[Asterisk-Users] GSM gateway flooded cell - how to detect?

[Woodoo People .pGa!]

Keyboardot ragadtam, hogy va'laszoljak Colin Anderson osszedobalt bytejaira:"

I think, if you should receive network busy, or unreachable (or at least
something, you should handle). You can also try your cellphone, if it gives
better result. Before moving your adapter, you also can try, to buy a directional
gsm antenna, and direct it to another cell. If you have some time and electrical
knowledge, you can do something like Satellite rotation - so you can force your
gsm gateway to roam to another cell.

here is the status info of my voismart gsm board:
  MCC MNC  LAC   ID BSIC ARFCN     RxLev
  216  01 0022 3053   21    49   -49 dBm
  RxLev Sub: -44 dBm
  RxLev Full: -40 dBm
  RxQual: 0 (BER less than 0.1%)
  RxQual Sub: 5 (BER 3.8% => 5.4%)
  RxQual Full: 0 (BER less than 0.1%)
  Timeslot: 0
  TA: 0
  RSSI: >= -51 dB,
  BER: 99 (N/A)
gsm*CLI>
Adjacent cells (6)
  #  MCC MNC  LAC   ID BSIC ARFCN     RxLev
  1: 216  01 0022 3144    5    46   -70 dBm
  2: 216  01 0022 3054    7    51   -72 dBm
  3: 216  01 0022 2eed    6    54   -78 dBm
  4: 216  01 0022 2eed    6    56   -87 dBm
  5: 216  01 0022 2ef5    7    44   -89 dBm
  6: 216  01 0022 2fdc   20    43   -90 dBm

as you can see, there is 7 cells (with the 2cm, included rubberduck antenna)
and 4 of them have nice signal.
(I'm going to ask them if there is a chance to manually disable a specified
cell to not to connect)

> We are using an Ateus VoiceBlue to GSM gateway calls on our * 1.0.9 server.
> It works perfectly fine, except at peak periods, say, 10 AM and 3 PM. At
> that point, calls get dropped (not gateway'd) and Asterisk jumps to the next
> priority in the dialplan. Our interpretation of this is that the local GSM
> cell is flooded with other calls and can't service our request, so nothing
> to to with Asterisk or the gateway. No matter how hard we try, during
> off-hours, we can't replicate this behavior. My question is how to detect
> this behavior and relay the call out to our PRI instead. I've had a couple
> of ideas so far, but nothing has panned out:
> 
> 1. Use the ${DIALSTATUS} variable, however when the condition occurs, the
> variable is set to NOANSWER which is the same setting if the guy doesn't
> pick up his phone, so it does me no good, since I can't correctly detect
> whether it is the gateway or whatever. Maybe an AGI which sets a timer to
> detect ringtime? More information: This is different than if the gateway is
> full and can't service the request, which I am already successfully testing
> for before the dialplan makes the determination to use the gateway in the
> first place or not.
> 
> 2. Dial the target cell using the gateway and the PRI simultaneously, so
> this masks the condition. If the gateway kacks, then the call would still go
> through the PRI to the target cell.  This would work, however I am using the
> 'r' option to dial, in order to detect early audio if the user has his cell
> off to advance the dialplan. When I do this, and the user answers, the PRI
> channel gets an early-audio indicator from the GSM provider ("The person you
> are calling can't answer blablabla" ), and Asterisk drops to the next
> priority in the dialplan, which I do *not* want to do, until the user has
> hung up or doesn't answer. Getting rid of the 'r' option is not in the
> cards. 
> 
> Another idea which just occured to me is to physically move the gateway to
> another location a few km away that we have a VPN tunnel to, and just route
> calls over there - another cell, maybe not so saturated, right? The danger
> there is that the gateway is not on the LAN so the side effect is that our
> infrastructure becomes more fragile i.e. if the VPN is down the gateway
> doesn't work. Still, I think it's worth a try.
> 
> Anybody have any spitballs about how to work around this issue? When the
> gateway works, it saves is $2-4K a month in airtime, so I definitely don't
> want to abandon it. My GSM provider (Rogers) could care less about working
> with me to address this, since it is more revenue for him. 
> 
> tia
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