9640 SIP, Acquiring Service every 2 minutes

[rpkn]

Hi everyone, I have a spare 9640 that I'm using with a third-party SIP service in a non-Avaya environment. I loaded the 2.6.17 SIP firmware and everything is working fine, can make and receive calls with no problem, except...

Every 2 minutes the Acquiring Service screen flashes up for a few seconds. Then it goes back to normal. If the 2 minutes hits while on a call, instead it pops up "Link recovery. Limited phone service. Calls may be lost." But the call continues without any issue.

I tried tweaking some parameters that looked like they might be relevant, but these aren't helping:

SET ENABLE_AVAYA_ENVIRONMENT 0
SET RDS_MAX_RETRY_TIME 2
SET RDS_INITIAL_RETRY_ATTEMPTS 1
SET FAILBACK_POLICY admin
SET DISCOVER_AVAYA_ENVIRONMENT 0

Any idea what it's doing every 2 minutes, or how to get it to stop?

 

[kyle555]

Trace the registration and look at the expires header from the 9640 and the expires header from the 200OK from the server.

Presumably that timer doesn't jive between the set and the server.

 

[rpkn]

Thanks for the suggestion! I did a tcpdump and I see that it's re-registering every 2 minutes, even though the expires is set to 900s. There's the original REGISTER -> 401 to get the nonce, then here's what the successful registration looks like:

[pre]
Request-Line: REGISTER sip:reg.jiveip.net SIP/2.0
Message Header
From: sip:XXX@reg.jiveip.net;tag=XXX
To: sip:XXX@reg.jiveip.net
Call-ID: XXX
CSeq: 3072 REGISTER
Via: SIP/2.0/TCP XXX;branch=XXX
Content-Length: 0
Max-Forwards: 70
Contact: <sip:XXX;avaya-sc-enabled;transport=tcp>;q=1;expires=900;reg-id=1;+sip.instance="<urn:uuid:00000000-0000-1000-8000-3cb15b4f492a>"
Allow: INVITE,CANCEL,BYE,ACK,SUBSCRIBE,NOTIFY,MESSAGE,INFO,PUBLISH,REFER,UPDATE
User-Agent: Avaya one-X Deskphone
Supported: eventlist
Authorization: Digest ...

Status-Line: SIP/2.0 200 OK
Message Header
m: <sip:XXX;avaya-sc-enabled;transport=tcp>;expires=900
Record-Route: <sip:XXX:5061;ftag=XXX;lr>
v: SIP/2.0/TCP XXX;rport=4090;received=XXX;branch=XXX
f: sip:XXX@reg.jiveip.net;tag=XXX
t: sip:XXX@reg.jiveip.net;tag=XXX
i: XXX
CSeq: 3072 REGISTER
Server: Jive Application Server
Allow: INVITE, ACK, CANCEL, OPTIONS, BYE, REFER, SUBSCRIBE, NOTIFY, INFO, PUBLISH, MESSAGE
k: replaces
Expires: 900
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2017 03:31:27 GMT
l: 0
[/pre]

But then it's followed by this exchange, from the server to the phone, which I don't quite understand:

[pre]
Request-Line: NOTIFY sip:XXX;avaya-sc-enabled;transport=tcp SIP/2.0
Message Header
Record-Route: <sip:XXX:5061;ftag=XXX;lr>
m: <sip:unknown@XXX:5061>
Via: SIP/2.0/TCP XXX:5061;branch=XXX
v: SIP/2.0/UDP XXX:5060;received=XXX;branch=XXX;rport=5060
Max-Forwards: 69
f: "unknown" <sip:unknown@reg.jiveip.net>;tag=XXX
t: <sip:XXX:5061>
i: XXX@reg.jiveip.net
CSeq: 102 NOTIFY
User-Agent: Jive Application Server
o: message-summary
c: application/simple-message-summary
l: 89
P-hint: NAT

Status-Line: SIP/2.0 400 Bad Request (Unknown Subscription State)
Message Header
From: "unknown" <sip:unknown@reg.jiveip.net>;tag=XXX
To: <sip:XXX:5061>
Call-ID: XXX@reg.jiveip.net
CSeq: 102 NOTIFY
Via: SIP/2.0/TCP XXX:5061;branch=XXX
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP XXX:5060;received=XXX;branch=XXX;rport=5060
Record-Route: <sip:XXX:5061;ftag=XXX;lr>
User-Agent: Avaya one-X Deskphone 2.6.17.0 (43258)
Content-Length: 0
[/pre]

After that, the phone immediately does an NTP update, then not much (just some TCP keepalives) until the next re-register, 2 minutes later. Each re-register is followed by an NTP update.

Does anything jump out at you here? What's up with that error, and could that prompt the registration to expire too soon?

 

[kyle555]

look in your 46xxsettings.txt. That's an Avaya-specific SIP enhancement for their environments

## ENABLE_AVAYA_ENVIRONMENT specifies whether the telephone is configured
## for use in an Avaya (SES) or a third-party proxy environment.
## Value Operation
## 0 3rd party proxy with "SIPPING 19" features
## 1 Avaya SES with AST features and PPM (default)
## This parameter is supported by:
## J129 SIP R1.0.0.0 and later; for IP office and 3PCC environments this parameter shall be set to 0.
## 96x1 SIP R6.0 and later
## H1xx SIP R1.0 and later; for IP office environment this parameter shall be set to 0.
## 96x0 SIP R1.0 through R2.4
## SET ENABLE_AVAYA_ENVIRONMENT 1

 

[rpkn]

I saw that, and I have it set to 0. But I just noticed the compatibility:

## 96x0 SIP R1.0 through R2.4

This is on a 9640 with the latest SIP firmware (2.6.17). Which I guess means it's ignoring the flag. Do you know if there's any way to get the same behavior on the newer firmware? I looked all through the settings but I did't see anything else relevant.

 

[kyle555]

Downgrade to 2.4? Look through the admin guides? Either 2.6 has some other way, or 2.4 is the end of the line for non-Avaya call servers.

 

[kyle555]

https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/100172318

"DISCOVER_AVAYA_ENVIRONMENT". I guess it's more flexible, but regardless, it reads like it only toggles the concept of "check if this is Avaya's call server" - if so, use it's features, if it isn't (or we don't discover) then just be a dumb SIP phone.

 

[rpkn]

Thanks for following up. Looks like this might be a no-go. According to the admin guide (page 28):

9600 Series SIP IP Telephones need SIP Enablement Services (SES) or Avaya Aura Session Manager (SM) to work properly.

Apparently if it's connected to a non-Avaya backend, it goes into survivability mode with degraded features, and tries "periodically" to reconnect to a full-service backend. If one isn't available, it just keeps doing this forever. This is as of 2.5+.

Downgrading to 2.4 would probably be a great solution, except they seem to have taken it down. I can't find a download link for the 2.4 SIP firmware.