No internet = No phones? even with pstn lines

[dantell]

I have a small 3cx install with 10 externsions using SNOM 300's/360's. 3cx is current except for the last patch as of a few days ago. I have a Patton 4114 pstn gateway (patched to current) with 4 lines and a voip trunk with Voicepulse. My main internet trunk went down yesterday and the phone went out with it. My 3cx server was running, i rebooted it and the patton, it would not pick up calls from the Patton. I dialed in multiple times to constant ringing.

I was out of the office and drove in, by the time i got there the internet connection was up and the phone system began answering calls. I dialed in multiple times after the reboot to constant ringing. Is there any reason an internet connectivity issue should keep it from answering calls on the PSTN lines? I am very frustrated, my employees have stopped telling me about issues with the phone system as they see them as happening every day. I have begun calling into the system every morning to make sure it is answering calls, we get complaints from our clients saying our phone system doesnt answer. But most every time i call in to test it, it picks up the phone.

I would create a support ticket, but other than "it doesnt work all the time", i dont know what to tell them.

Its running on a Windows 2003 machine built only for the phone.

 

[leejor]

It might give a clue as to what's happening if you had a look at the server logs while you pulled the internet connection. Obviously, something best done "after hours".

 

[nb]

It would be good to generate logs when this occurs to see why this is happening.

This is not related to internet. The FXO communication part between 3CX and the patton should remain working - they have no dependency on Internet connectivity.

Can you reproduce this? If yes How? Thanks - could it be that maybe the patton got stuck and therefore needed a reload?

Did you change the configuration of the Patton? maybe uploaded a new one lately?
What firmware of the patton are you using?

It could also be that you had stuck calls (calls still going on which were supposed to be disconnected. When this happens can you have a look at the Active calls page to see whether the line is free, ringing or connected?

Thanks

 

[dantell]

It's happened once, but its been a collection of events thats causing the frustration. My service provider had an area wide outage early morning monday. Phone calls werent coming through, and outbound calls werent connecting, either through the pstn or the voip (obviously). Since i wasnt in office, i had someone reboot the Patton and the 3cx server. I tried dialing in and they tried dialing out, and neither worked. I headed into the office and when i got there, the ISP had resolved the issue and suddenly the phones were ringing and dialing out. No one had touched the server after i had them reboot it, it had been about 30 mins.

I updated the patton to the latest 5.x firmware a couple of weeks ago, no change since. The patton didnt work even after a reload. I didnt grab the log at the time. My pstn lines and isp are different providers, so one shouldnt affect the other. There werent any active calls as the phones hadnt worked all morning. They worked close of business friday, nothing on monday.

 

[crsc]

We have been experiencing the same problem. We are running v7.0.4744.0 on Windows Server 2003 and a Patton 4114 R5.2. It is hard to troubleshoot because the messages on the log are all normal. We have isolated the issue to the VOIP trunk. When the void trunk unregisters, all the PSTN lines fail to receive calls. The PSTN lines show registered but no calls can come in. When the Internet connection comes back the phones will start working when the VOIP trunk re-registers. Forcing the VOIP trunk to re-register also brings back the PSTN lines.

To complicate matters, if the Internet service interruption is short, the 3CX system does not unregister the VOIP trunk and chances are that the office does not notice a phone outage but clients calls ring unanswered. Except, in the case an internal user is trying a long distance call (we use the VOIP trunk for LD calls) if the Internet service is down, all lines will go down immediately. Using the default setting re-registration is attempted every 10 mins, if the 3CX system try to re-register the VOIP trunk while the Internet service is down all lines go down.

Simply disconnecting the Internet service does not reproduce the problem; disconnecting for longer than the time between registration attempts does. The log will show that the VOIP trunk failed to register and the STUN failed to resolve the SIP external IP. To me, these messages don't show what is happening with the PSTN lines.

 

[nb]

Hi Guys

We are going to take a look at this. We will keep you updated.

If this happens again please generate support logs and send them to [email protected]

Thanks

 

[dantell]

We have been experiencing the same problem. We are running v7.0.4744.0 on Windows Server 2003 and a Patton 4114 R5.2. It is hard to troubleshoot because the messages on the log are all normal. We have isolated the issue to the VOIP trunk. When the void trunk unregisters, all the PSTN lines fail to receive calls. The PSTN lines show registered but no calls can come in. When the Internet connection comes back the phones will start working when the VOIP trunk re-registers. Forcing the VOIP trunk to re-register also brings back the PSTN lines.

To complicate matters, if the Internet service interruption is short, the 3CX system does not unregister the VOIP trunk and chances are that the office does not notice a phone outage but clients calls ring unanswered. Except, in the case an internal user is trying a long distance call (we use the VOIP trunk for LD calls) if the Internet service is down, all lines will go down immediately. Using the default setting re-registration is attempted every 10 mins, if the 3CX system try to re-register the VOIP trunk while the Internet service is down all lines go down.

Simply disconnecting the Internet service does not reproduce the problem; disconnecting for longer than the time between registration attempts does. The log will show that the VOIP trunk failed to register and the STUN failed to resolve the SIP external IP. To me, these messages don't show what is happening with the PSTN lines.

You know, now that you mention, this did happen once too. My voicepulse lines failed to register for about an hour, I get the Stun failure messages too. But when the voicepulse lines went out we werent getting pstn calls, since it was so early in the morning i didnt make too much of it.

 

[nb]

Hi Guys

1) if the internet disconnects, the voip providers will of course be unavailable but Gateways and PSTN lines have no relation to this. They do not request a stun resolution query when a PSTN call is made. UNLESS

The gateway is on a different lan than the PBX. Can you confirm whether this is the case?

Is the PSTN gateway on the same Lan as that of the pbx or is it on a different network?

We are going to publish an FAQ on how to disable stun - because if you have a Static ip, and a router that does correct static port mapping, you can completely disable stun.

Basically
Step 1: Confirm that you have Static IP and that your router can do correct port forwarding/mapping ie that the port translation is left the same External 5090 -> Internal 5090
Step 2: Go to Settings, network, Stun Server Tab
Step 3: Check Turn Off Stun Server, Specify your public ip and select the outgoing network interface on the local machine to direct all traffic through that interface.
Step 4: Press ok and restart the 3CX Phone System service. This in turn will restart all the dependencies.

Let me know if you have any other questions. especially the gateway question I asked.

 

[dantell]

Hi Guys

1) if the internet disconnects, the voip providers will of course be unavailable but Gateways and PSTN lines have no relation to this. They do not request a stun resolution query when a PSTN call is made. UNLESS

The gateway is on a different lan than the PBX. Can you confirm whether this is the case?

Is the PSTN gateway on the same Lan as that of the pbx or is it on a different network?

Gateway and PBX are on the same subnet/lan.

 

[nb]

To confirm there is a small test you can make to conclude where the problem could be.....

Wait until everyone leaves your office premises so you are out of office hours and unplug the internet connection (given you can do this) to replicate downtime on the provider. Make one call on VOip and another on PSTN and capture the PBX server logs in verbose mode. Send this to me directly at [email protected]. Then plug in the network. This should not take you more than 5 Minutes to complete. We will check and see what the problem is. However this is the same type of test we made and our provider calls failed of course but PSTN calls could still be made and received with no problems. We can fully confirm that a PSTN call does not make a STUN request. Therefore if this is eliminated, there is no reason why calls cannot be made over PSTN. It would be very good if you could be able to replicate this issue in your environment.

Is stun enabled or disabled in your configuration?

 

[dantell]

Sounds doable. I have to go into the office and move some equipment tomorrow morning. I'll do it then.

thanks,
david