How to tell if your SBC is running?

[ccomley]

It would be nice if the SBC (Windows) app had a system tray icon to confirm that it's running and connected, but until there is, here's a handy tip!

Run the "Resource Monitor" app

Go to the Network tab

Open the "TCP Connectivity" and "Listening Ports" panels.

If the SBC is up and running, in the "Connectivity" tab, you should see an active connection on port 5090, with the PC's address in "local" and the PBX's address in "remote".

In "Listening ports" you should see the SBC app listening on port 5060!

In the attached screenshot, you can see a happily running 3cxsbc.exe app connected on port 5090 from the local address (192.168.100.50) to the PBX address (104.obscured) and the app also listening away on port 5060 (highlit)

 

[ccomley]

On a Linux install, by the way, you can derive the same info from the more boring text screen you'll get if you type in "netstat -a" at the command prompt. You can do this on Windows as well.

 

[eddv123]

This sort of thing has been requested more times than I can count and is currently in progress as a feature request: https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/3cx-sbc-status-in-admin-gui.42985/

Unless you are familiar with how to read the 3CX tunnel logs from the Support info file from the PBX:
https://www.3cx.com/docs/collecting-logs-for-3cx-support/

The only sure way to tell if the tunnel is up and the device is connected and able to see the remote devices is to plug in a supported/preferred handset type: https://www.3cx.com/sip-phones/

It will appear in the "phones" list tab with :SBC in front of it.

 

[ccomley]

Just told you how to tell if it's up! If it can't log in to the PBX for any reason, there'll be no active TCP Connection on port 5090.

 

[eddv123]

To extend on this there are several different states with the SBC which I will highlight:

* SBC is actually up and running (in Linux you can run the command 3cxsbc status to see this) it will show you if the service is running, same in Windows under task manager - nothing more.

* SBC is "connected" to the remote PBX (port 5090 is connected) = port forwarding and firewall are setup correctly and the tunnel is up.

* Phones can "appear" in the console of the PBX - I have known instances where the tunnel is up but no phones appear, normally a remote site issue (for example 2 x DHCP servers or something like that).

* Phones appear in the status page but no provisioning, could be provisioning port not forwarded or trusted SSL certificate issue.

With all this in mind having a client side status for port 5090 alone is a little pointless in my view.