keepalive

[ssss25]

Hi,
I am trying 3CX on nexus and here are my findings.

I find that it's good to make calls, but I have problem receiving calls... I recv the call if I Test immediately, but after few seconds it doesn't. I did some investigation and I think what is happening is that the 3CX client sends a small 2 byte packet to the SIP server every 60 seconds as the keepalive configured in preferences. However, my sip provider (voip.ms) does not respond to this packet. I am guessing that my 3G provider then after whatever timer they have for their firewall closes the firewall window. Then when I try to call myself, my phone never sees the sip invite from my voipprovider because it gets blocked by firewalls.

So basically, I am looking for a way to send a keep a live in the form of an option or maybe a ping SIP message to keep the door open on the firewalls between my phone and clip provider. What other options do I have? I know a small keep alive packet is a good idea to conserve bandwidth, but right now I Cannot use this at all.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

 

[nb]

We use a very standardized way of Keep alive - Can you contact your provider?

What you can also do is set the registration time to the least amount - 300 sec. At least you will refresh the registration more often.

 

[jotoca]

I have the very same problem. The extension doesn't remain registered beyond the first seconds. I am able to initiate calls but not to receive them. I have tried several "registration time" configurations without luck. My provider is my own PBX Asterisk system, therefore no problem (I hope) for that side. I have tried others Android Sips Clients. They worked properly.
Thanks for any clue.

 

[ssss25]

Nickybrg

Thanks. Can u tell me what I the standard u use? Name or rfc? So I can talk with my provider.

Also' registration would have to be every 30 secs to work.

Any plans to add iax?

Thx

 

[katy]

Did you get voip.ms to work with 3cx?

 

[nb]

We did not try voip.ms. Im awaiting manual confirmation for an account I created from voip.ms

It has no reason not to work. The 3CX Phone for android was tested with a lot of voip providers.

-->Thanks. Can u tell me what I the standard u use? Name or rfc? So I can talk with my provider.
Lets not go there for now. First we need to see this in test lab.

-->Also' registration would have to be every 30 secs to work.
You have a problem doing this? Probably battery life.

-->Any plans to add iax?
No - we have our own tunnel protocol. Android client will have the 3CX Tunnel inside in the future yes.

 

[cannedrag]

Voip.ms works for me.

Profile Name: voip.ms
User: <number>[_<subaccount>]
Password: <password>
Internal Server:
External Server: <city>.voip.ms
STUN Server:
Proxy:
Port: 5060
Registration Timeout: 300
Keep-Alive Interval: 30
DTMF Method: RFC-2833
Enable NAT: yes
Enable ICE: no
Play Buffer: -1
Record Buffer: -1
Mic Gain: 1
G.711 (uLaw): yes
G.711 (aLaw): no
GSM: yes
Speex: no

 

[cannedrag]

I do have a problem with voip.ms when I put my "landline" and my mobile
in a group (with the same phone number). You cannot call your landline
from your mobile because 3CX dies. If you (like me) have a ATA with dual
line support, you should be able to set up a second subaccount for your
"landline". I have not experimented with that because I am going to be on
the road soon and prefer to deal with the problems I know instead of with
new unknown problems. I reported this problem by submitting the core
dump via the app. Maybe that's why nickybrg is looking into voip.ms?

 

[nb]

By group you mean queue?
Yes we are working on this. In some scenarios/phones, if a queue call comes in and 3cxphone for android is a member it might stop unexpectedly.

voip.ms have to get back to me. Still no answer from them.

 

[ssss25]

Ok I will try the settings and see if I misses something.

Outgoing works well for me. So is incoming as long as firewall window is open. I just didn't get a response Ford the keepalive to keep firewall open.

Thx.

Note: yes. Using a sub account.

 

[cannedrag]

By group you mean queue?
Yes we are working on this. In some scenarios/phones, if a queue call comes in and 3cxphone for android is a member it might stop unexpectedly.

voip.ms have to get back to me. Still no answer from them.

I mean Ring Groups (at least that's how voip.ms calls them).
After logging in to voip.ms, go to DID Numbers -> Ring Groups.
Add both the main account and a subaccount to the group.
Then go to DID Numbers -> Manage DID(s) and set Routing to
the just created group. When a phone call comes in to your DID,
all members of the group (that are reachable/logged in) will receive
a phone call. Very handy.

 

[ssss25]

cannedrag

That is pretty much the same settings I had... except the default stun server was there, I removed it. And you set re-registration every 5 minutes, which can be battery draining in my opinion also a BW user. The keep a live is a much smaller packet and shoudl take a lot of process while registration is heavier. So my question is I wonder if yours is working because reregistration is whats keeps the firewall sip door open rather than keep alive?

Try reregistration of 1800 and see if you can still call the clint after say 8 minutes.

Thanks,

 

[LeonidasG_3CX]

We are talking about packets here...
How much of a battery drain can 1 packet cause you?

 

[ssss25]

LeonidasG,

There are few issues with using registrations as a method of keep alive, which is valid in some cases, but because of my explanations below we may have some issues:

The real issue though is that 5 minutes for re-registration is not enough (5 minutes is the minimum setting I have, if re-registration must be used, then a setting of one minutes must be added). Firewalls usually close the window and block traffic to client from the provider after about 2 minutes of no traffic between server/client. Some firewalls are more strict and have 60 seconds close window timer. This setting will be depending on how the cell phone provider setup their firewall. Registering every 5 minutes means that calls can only be received the first 2 minutes (or 1 minute if more strict timer is used), and not the rest.

That is why keep alives timers have values of 30 secs and 60 secs. every keep alive will pass through the firewall in both directions and thus resetting the timer for the firewall window to allow voip provider to talk to cell.


Then, Registrations consist of 6 packets:

- REGISTER
- UNAUTHORISED (as it asked for more auth info)
- ACK
- REGISTER AGAIN
- TRYING
- OK

6 Packets per registration. Each packet is about 500 - 600 bytes in size, that is about 3500 bytes each registration... The registration also uses some cipher to decode. So a bit more CPU cycles. No problem if this was wireless or off dsl.

But the real concern with this is the bandwidth usage for those using the client over 3G who don't want a drain of 3500 bytes every 1 - 5 minutes and who want to keep the client running 24/7. Compare this to a keep alive, which is 2 bytes and no real cpu usage.

Say a user sets registration to 2 minutes. That is 720 registrations a day, that is 2.5/MB per day, or 75MB per month. Not much, but if somebody has 500MB monthly limit, that might be an issue.

So a temp fix is to add a re-register for 1,2,3,4,5 minutes and above. But I think a real keep alive mechanism is needed.

Thanks,


Thanks,

 

[motls]

I have VoIP.ms as my SIP provider. Had same Registration issues. After I decreased registration time to 60sec problem disappeared. It's a bit weird to re-register every minute, but it's works.

 

[nilism]

Did anything come of this? I didn't see any solution here.

I am on voip.ms and having keep alive issues described here on my n1. This seems to be across multiple softphone software, so maybe this is a voip.ms issue of not returning the keep alive packet as discussed.

 

[LeonidasG_3CX]

A fix is in progress for this as we speak.
You will most possibly see it in the next 3CXPhone for Android Release. (No ETA available for that currently)

 

[nilism]

Was this a voip.ms problem or a 3cx issue? I have come across similar issues so far with all softphones I have tried on this android n1.
I will be testing pbxes and call centric to see if this persists across voip providers and pbxs.