[asterisk-users] extensions not being detected consistently

[Terry Nathan]

G'afternoon everybody,

I'm having a problem with consistently being able to ring our extensions 
from an outside line. I don't have a problem reaching the number, but 
during our calls to Background(msg) that I am having a problem. It seems 
to be an issue with timing. If I press the extension towards the end of 
the Background(msg) the it often works. However, in the middle of the 
message it will not work at all.

What is also strange is that I can dial an extension any time if I call 
from one of our ip phones. This seems to be strictly a problem with 
regular phones, then the timing of dialing the extension becomes important.

The fact that the ip phones always work seems to suggest that I need to 
look at tone detection, but after googling and searching the bowels of 
every conf file I could find, I haven't found any magic bullet.
I should mention that the first call to Background() usually works, even 
for the regular phones, I think this is because it is short enough that 
the timing of dialing the extension is relatively easy.

I don't know if it is significant or not but it seems that once a callee 
tries to dial an extension and it doesn't work, even the next few calls 
will also not work. And similarly, sometimes it works and then a few 
calls will go through, but then it will go back to not detecting 
properly again. Asterisk is running on its own box and there is nothing 
unusual happening with the system, or even people on other lines, that 
is happening.

Checking the log files when I call in Asterisk tells me that either it 
only detects 1 of the 3 digits (usually the second or third one) or, if 
I dial the extension at a different point in the message, that the first 
digit was pressed twice e.g. '22' instead of just '2'. The inconsistency 
of the problem is starting to drive me bonkers as I can't accurately 
nail down the problem.

Ideally I'd like our callees to be able to dial an extension as soon as 
the call to Background() is hit in the context, from any phone that 
calls in, not just ip phones. My setup is an installation of 
asterisk-now (Centos 5 with Asterisk 1.4.24)

If anyone has seen a problem like this before or has even an inkling of 
what it might be, that would be awesome :D Thanks in advance.

My dial plan:

[incoming-our-number]

exten => s,1,Answer              
exten => s,n,NoOp(incoming-our-number)
exten => s,n,Background(cassandra/CustomWelcomeMessage)       ****This 
line is usual fine, I think because the message is short enough that 
timing the dialing of the extension is less of an issue.
exten => s,n,GotoIfTime(09:00-17:30,mon-fri,*,*?open)
exten => s,n,Wait(0.5);
exten => s,n,Background(cassandra/OfficeHours)
exten => Wait(10)
exten => s,n(open),NoOp(open)
exten => s,n,WaitExten(0.5);
exten => s,n,Set(TIMEOUT(digit)=10)
exten => s,n,Set(TIMEOUT(response)=15)
exten => s,n,Background(cassandra/NextRep)                              
      ****This is the line where I have a problem with dialing an 
extension. The timing is very fickle and heaps of our callees cannot get 
to the right extension properly.
exten => s,n,WaitExten(10,m[default])

exten => s,n,Macro(dial-us)
exten => s,n,Macro(hangupcall)

exten => i,1,Playback(pbx-invalid)
exten => i,2,Goto(s,open)
exten => t,1,Macro(hangupcall)
exten => #,1,Macro(hangupcall)