Solved Weirdness over vpn for remote 3cx clients

[Serco]

Good afternoon All

I have a very very odd issue which appears to have appeared earlier today and i wondered if some of you can suggest anything i should check:

Basically, remote users who have their softphones connected are unable to dial eachother via the extension - however, a DDI to eachother works. They can ring an office based user via their extension and that works ok?

The home users can receive calls from customers and they can make external calls too so its not overly urgent right now - but i can't for the life of me figure out where that problem lies.

I can only think our firewall is playing silly buggers - but then why would it work when a remote user on vpn calls an office based user? Everyone uses the same version of softphone whether in office or out.

vpn software is sonicwall netextender which has been fine up until today

Any ideas where i should search for this before restarting 3cx server or services or firewalls? I am not seeing anything worrying on the 3cx dashboard

thanks in advance
Andy

Edit : Just to add remote users have restarted systems so vpn has been disconnected / reconnected and softphone have had to reregister too

 

[NickD_3CX]

Hi Andy,

It is weird but first some more information about the setup would be useful:
https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/information-to-provide-when-requesting-help.67558/

Also to clarify one point, you say a remote user connected over VPN cannot call another remote user connected over VPN.
What happens when they try? Does the other extension ring and there is no audio, it instantly hangs up, or the callers just hears dead air?

 

[ClaudioBassani]

Hi,
I don't know if it can be useful, maybe the problem is solved by check PBX Delives Audio parameter (Extension-> Options).

 

[Serco]

Hey guys - really sorry for my late reply. Christmas holiday kicked in and its the first chance I have had to revisit this issue.

so, a bit more info about my environment as requested:

Version 16.0.6.641
Windows 2016 server (on prem installation)

I have spoken to one of the home users about the calls between home users over the vpn and they tell me they can hear the ringing as they are calling but once they are connected, there is no audio on either side

@Claudio - I checked the PBX delivers audio setting in the extensions and they are not enabled in any of them. It is though for the trunks. I am not sure myself whether i should be switching them on in the individual extensions, but I am assured this was working ok previously, so am rather suspecting something else has gone wrong.

The weird thing is everything else appears to work for them - calling office workers extensions, calling customers externally and receiving calls from external users

Ni idea where to even start here?

 

[NickD_3CX]

I think what Claudio suggested might be a good starting point, enabling shouldn't break anything that is already working.
All this option does is "force" the audio to go via the 3CX Server instead of directly from one client to another.

 

[Serco]

Claudio / Nick - many thanks again.

I tested this on a handful of the sales team and it worked

I think i might have realised why this went unnoticed for a while. I switched off call recording for my sales team members recently and i have read that having call recording on forces pbx audio to be delivered. By removing the call recording, I think it stopped remote users getting any audio.

Therefore Claudio you were spot on - thanks very much

Nick - really appreciate your support too and for pointing me to the useful information for future tickets.

 

[NickD_3CX]

Aha! Yes, that would explain it. You read absolutely right, Call Recording in the background forces the "PBX Delivers Audio" behavior.

Glad to hear it is working now!