IP Office 500 call quality and faxing since upgrading to new internet circuit 4

[CorbinMyMan]

We have an older IP Office 500 (no longer supported but I may call old vendor if I can't get help here) for a small office (20 people) that we've had for a decade. It's worked perfectly for what we need. Back in April we migrated to a new internet circuit (AT&T Ethernet IP FLEX BVOIP service) that handles both phone and our internet. We've had a previous our AT&T circuit for years but we were due for a new contract so we went ahead and upgraded the circuit speed which required new circuit hardware.

We did the test and turn up and migrated all our DID's no problem. I plugged my IP Office into the new circuit and it worked fine, I could make and receive phone calls.

A few days after the circuit upgrade I got reports of degraded call quality, and I myself noticed a lag in between the time I spoke and the person I was on the phone with responded, a good 2 seconds at times. Then the fax issues were noticed. If we tried to send a fax (using the IP Office to dial a regular fax machine out, same way we've done it for years) it would only work maybe 10% of the time. Same with receiving, we would only receive partial pages and it would give us one of several errors:

:

Attached is a part of an errored fax, some pages may be missing. fax aborted by remote user, error (b4)  (I saw this a lot when sending myself a fax out of the ip office and having it dial back in)

or
:

fail - bad line conditions or incompatible fax machine, error (72

I called AT&T and they 'worked' on it for weeks. They would keep telling me to "try now", and "send a fax and see if it works". Whatever they did (on their end, they didn't touch anything on my network) helped a little, but any faxes that are a few pages or more always fail. At this point I think they've given up because they haven't updated the ticket in a while (the ticket was created a month ago) and our faxes still aren't reliable. For example I've been trying to send a 2 page fax all morning and it fails constantly.

My question is, could it be anything in my IP Office configuration that is causing this? Especially something that's maybe not configured properly for the AT&T circuit? Is there any way to test this? It's becoming increasingly frustrating as AT&T doesn't seem to want to help anymore.

IP office has a module in it with 12 ports on it in it, that's what my fax machine is connected to. The module is labeled "PHONE (1-8) 700417231". If there's something pertinent in the config I can provide I'll happily do so.

Here's some info on the new circuit from AT&T:
PBX Handoff: PRI
PBX Type: TDM
Routing Protocol: STATIC
Dial Plan Code Translation: Calling Plan C

This has to be related to the new circuit as the issue started immediately after putting it in. We had zero problems with faxes for almost 10 years before this new circuit. I'm hoping it's something that can be fixed in the IP Office configuration since AT&T hasn't been any help. Thank you

 

[TouchToneTommy]

On every AT&T IP Flex turnup I've been part of, the AT&T remote programmer will ask if there are any Faxes on the system, ask for the number, and program something on his end, presumably a different codec based on the CID. This is where they are coming in on their fiber, installing a Cisco router, and handing off PRI to the PBX.

 

[CorbinMyMan]

It is your new VOIP based circuit from AT&T causing the problem, you will more than likely fight AT&T until the end of time, just get separate dedicated analog fax lines and save your soul.

I wish it were that simple. We have about 50 DID's that are used for faxing. We have a FaxFinder server and when someone receives a fax on a number it goes through my IP Office, then to faxfinder where it is emailed to the appropriate recipient based on the number.

 

[CorbinMyMan]

I would also like to one day setup an internal fax server where users can fax from their emails. To do this everything would need to go through my digital PRI currently in place.

I got an email from an engineer at AT&T yesterday saying they were escalating the ticket.

Also, VoIP Numpty might be on to something with the clock. Whenever I reboot my IP Office I get an error in my System Status app under CONFIGURATION -> SERVICE that says

8kHz clock source changed.  Previous source was internal.

This has been this way since we had the IP Office installed (10 years ago) by the vendor. They said this error wasn't a problem and never resolved it. I can clear the error and it won't show back up until the next reboot.

 

[VoIP Numpty]

That is probably normal - at bootup IP Office will use its internal 8kHz source, then as cards are initialised and circuits come up the IP Office will accept a clock from the PRI as per config and so you get that message. I guess it might have been good for them to have not put that out as an error...
Any further errors like that indicate an issue.

And with a real PRI then you always use that as you synch source. I guess the same is true for the IP derived services - but I don't really know, I'm rarely out on the front line these days...