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

[Alexander Lopez]

I am also running a pretty recent version albeit not today's CVS, but
CVS-HEAD-11/20/04-11:29:52. 
 
D you have problems b/w the Ciscos or only when going out to the PSTN??
 
I have 35 7960s with a PRI and no problems that you speak of.  I do get
an occational dropped call but that may be the DHC server lease running
out on the phones.
 
Can you tell us a little more about your setup???
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Paul Rodan
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 11:58 AM
To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion'
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Static/Breaking up after I upgraded Asterisk
aswell as a crash - Can't trace bug
 
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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