RTP port range "bug"

[xc99tour]

OK, I did something stupid.

I had a situation where calls would be directed to a end point (ext 100) if it was busy, it would forward to the second appearance on the phone (ext 101) then if RNA it would forward to MY OWN IVR SYSTEM (not VM on 3CX but another ext).

When my first appearance (100) was busy, callers would experience ring tone (I could see the call ringing on my second appearance) then they would hear silence. In my trace I could see the call being transfered on RNA to my own IVR, but no voice.

The problem was that I has set up the port range for external calls from 9000 to 9003. This was because of wanting to limit the number of ports I had to open in my firewall. But what happened is when 3CX ran out of RTP ports, it just did not open a port apparently, thus no voice.

The bug is that there was no indication of this in the Server Status Log. It should have been in flashing red, bold with 15 stars and played an audio file that sounded like a car crashing. But it was silence, letting me tear my hair out for hours.

 

[archie]

In current version MS doesn't have access to log, because it is separate process and Server Status log file is owned by Call Manager. We tried to share one log file between two processes, but it consumes too much resources for synchronization, so we refused such approach. We will think how to override this limitation and properly signal about MS problems in next versions.

 

[xc99tour]

I think it is something you should really consider and quickly. Look at the kind of qustions for support you get on the forum. Many have to do with no sound and that is almost impossible to debug or trace. I use Ethereal/Wireshark but it does not do the whole job either. Since your market is going to be the "I want an easy to use interface" person, solving the RTP tracing and problem solving should be one of your major concerns.

Otherwise you will end up with huge support problems and fustrated customers.

 

[N_G]

Hi larry,

Thank you for your feedback.

This is definitely an area we need to improve. We will be working on improved logging in this area for the next version.