[Asterisk-Users] why a perfectly fine iax2 host becomes UNREACHABLE?

[Tom Engleward]

--- Vahan Yerkanian <vahan at arminco.com> wrote:
> Andrew Kohlsmith wrote:
> > On Thursday 04 May 2006 11:31, Louis-David
> Mitterrand wrote:
> >> I've got this low-ping 100%-up dsl connection
> between two asterisk
> >> 1.2.7.1 servers. And oftentimes one of them would
> declare its opposite
> >> UNREACHABLE.
> 
> Same, here, two asterisk 1.2.7.1 boxes connected to
> the same switch... 
> Over a week I see at least one case of one of the
> boxes becoming 
> unavailable for the other... simple iax2 reload
> fixes the problem.
> 
> Been like this for ages.

<rant>
>From this thread today I've learned that the problems
I've been having the entire time I've been using
asterisk (about two weeks) stem not from NAT, as I
originally thought, but from asterisk itself, so that
if I were to move my asterisk box to a public IP
address, my iax2 connection to my PSTN originator
(which also runs asterisk) would _still_ be
unreliable.
This makes iax2 on asterisk useless for receiving
calls. No matter how many spiffy features asterisk
has, there is one simple nonnegotiable requirement: it
must always answer incoming calls. If it can't do
that, then it can't be relied on. And over iax2, it
can't do that.
Isn't asterisk supposed to by default reregister iax2
connections every minute or something like that? Why
then do I get reliable incoming connections for
several hours, and then it dies, and I have to do a
"reload"?
Am I supposed to make a cron job to automatically tell
asterisk to reload every so often, since iax2 likes to
periodically die? Or maybe am I supposed to make a
cron job to place a phone call every so often from an
external phone into my asterisk system and verify that
asterisk actually answers, and immediately issue
asterisk a reload if it fails?
This is utterly ridiculous. Yes, I know, it's free
software and all, and "you get what you pay for."
Just in a bad mood today because I've literally lost
thousands of dollars due to asterisk's failure to
reliably answer incoming calls, and I only discover
these failed incoming call attempts later when I check
my PSTN originator's logs. I then go "oh crap!" and do
a test call into my asterisk system, and get Ma Bell's
"the number you are calling has been disconnected or
is no longer in use", and I issue a "reload" to
asterisk and try again, and this time my call
succeeds. At this rate soon it will be more profitable
for me to just invest in a traditional reliable PBX
hooked to Ma Bell and be done with these problems.
I'm not a Digium customer, so they have no reason to
listen to me, but surely there are Digium customers
who are also getting bitten by this iax2 bug.
Is anybody on this list actually using iax2 for
anything mission-critical?
</rant>


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