[asterisk-users] checking if a phone number is UP

[Bryant Zimmerman]

We designed our solution the following way.

We have several land line numbers hooked to an asterisk testing server.
The testing server places one call every X seconds per line to a number we 
want to test . We cycle through each number in our testing pool. Each  
number on average is tested once every 30 min this can be adjusted by the 
dial rate and the number of test lines in the outbound calling pool.  When 
a call comes from one of our test numbers our inbound dial plans log the 
call and busy's out. So the test call is not answered and no call charge is 
assessed per carrier.  To verify that a test succeeded the testing server 
checks the database after it gets a busy.  By design if a call comes in it 
is checked before any line counts are tested so this method never effects 
the customers line counts.   We also have a full audio/dtmf test that is 
run once a day per number. This means that the first test call of the day 
is actually answered and a DTMF and audio hand shake is done.  Both ends 
log the result in a database. 

We catch vendor issues with these methods and it allows us to open tickets 
and resolve issues before a customer knows there might be an issue. Our 
vendors hate the system as we tend to catch any hiccup they may be having 
as well. Several of them are mistified how we can open tickets on issues 
consistently before they know they have an issue. 
Bryant 

----------------------------------------
 From: "Aurimas Skirgaila" <a.skirgaila at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 9:34 AM
To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" 
<asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Subject: [asterisk-users] checking if a phone number is UP

hi,

 We have a phone number from third party provider which is used for inbound 
calls. How could I monitor if this phone number is reachable? 
 the initial idea doesn't sound elegant:  - on my SIP server I set couple 
seconds of ringing before Answer(). - the monitoring server calls to that 
phone number for few seconds, checks if it "hears" the ringing and hangs up 
the call.

 ** I use Nagios to check if my services are UP using check_sip, but it 
this situation I'm more concerned about my DID provider than my server. 
It's just like pinging a phone number.  

 Thank you, Aurimas   

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120209/48b4de09/attachment.htm>