all symptoms disappeared. I did it just as a test but decided to leave the zentyal server running.

All my phones stay registered with no problems.

I should have known better then to trust a off the shelf router (netgear)

Thanks again to all.

Merlyn

 

[ice]

I had a feeling the bottleneck may be there somewhere. When I turned on the keepalive, it seemed to work okay. I wonder if there's a timeout feature you can adjust, but either way thanks for checking back in!