[Asterisk-Users] Static/Breaking up after I upgraded Asterisk as well as a crash - Can't trace bug

[Paul Rodan]

We use Cisco 7960's with the P0S3-7-3-00 firmware, which was the latest as
of a few months ago.

 

I've so far found CVS-v1-0-10/26/04-07:28:01 to be the best version of
Asterisk I've found. I've upgraded regularly in the past, like every other
week. I upgraded to this version and also encountered no issues. About a
month later I tried upgrading, to some version in November, and that's when
all the phones in my office started experiencing quality issues, breaking
up, garbled voice, maybe static. One person reported they had issues
transferring calls, but I could not verify. So I immediately downgraded back
to 10-26-04 and stayed on that version up until several days ago, when I
hoped whatever bug was introduced had been repaired. So I upgraded to
CVS-v1-0-01/06/05-01:53:07 and for a time I thought everything was fine, but
now I get the occasional report of quality issues again, phones breaking
up/garble. It's not as bad as it was before, but I myself have started
experiencing quality issues on my phone and I've never experienced these
issues before. So whatever bug existed, still exists. It might not be a bug,
but maybe some modification to chan_sip has broken compatibility with the
Cisco 79xx phones. Unfortunately I am not a developer and am not able to
take apart and put back together again the source, to adapt it to my own
needs, so I'm at the mercy of the Asterisk developers. 

 

Nothing has changed in our network topology, no new phones added, no
computers share the subnets with the phones. They're part of the same
physical network as our computers, but do have their own separate subnet. I
haven't tried other phones, or converters, but I can if anybody wants me to
do further analysis. What I have here is a unique situation to single out a
quality issue, a bug, and I'd like to help by testing different versions of
chan_sip.c to see which option/modification in fact created the quality
issue. I would stay on this version of Asterisk longer (despite the
occasional quality issues) if it weren't for the fact that yesterday evening
the Asterisk daemon crashed for no apparent reason. Until this time, the 6
months I've been running Asterisk, Asterisk has never crashed on me. All the
phones in one of my Call Groups started ringing for no reason, when I
answered, nobody was there. I had to go and answer each phone individually,
there wasn't anybody on any phone. After the last was answered and hung up,
the phones were quiet. But when I tried to access voicemail or dial out,
nothing, that's how I'd know Asterisk had crashed, the
/var/log/asterisk/messages file revealed nothing, absolutely nothing,
neither did /var/log/messages

 

So tonight I'm going back down to 10-26 and I'd bet money the quality issues
disappear, it's happened before. I hate downgrading, I feel like I'm now
stuck at a certain version and am unable to proceed safely. The security and
bug fixes I keep seeing hit the stable version are all now no longer
available to me, which sucks. Can anybody suggest how I can trace this
issue? During one of the phones conference calls the quality was really
horrible, so I started a constant ping on the phone to see if there were
jumps in latency or packet loss, as their very sensitive to this, and I
didn't see any. 

 

 

The only other thing I can think of is bad phones? One sales guy had
continuous phone quality issues since the upgrade, so I traded my phone for
his, switched the config files. And I made his mine. And when I started
placing calls, I started having quality issues in which I didn't have any
before. So I thought the phone must be defective. So then I grabbed another
phone, a Cisco 7940 and made it mine, and the quality is better, but I still
here the occasional robotic sound when I place calls, and this is a
completely different phone. I'm thinking I just didn't notice the problems
as severely as others have. There's also 4 or 5 other employees (about 20 of
us in total) reporting quality issues, I don't think it's possible for that
many phones to fail when they've been doing good for so long. 

 

Any help or advice would be helpful. However, a couple of my friends
companies run asterisk and I've already seen the "I use CVS Version so and
so (newer than mine) and I don't have any problems, etc. etc." lines, so I
know that for most it must work, but I'm one of the ones that it does not
work for, and I'd really be interested in finding out why. I've pretty much
eliminated the network possibility. They're all local, we have 4 physical
segments each with 2 subnets, 1 for the computer and 1 for the phones, the
subnets are all linked by a Linux firewall with multiple interfaces. This
firewall is set to give the VOIP Subnets full access to one another, and has
never interfered with the phones ability to communicate with the Asterisk
server before. 

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