3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX's

[kevint]

Hi please help!!!

I currently have 3 issues I need to iron out before I buy more and more 3CX's:

1. Working fax using SPA112
2. Random call quality
3. Forced Caller ID intermittantly showing incorrectly to customer

Apart from this 3CX so far seems perfect.

If anyone can shed light on these that would be fantastic!!

I will follow on from this with more detail on each.

Kevin

 

[kevint]

Re: 3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX'

Ok some background:

I had one 3CX 8 channel running on a brand new XP Pro Optiplex 380 using an 8 channel Hostcomm SIP trunk with a mixture of 10x Aastra deskphones, apair of Snom M9's with base and an SPA112 for analogue fax.

The other half of the building was then ready, so I added 30x Yealink T18's, 3x Yealink T22's, some more Aastra's and a 16 channel licence.

This was working perfectly and the first 3CX I had played with. Call quality perfect.

Now that building has been split into 2 seperate companies and I had an immediate to apply Music on hold for one company so I need another 3CX due to branded Music on Hold.

To let you know the whole building runs off an 800mbps layer 2 symetrical Motorola point to point radio link from our other building accross the road!

However, for the minute both companies are on and need to be on the same subnet until our Fibre is installed etc

So I have fired up another brand new Optiplex 380 with latest 3CX build and restored an identical 3CX backup of the first, reprovisioned the correct phones and trunks to the correct boxes (live I might add...). Relicenced the 1st box with the 8 channel licence and 2nd with the 16 channel licence.

Now here's the issue's:

8 channel box - random crackly call quality and can't get fax working on SPA112

16 channel box - Call quality ok but Forced Caller ID goes out intermitantly and 2x SPA112's not working

Some techicals:

Both on same dedicated ADSL line (although this is bonded etc)
Both have seperate external IP's with seperate NAT's to seperate internal IP's
Both have correct ports open on Cisco firewall
Upload tested for capacity and graph shows not hitting max
Voip-Unlimited T38 trunk ordered for fax but still fax fails to transmit
DHCP not being used for provisioning, manual provisioning or 3CX provisioning
Hostcomm SIP trunk checked to make sure passing PBX caller ID

The only other weird thing I have noticed over the last few days is that one particular Yealink T22 keeps appearing in the Phone List on 8 channel 3CX when it is already provsioned and listed on the 16 channel!!!

Hopefully thats enough info to kick us off!

 

[jpillow]

Re: 3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX'

As far as the SPA112 goes I have that in quite a few installs with no problems whateover, simply register to the system and you good to go, what type of issues are you having there? As far as caller ID is concerned did you set the caller ID to show in the trunk or on all extensions? What were you able to see in the caller logs. As fas as call qualoty its usually a QoS or bandwidth issues. You may want to post logs replicating the caller ID issue and the issues with thte fax's not goingout.

 

[lneblett]

Re: 3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX'

Call quality issues.....are these experienced on internal calls/external or both?

 

[kevint]

Re: 3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX'

Ok reply to jpillow:

I'll stick with the 1st SPA112 to start with, registered fine with quick setup and have DID set to that extension. I can ring the DID from my mobile for example and I do get the fax tone noise like expected. However when sending it a fax from another fax machine, you get the fax tone noise and it appears to be sending but then you get "Delayed, Communication error" on the fax I'm sending from.

I have been though and set the 3102 settings on the 3CX site, ordered a T38 trunk which is in place, stopped and disabled the Fax Service on 3CX, created a new Fax Extansion and reregistered etc etc! Still same issue!

Caller ID issue, I have tried setting Caller ID in trunk and individual extensions. I just tried ringing my mobile 6 times from one extension and got the correct Caller ID 5 times 01604 683555 and then the main Trunk DID broken down to +1(604) 210557 with British Columbia,Canada with it! It's randomly coming up with the underlying Tunk DID number in that format????

Call Quality Issue, this is only happening on the 1st 8 channel 3CX though, if it was QoS or bandwidth it would be happening on the 16 channel box which takes a lot more calls ???

Can someone fill me in on the logs, they just look an absolute mess to me, pages and pages of stuff, anyway of narrowing it down???

 

[kevint]

Re: 3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX'

Reply to lneblett:

Call quality issue has only been reported on external calls from the 8 channel box and it is very random!

 

[lneblett]

Re: 3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX'

Thanks.

You gave a lot of information and I thought if we could pare down the issues to start with, we could isolate some faster. The fact that the quality issue is external is more an indication that a network issue is involved rather than 3CX itself.

You indicated that you have a bonded ADSL connection, but don't really indicate the details. I am not a big fan of bonded ADSL as it, in my opinion, is difficult to monitor and see if the load balancing is truly working the way it should and if the speed you expect is really there (I have no concerns with the PtP Moto radios at this point).

I assume that crackling audio is really jitter which I find more easily described as when the words heard may have a certain amount of stuttering in addition to the crackling. If bad enough, some words or syllables may have disappeared (dropped packets). You might try http://www.pingtest.net from each 3CX box and see if this simple test gives any indication as to the quality of the paths that each saw. You can also run http://www.speedtest.net and see how each fares in this manner. If truly bonded and done well, they should reflect the same numbers. If not, then there is an issue you will need to address with the provider.

As far as your having tested and the graphs not showing any bottlenecks, perhaps it was just luck that the timing of the tests were not synchronous to any period of high usage. I do not know if your normal web traffic is using the same or not. If so, then it seems that when buildings are inter-connected with near gigabit capability that the internet needs would likely exceed the ADSL capacity (6mb max if 4 lines bonded, correct?).

The t.38 is great and needed for the in-built webserver of 3CX, but you do not indicate how you have them connected to the system...as fax extensions or as normal extensions. These too may be suffering from what I think is likely external network congestion.

 

[kevint]

Re: 3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX'

I think you may be on the right track, however the bonded adsl we have is from a specialist and we have online monitoring where we can see each link's live throughput up and down. 2 links have the SIP providers IP address's as priority and no normal Internet data goes through these 2, they have been purely prioritsed for the SIP trunk. The load balance is very is to see live and very easy to count the number of calls if that makes sense.

But this prioritisation only happens once the traffic has hit the actual bonder, before that the whole LAN both sides of the road is free for all, so maybe when both sides are surfing, working, calling etc etc, we are causing some major Jitter! I have run speedtest.net and pingtest.net which appear ok but obviously its out of hours now so not a good test!

 

[kevint]

Re: 3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX'

The SPA112 is connected to an analogue printer/fax machine and the extension is setup as a fax extension, I have stopped and disabled the fax server service in 3CX.

I have even tweaked the SPA112 with the 3102 settings 3CX recommend!

So is a T38 trunk not really required???

 

[lneblett]

Re: 3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX'

When you ran the test, the results should have been nearly identical from one machine to the other. Not just good, as the bonding implies that all are shared equally. The data packets are not dedicated to a particular path, but could/can use any and all. BTW, what is the expected max through-put? It only takes a surge of traffic to disrupt the steady flow. What codec is being used? I would suggest a low rate codec. The issue I see with bonded is that a data stream from one device can be split between the "physical lines" of the bonded connection. This implies a possible (likely?) further segregation along the transit and that at each receive-end a reliance on the phone jitter buffers to accommodate the variance in packet arrival. You might compare the settings of the jitter buffers between the Aastra and the Yealink as this might be an influencing factor as well. I just get the feeling that the variables are stacked against you - some 40+ phones with a current call capability of 24 across a bonded connection with a codec that might not be optimal and a semi-random traffic usage that might come into play and disrupt the lot.

The built-in receive fax server requires t.38, and I use this quite successfully. I have not used the SPA, but have used the Patton M-ATA, but not as a fax extension, but as a regular extension and have been quasi-successful in sending faxes although only using the voice 711/729 codecs (not using T.38). You might need wireshark on this one to really see what is going on. Sending is not really supported by 3CX, but they do throw a tidbit or two out there for those who are willing and want to try.

Jpillow indicated he has been successful so you might PM him and get his details. He did not indicate as a fax or as a regular extension, but I sensed given the simplicity of his statement as an extension.

 

[davidbenwell]

Re: 3 Issue's I need to resolve before ordering lots of 3CX'

Bonded ADSL is not supported on VoIP due to packet re-ordering etc, this could be the reason why the quality of calls is not very good. also if you are using Music On-Hold with a G729 Codec this could also make the quality poor. where possible try and stay with G711.

24 concurrent calls at G711 will require at least 1920Kbps up and down on your internet connection.