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brent at texascountryt...
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 Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:24 am Post subject: [asterisk-users] Phantom Rings |
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I'm having a major problem at one of my branch offices with "Phantom
Rings" on their asterisk-based phone system. The system was originally
built using 2 X100P cards and was recently upgraded to a Rhino R4FXO-EC
card. The upgrade severely increased the frequency of the phantom
rings. I've read everything I can find on-line about automatic testing
and noise on the line and have made several calls to Verizon with no
solution to the problem. I know the telco switch that is feeding my
analog lines is an old switch and can't even do CallerID with 2 lines in
a rollover configuration. Audio quality on the line is perfect during
voice calls. No static or other noise. I've asked for disconnect
supervision to be added to the line, but It doesn't look like it's
there. The line still seems to keep the channel open long after the far
end hangs up.
Has anyone else ever seen this problem or have any ideas how to
eliminate it?
Thanks,
Brent Davidson |
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JonP at inline.net
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:05 am Post subject: [asterisk-users] Phantom Rings |
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Quoting Brent Davidson <brent at texascountrytitle.com>:
| Quote: | I'm having a major problem at one of my branch offices with "Phantom
Rings" on their asterisk-based phone system. The system was originally
built using 2 X100P cards and was recently upgraded to a Rhino R4FXO-EC
card. The upgrade severely increased the frequency of the phantom
rings. I've read everything I can find on-line about automatic testing
and noise on the line and have made several calls to Verizon with no
solution to the problem. I know the telco switch that is feeding my
analog lines is an old switch and can't even do CallerID with 2 lines in
a rollover configuration. Audio quality on the line is perfect during
voice calls. No static or other noise. I've asked for disconnect
supervision to be added to the line, but It doesn't look like it's
there. The line still seems to keep the channel open long after the far
end hangs up.
Has anyone else ever seen this problem or have any ideas how to
eliminate it?
|
I had the phantom rings for years, once a day same time roughly every
day, finally just got annoyed enough one day I trapped the telco on
the phone with me till I finally got to talk to the right person. The
"right person" knew instantly what I was talking about after months of
previous denials. On DMS switches what you need to insist be added to
your customer line profile is something called "NLT" or no line test.
The "wrong person" can even look it up if you tell them the name of it
- imagine that eh ?
Jon Pounder
_/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/
_/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/ _/_/
_/ _/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/
_/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/
Inline Internet Systems Inc.
Thorold, Ontario, Canada
Tools to Power Your e-Business Solutions
www.inline.net
www.ihtml.com
www.ihtmlmerchant.com
www.opayc.com |
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brent at texascountryt...
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:22 am Post subject: [asterisk-users] Phantom Rings |
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Jon Pounder wrote:
| Quote: | I had the phantom rings for years, once a day same time roughly every
day, finally just got annoyed enough one day I trapped the telco on
the phone with me till I finally got to talk to the right person. The
"right person" knew instantly what I was talking about after months of
previous denials. On DMS switches what you need to insist be added to
your customer line profile is something called "NLT" or no line test.
The "wrong person" can even look it up if you tell them the name of it
- imagine that eh ?
|
Unfortunately the tech I spoke to said the switch we're connected to is
so old it has no built-in test capabilities. To run any sort of line
tests the line has to be disconnected from the switch and connected to
an external test set. I guess that's one of the things you deal with
when the boss decides to serve only rural markets. It would be hard to
find locations any more rural than where our branches are. At present I
have ztmonitor streaming all line activity to a file. I've got plenty
of hard drive space so I can record all day if I need to. According to
the manager of the branch in question, there were at least 50 phantom
calls yesterday, but there has only been 1 this morning. The other
curiosity here is that reviewing my asterisk logs all of the phantom
calls are on 1 line and swapping ports, the calls follow the line. It's
easy to spot the phantom calls in the logs because they always mention
dropped frames (probably because of the dialtone coming from the Analog
line card).
Thanks,
Brent |
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JonP at inline.net
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:38 am Post subject: [asterisk-users] Phantom Rings |
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Quoting Brent Davidson <brent at texascountrytitle.com>:
| Quote: | Jon Pounder wrote:
| Quote: | I had the phantom rings for years, once a day same time roughly every
day, finally just got annoyed enough one day I trapped the telco on
the phone with me till I finally got to talk to the right person. The
"right person" knew instantly what I was talking about after months of
previous denials. On DMS switches what you need to insist be added to
your customer line profile is something called "NLT" or no line test.
The "wrong person" can even look it up if you tell them the name of it
- imagine that eh ?
|
Unfortunately the tech I spoke to said the switch we're connected to is
so old it has no built-in test capabilities. To run any sort of line
tests the line has to be disconnected from the switch and connected to
an external test set. I guess that's one of the things you deal with
when the boss decides to serve only rural markets. It would be hard to
find locations any more rural than where our branches are. At present I
have ztmonitor streaming all line activity to a file. I've got plenty
of hard drive space so I can record all day if I need to. According to
the manager of the branch in question, there were at least 50 phantom
calls yesterday, but there has only been 1 this morning. The other
curiosity here is that reviewing my asterisk logs all of the phantom
calls are on 1 line and swapping ports, the calls follow the line. It's
easy to spot the phantom calls in the logs because they always mention
dropped frames (probably because of the dialtone coming from the Analog
line card).
|
is that one line in the same cable bundle all the way back to the CO ?
Could be picking up interference or something, or be half connected to
some other line somewhere or some other weirdness. ask for a TDR
reading of cable feet on a working and non-working line and they
should be damn close to identical. Could also be a bridge tap picking
up some stray signal somehow - have that checked for and disconnected.
I have also had issues before where an analog modem just plain would
not work as the management cct on a telco supplied T1, they changed
every piece of wire all the way back to the CO and finally decided it
was a bad switch port, swapped the line to a new port and voila worked
- tech figured the port was just flaky from lightning damage or
something, so some other poor schlub will get a line on there at some
point since it tests out ok but doesn't work. I would like to see them
go to this effort if it was my own line with my modem - never would
have happened. initially all the fingers were pointed at bad building
wiring, but that was ruled out in the first 5min, until eventually all
that was left was the switch port.
Jon Pounder
_/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/
_/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/ _/_/
_/ _/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/
_/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/
Inline Internet Systems Inc.
Thorold, Ontario, Canada
Tools to Power Your e-Business Solutions
www.inline.net
www.ihtml.com
www.ihtmlmerchant.com
www.opayc.com |
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lee at datatrakpos.com
Guest
|
| Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 4:24 pm Post subject: [asterisk-users] Phantom Rings |
|
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Brent Davidson wrote:
| Quote: | I'm having a major problem at one of my branch offices with "Phantom
Rings" on their asterisk-based phone system. The system was originally
built using 2 X100P cards and was recently upgraded to a Rhino R4FXO-EC
card. The upgrade severely increased the frequency of the phantom
rings. I've read everything I can find on-line about automatic testing
and noise on the line and have made several calls to Verizon with no
solution to the problem. I know the telco switch that is feeding my
analog lines is an old switch and can't even do CallerID with 2 lines in
a rollover configuration. Audio quality on the line is perfect during
voice calls. No static or other noise. I've asked for disconnect
supervision to be added to the line, but It doesn't look like it's
there. The line still seems to keep the channel open long after the far
end hangs up.
Has anyone else ever seen this problem or have any ideas how to
eliminate it?
|
Brent,
I had a similar problem and I feel for you, its frustrating.
Are you using polycom phones by chance? Here is the problem that I had, not
sure if your problem is related.
Specs:
- 6 Polycom 301 phones.
- CentOS 4 Server with Asterisk 1.2.x
- Sangoma A200 card with 3 FXO ports.
Pretty simple settings for a small office where a group ring between all 6
polycoms was initiated once the call was received. After that it would go to a
auto attendant and give the caller option to continue to hold, leave a message, etc.
At any rate, once in a while, Caller ID would fail, either on the Sangoma card
or somewhere in Asterisk, not sure, but CLI clearly showed an error on caller ID
every once in a while when a POTS call came in.
All six polycoms would ring, but when you picked up the handset or hit the
Answer soft button, nothing would happen, you couldn't answer the call. The
phones would just ring, and ring and ring for the duration of the group ring
(about 60) and the customer was really annoyed since it was a small office.
Continuing, the problem finally turned out to be the polycoms! When no caller
ID information was present, the polycoms wigged out and while they did ring, you
could not get the phones to pick up.
I could readily replicate the behavior by initiating a Call File without
specifying the caller ID information using the local channel. It would happen
every time. Specifying the CID would allow the polycoms to work correctly.
On the customer side, I did a quick GoToIf in their dialplan to see if the
caller id info was set and if it wasn't I would set it manually to something like:
CALLERID(num)=555-555-5555
CALLERID(name)=CID FAILURE
That cleared up the problem.
HIH
--
Warm Regards,
Lee |
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brent at texascountryt...
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:13 pm Post subject: [asterisk-users] Phantom Rings |
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Lee Jenkins wrote:
| Quote: | Brent,
I had a similar problem and I feel for you, its frustrating.
Are you using polycom phones by chance? Here is the problem that I had, not
sure if your problem is related.
Specs:
- 6 Polycom 301 phones.
- CentOS 4 Server with Asterisk 1.2.x
- Sangoma A200 card with 3 FXO ports.
Pretty simple settings for a small office where a group ring between all 6
polycoms was initiated once the call was received. After that it would go to a
auto attendant and give the caller option to continue to hold, leave a message, etc.
At any rate, once in a while, Caller ID would fail, either on the Sangoma card
or somewhere in Asterisk, not sure, but CLI clearly showed an error on caller ID
every once in a while when a POTS call came in.
All six polycoms would ring, but when you picked up the handset or hit the
Answer soft button, nothing would happen, you couldn't answer the call. The
phones would just ring, and ring and ring for the duration of the group ring
(about 60) and the customer was really annoyed since it was a small office.
Continuing, the problem finally turned out to be the polycoms! When no caller
ID information was present, the polycoms wigged out and while they did ring, you
could not get the phones to pick up.
I could readily replicate the behavior by initiating a Call File without
specifying the caller ID information using the local channel. It would happen
every time. Specifying the CID would allow the polycoms to work correctly.
On the customer side, I did a quick GoToIf in their dialplan to see if the
caller id info was set and if it wasn't I would set it manually to something like:
CALLERID(num)=555-555-5555
CALLERID(name)=CID FAILURE
That cleared up the problem.
HIH
--
Warm Regards,
Lee
|
That really doesn't surprise me with Polycoms. They have excellent
voice quality but their interface is dismal. I'm using Snom phones and
I'm fairly certain the problem is with the phone line. I have all
callerID settings disabled as the Telco is unable to provide it along
with our rollover line setup due to limitations in their antiquated
switch. The CLI and Logs all plainly show the calls as if they were
normal calls with the exception of a message about "Failed to write
frame" and no DTMF attempts, then the call is routed into the operator
queue. The calls always came in on Zap1-1 so I tried swapping the 2
lines to see if it stayed on port 1 or if the phantom followed the
line. As expected, the phantom rings followed the line and began
showing up on Zap2-1. So it pretty has to be something in the telco,
but I'm not sure what. Putting "WaitForRing(3) before the "Answer"
command in my IVR menu eliminates most of them, but sometimes more of
them slip through.
-Brent |
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lists at wildgooses.com
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 8:46 am Post subject: [asterisk-users] Phantom Rings |
|
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| Quote: | I'm fairly certain the problem is with the phone line. I have all
callerID settings disabled as the Telco is unable to provide it along
with our rollover line setup due to limitations in their antiquated
switch. The CLI and Logs all plainly show the calls as if they were
normal calls with the exception of a message about "Failed to write
frame" and no DTMF attempts, then the call is routed into the operator
queue. The calls always came in on Zap1-1 so I tried swapping the 2
lines to see if it stayed on port 1 or if the phantom followed the
line. As expected, the phantom rings followed the line and began
showing up on Zap2-1. So it pretty has to be something in the telco,
but I'm not sure what. Putting "WaitForRing(3) before the "Answer"
command in my IVR menu eliminates most of them, but sometimes more of
them slip through.
|
I get a similar problem with a domestic analogue line in the UK. I
*speculate* that there is a short half ring being sent for some reason
(line test or similar), but my card (Digium) seems to need about 5
seconds to detect hangup on the remote end, so I get a phantom 2 rings
at my end and then it stops...
No solution, but thought it might give you something to consider...
Ed W |
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JonP at inline.net
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 9:08 am Post subject: [asterisk-users] Phantom Rings |
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Quoting Ed W <lists at wildgooses.com>:
one thing I thought about, but never actually did was to install a
damping circuit across the line - a phone plugged in the line never
actually rang or if it did it was so short it was imperceptible. I
figured just a load across the might damp down the test pulse enough
to not be tricked into ringing the channel bank.
social engineering rather than technical engineering eventually solved
the problem though.
| Quote: |
| Quote: | I'm fairly certain the problem is with the phone line. I have all
callerID settings disabled as the Telco is unable to provide it along
with our rollover line setup due to limitations in their antiquated
switch. The CLI and Logs all plainly show the calls as if they were
normal calls with the exception of a message about "Failed to write
frame" and no DTMF attempts, then the call is routed into the operator
queue. The calls always came in on Zap1-1 so I tried swapping the 2
lines to see if it stayed on port 1 or if the phantom followed the
line. As expected, the phantom rings followed the line and began
showing up on Zap2-1. So it pretty has to be something in the telco,
but I'm not sure what. Putting "WaitForRing(3) before the "Answer"
command in my IVR menu eliminates most of them, but sometimes more of
them slip through.
|
I get a similar problem with a domestic analogue line in the UK. I
*speculate* that there is a short half ring being sent for some reason
(line test or similar), but my card (Digium) seems to need about 5
seconds to detect hangup on the remote end, so I get a phantom 2 rings
at my end and then it stops...
No solution, but thought it might give you something to consider...
Ed W
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Jon Pounder
_/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/
_/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/ _/_/
_/ _/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/
_/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/
Inline Internet Systems Inc.
Thorold, Ontario, Canada
Tools to Power Your e-Business Solutions
www.inline.net
www.ihtml.com
www.ihtmlmerchant.com
www.opayc.com |
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