Sporadic one-way audio

[BillG]

I'm occasionally getting one-way audio. I answer the phone and there's no one there. Not every time though. They report back later than they could hear me saying "hello? hello?" but I obviously couldn't hear them. I have PBXiaF set up just like I had my old Trixbox set up, including same IP address, port forwarding, etc etc. I just switched back to my old Trixbox machine which was perfectly reliable until I can work the bugs out of PBXiaF - this is an obvious deal breaker but I don't know how to track down such an intermittent problem. Sometimes it works perfectly fine; sometimes I just can't hear incoming. Any insights?

Bill

 

[mtennant]

What ports are you actually forwarding to your PIF box?

 

[BillG]

All the same ports that I was forwarding to my Trixbox. When I took down Trixbox I brought up PBXiaF on the same IP address - nothing changed.

 

[mtennant]

Just make sure got the ports correct. Also, reboot your router.

 

[BillG]

I guess I wasn't clear. The ports are all the same as the have been for the past 2 years with Trixbox - that's not the issue. And sometimes it works fine, sometimes I pick up and can't hear my callers (they can hear me though.) It's happening enough now that I've had to turn off PBXiaF and go back to my trusty old Trixbox system.

 

[jroper]

Hi

In terms of your trunks, are they standard, in other words, are you being caught out by the firewall rules on the PiaF which do not exist on TB.

Try turning off the IP tables via help-pbx, and test again.

Yours

Joe

 

[BillG]

The problem is that it's a sporadic problem - I can't recreate it at will. Why would it work sometimes and not others?

 

[jroper]

Hi

The media stream can end up any number of pairs of ports, so if they are ports that are being let through, then no problems, if it hits ports that are blocked, then you will not hear other end, but they will hear you, as no ports are blocked outbound, only inbound.

Joe

 

[wardmundy]

If you've been using trixbox for two years, then the setup is probably different now because we're using an entirely new generation of Asterisk.

Take another look at the Nerd Vittles article and especially the section on Getting Rid of One-Way Audio.

Finally, perhaps you could fill us in on which ports are actually being forwarded through your router. "Same as with trixbox" from two years ago isn't much of a clue unfortunately. I understand you're suggesting that it should be a drop in replacement, but the underlying versions of Asterisk are really quite different.

 

[BillG]

Ah, thanks guys - that makes some sense. I'll look into the the ports and PBXiaF firewall and report back.

 

[BillG]

Hi again - I hate to bring up an old topic, but I never got this resolved and it's really hurting me. I'm forwarding 5004-5082, 10000-20000, 4569. Still getting sporadic one-way audio - callers can hear me but I can't hear them. It's so sporadic that it's pretty much impossible to test. Any other suggestions?

 

[wardmundy]

Did you read the article?? Port forwarding is only part of the problem. The other requirement to get rid of one-way audio is setting externip and localnet or externhost and localnet in sip_custom.

 

[gaijin]

These audio problems are always sporadic. Don't stress about you not being able to replicate it always, that is the very nature of this type of problem.

can you post what you have in your sip_nat.conf and your rtp.conf?

They should match the ports above.

Also,
1: does your piaf have only one network card?
2: Is there ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that another box may have an IP conflict with your PIAf's internal IP?
4: What about your handsets? no chance of an IP conflict there?
5: Could it possibly be a contention issue (ie is anyone / thing sharing your Piaf Server's bandwidth.
6: please also provide your hardware details. primarily brand of NIC. I can;t really help you there but there are pleanty of Linux Geeks who could tell you if you are using the right drivers etc.
7: disable IP tables (or just allow ICMP echo if you know how) and setup a ping -t ip.add.of.pbx > c:\pinglog.txt
when you get a drop out stop the ping and review the log.
8: replace your server's NIC. The only problems I have had with PIAF was hardware related!!! I had a NIC intermittently fail.

Also which way is the one way audio?

It is almost always a networking problem. and networking problems are almost always the simplest things that goes wrong.


Today I installed a cisco phone for someone (they had complained about poor speakerphone performance) & it tested fine. They rang me (from thier mobile) complaining that the phone was broken. I knew it wasn't because I had tested it. Turns out I had plugged in the handset to the headset socket. I was so stressed about getting the speakerphone just right I never tested the obvious!

 

[BillG]

Did you read the article?? Port forwarding is only part of the problem. The other requirement to get rid of one-way audio is setting externip and localnet or externhost and localnet in sip_custom.

Yep, I've read that - sip_custom is set correctly.

 

[BillG]

These audio problems are always sporadic. Don't stress about you not being able to replicate it always, that is the very nature of this type of problem.

can you post what you have in your sip_nat.conf and your rtp.conf?

They should match the ports above.

Also,
1: does your piaf have only one network card?
2: Is there ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that another box may have an IP conflict with your PIAf's internal IP?
4: What about your handsets? no chance of an IP conflict there?
5: Could it possibly be a contention issue (ie is anyone / thing sharing your Piaf Server's bandwidth.
6: please also provide your hardware details. primarily brand of NIC. I can;t really help you there but there are pleanty of Linux Geeks who could tell you if you are using the right drivers etc.
7: disable IP tables (or just allow ICMP echo if you know how) and setup a ping -t ip.add.of.pbx > c:\pinglog.txt
when you get a drop out stop the ping and review the log.
8: replace your server's NIC. The only problems I have had with PIAF was hardware related!!! I had a NIC intermittently fail.

Also which way is the one way audio?

It is almost always a networking problem. and networking problems are almost always the simplest things that goes wrong.


Today I installed a cisco phone for someone (they had complained about poor speakerphone performance) & it tested fine. They rang me (from thier mobile) complaining that the phone was broken. I knew it wasn't because I had tested it. Turns out I had plugged in the handset to the headset socket. I was so stressed about getting the speakerphone just right I never tested the obvious!

Thanks, gaijin. I know - I hate troubleshooting sporadic problems. My sip_nat.conf is empty, but that info is in sip_custom. rtp.conf has the correct ports (10000-20000).

Only one network card. Definitely no IP conflict with the box or phones. No contention - this works fine with my old box, not with my new. I'm not sure what network card I have in there now but this really doesn't feel like a NIC problem. It's nearly impossible to troubleshoot since it is so random - it just doesn't happen often enough to track. But it does happen often enough to cause me major headaches!

 

[gaijin]

Just try the ping logging and see if that will yield any results. I would eat my hat if it was not a networking issue of some kind. I had a very similar issue with a BRI Gateway.

Try one last thing. add a static route for you sip provider into your routing tables on the pbx so it never has to do a lookup. AND create a hosts entry for your provider so it never has to trouble with dns...

 

[BillG]

I'll eat ALL my hats if I could get this fixed!