[Asterisk-Users] Newbie Issues => SIP won't stay connected, and IAX Unable to Create Channel

[Rich Adamson]

> When I reboot the computer running * and run * via asterisk -vvvvgc
> everything starts without any warnings, notices, or errors.  At that
> point none of my SIP clients login to *.  If I do a sip debug it doesn't
> even show the clients trying to connect, however on the X-Lite logs it
> is sending the REGISTER message to the correct IP address.  If I ping
> the client's IP address from the * server the client immediately
> registers and can make calls.  If I stop pinging for at least 30 minutes
> the clients are again unable to connect.  Upon discovering this I
> thought that I had a physical network problem.  So I went out and got a
> brand new 10/100 switch, and new network cards for the server and the PC
> based clients.  After installing and configuring all the new equipment I
> am in the same boat.  I simply cannot understand what is going on.  All
> of the machines are on a local address scheme without any NAT's or other
> firewalls in between.
> 
> The next problem that I have has to do with IAX.  I have accounts setup
> with both NuFone, and VoicePulse just to try out the various services.
> I have my iax.conf configure as instructed by both the wiki and from the
> providers.  I also have a DID from VoicePulse so I have a register line
> for that as well.  After I reboot the * server, run *, and ping the
> clients both provider's work properly.  However after a certain period
> of time(variable length) the register times out and VoicePulse becomes
> "UNREACHABLE".  The same goes for the NuFone service.  When this happens
> occasionally I get a message on the console that says "Unable to create
> channel".  

All the words that you've used tend to suggest a firewall is getting in the
way (eg, iptables). A few things you can do to help narrow down the problem.

1. on each system, do a "arp -a" before and after the connection fails to
see what each system thinks is the current IP & MAC address. If there are
no entries, then that system has not even attempted communications at the
layer-3 level.  If the entries are present (on each system), then at least
you know each has made "some" attempt.

2. download and implement ethereal, and run it until the failure occurs.
Look at the packet displays and see if that helps point to an issue. If you
can't read packet traces from ethereal, there are lots of others on this
list that can. It at least helps point to the problem.

3. in the /etc/asterisk/logger.conf file, configure it for "debug". Restart
asterisk (not reload). Asterisk will then write lots of detailed messages
in a file at /var/log/asterisk (if memory serves correctly).

Rich