Getting a lot of SBC UP notifications

[Connexium Partner]

Hello,

I appreciate receiving email notifications for the SBC Statuses.
I also understand the difference between just UP and DOWN then UP.
I also like @NickD_3CX's reasoning in this forum thread

My questions are not related to an issue with 3CX, but mostly;

1- At what point should I be worried if I receive multiple UP notifications a day from a specific SBC?

2- We sometimes receive a bunch of email notifications all at once (within a couple of minutes) from different PBX from unrelated customers using their own SBC in different locations or even towns. The only correlation between those simultaneous SBC UP email alerts is the fact that all those customers are using the same ISP across the province.

3- Lastly, if I call the tech support of this ISP (or all ISPs for that matter) and I'm lucky enough not to end up in the Philippines, there is no way they will be able to assist me (or even believe me). I would say that, in my experience, 90% of front-line tech support for most ISPs do not know what is SIP ALG. So in your experience, how do you actually test this problem (to have tangible proof) and how do you report it to an ISP? And how worried should I be about this issue?

Thank you for sharing your experience


P.S. Hard to do a forum search with the keywords SBC and UP since they are too short to trigger a search

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

1- At what point should I be worried if I receive multiple UP notifications a day from a specific SBC?

Generally speaking I don't think you should need to worry if it is not too frequent and especially if it does not seem to affect users or 3CX functionality. Yes it means that the SBC may have had some minor connection issues with the PBX but if the only consequence are the emails then I don't think you should waste much time on it. Off the top of my head, only scenario I can think of where investigating would potentially be worth it, even though you have no other adverse effects, would be if the emails start to become more frequent over time, as this may be an indication of an internet connection that's slowly degrading for some reason so that way you would be able to take some pre-emptive action.

2- We sometimes receive a bunch of email notifications all at once (within a couple of minutes) from different PBX from unrelated customers using their own SBC in different locations or even towns. The only correlation between those simultaneous SBC UP email alerts is the fact that all those customers are using the same ISP across the province.

3- Lastly, if I call the tech support of this ISP (or all ISPs for that matter) and I'm lucky enough not to end up in the Philippines, there is no way they will be able to assist me (or even believe me). I would say that, in my experience, 90% of front-line tech support for most ISPs do not know what is SIP ALG. So in your experience, how do you actually test this problem (to have tangible proof) and how do you report it to an ISP? And how worried should I be about this issue?

Based on point 2 it does sound the issue may be related to the ISP as it is the only common denominator but of course only they themselves can confirm it. In regards to what data they would deem as proof for something like this I do not know, but I imagine if there does exist something they would accept then they would probably be the ones able to tell what that may be.

Note: SIP ALG should not have anything to do with this neither would the SIP protocol in general. The 3CX SBC establishes a TCP connection with the PBX in order to keep the 3CX Tunnel connection up and that is what is disconnecting and causes the email alerts.

 

[Connexium Partner]

Thank you for your reply @ChrisC_3CX

I could get 5-6, and I've seen up to 10-15 notifications from one single SBC in one day. Then it could be fine for a week. Oddly variable. In all cases, the connection type is FTTH (Fiber all the way into the server closet). If it was DSL, I would have disregarded the UP notifications altogether.

I have used a free Internet stress test tool from StarTrinity in the past with some success. The tool basically sends and receives packets for hours and monitors any drops or interruptions.

About your note:

Note: SIP ALG should not have anything to do with this neither would the SIP protocol in general. The 3CX SBC establishes a TCP connection with the PBX in order to keep the 3CX Tunnel connection up and that is what is disconnecting and causes the email alerts.

Yes, I was just trying to illustrate how bad most of the ISP's tech support is by citing this SIP ALG example. Thank you for clarifying.


Lastly, I would love to hear what other partners and forum members have to say about this before closing this thread.

Thank you

 

[CentrexJ]

Thank you for your reply @ChrisC_3CX

I could get 5-6, and I've seen up to 10-15 notifications from one single SBC in one day. Then it could be fine for a week. Oddly variable. In all cases, the connection type is FTTH (Fiber all the way into the server closet). If it was DSL, I would have disregarded the UP notifications altogether.

I have used a free Internet stress test tool from StarTrinity in the past with some success. The tool basically sends and receives packets for hours and monitors any drops or interruptions.

About your note:

Yes, I was just trying to illustrate how bad most of the ISP's tech support is by citing this SIP ALG example. Thank you for clarifying.


Lastly, I would love to hear what other partners and forum members have to say about this before closing this thread.

Thank you

If you get an Up without a Down message its because the connection from the SBC to the PBX went down, but went down for under 5 minutes. The PBX issues the SBC Down message at the 5 minute mark.

 

[Connexium Partner]

If you get an Up without a Down message its because the connection from the SBC to the PBX went down, but went down for under 5 minutes. The PBX issues the SBC Down message at the 5 minute mark.

Yes, I understand the difference as I mentioned at the top of my initial message. And I've been talking about only UP notifications ever since.