Phonepower SIP Trunk Drops with Idle Time

[dmaderi1]

Hello Tek-Tipers!
I have a rather odd problem, recently my SIP trunk to Phonepower has been dropping after an extended period of idle time. It generally with go dead between 3 & 5am, just about daily. A reboot of the phone switch and an outbound call is the only thing that will restart the SIP trunk. I originally though we might be having a power issue so I swapped the UPS in that rack just yesterday but it happened again this morning, so that's not it. Phonepower does not do option pings and they also do not respond to them, but I notice in my sysmonitor logs that the switch is trying to send them. I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to try, or monitor to determine why this continues to drop daily. And not to mention my users aren't very happy about it either. Any help or direction you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Denny

 

[amriddle01]

I have had his issue before, turned out a Draytek was timing out the connection and hat would stop subsequent traffic going through, resetting the router was sometimes required to fix it. As Drayteks have more stuff hidden than shown the only permenant fix was to ditch it



"No problem monkey socks

 

[dmaderi1]

In this setup the IP Office has a direct connection to the internet via LAN2. There are no other devices between the IP Office and Time Warner's fiber connection.

 

[amriddle01]

Are they registered or trusted? If registered is the re-register timer correctly set?



"No problem monkey socks

 

[dmaderi1]

There are no SIP credentials setup so they must be trusted.

 

[amriddle01]

Ask the provider if they even see traffic hitting them when they go off, also see what monitor shows when they are off and calls are attempted, if it's all Tx and no Rx chase the provider



"No problem monkey socks

 

[dmaderi1]

I will test and post back as I am sure this will be helpful to someone.

 

[dmaderi1]

Happened again this morning, the phone system put the trunk in "out of service" mode. That makes them unusable, so there is no SIP traffic at that point. I did confirm that thru the sysmonitor. Before the reboot I unchecked 'Check OOS', to stop the phone system from checking the status of the SIP trunk. I will see if that makes a difference. Unfortunately it may be a few days before I can report back on the status.

 

[dmaderi1]

As of my last posting unchecking the 'Check OOS' has not resolved the issue of my SIP trunk being placed into Out of Service just about every morning. I have eliminated it being a power issue and equipment issue. Does anyone know what conditions cause a SIP trunk to be placed in Out of Service, a reboot is successfully clearing this condition but every morning is a real pita. This is gone from a very stable system to very problematic very quickly and I just can't put my finger on what might be causing this OR what I should be looking at to try a diagnose it. Really reaching out for some help here...

Thanks!

 

[krufka]

dmaderi1, what is your overall experience with this provider on your IPO? I have IPO and am looking for sip trunk provider and was wondering if you can comment on the service experience?

i apologize for posting here, could not find a pm button ...

Thanks!

 

[amriddle01]

You haven't made comment on any of the points I raised, I would also add we have seen this on Mitel 5000 systems too and it was/is the router causing it for that aswell



"No problem monkey socks

 

[pmcook]

What are you using for a router/firewall?

 

[dmaderi1]

amriddle01 - thanks for the response, when I reviewed the log when trying to make outbound calls, because the trunk is marked as out of service it doesn't even attempt to try to make a call using that trunk. Due to it being the only trunk and OOS I then get an unobtainable.

I spent a few hours on the phone, at different times, running tests while the trunk was down. They would see the attempts leave their system but I would never receive it on my end. They could also see a ping leaving their system but I wasn't receiving it. They could see my pings from the IPO and were responding. Without any changes on my end their only comment was that they needed to "resync" the trunk on their end, whatever that means. Once they did that I haven't had any problems with it until just this past Tuesday 8/6/13. They provide the ringback for incoming calls. Callers where complaining that they didn't hear any ringing, so I placed (yet another) support call with them, they turned the ringback on again and the following morning the trunk was down and required me to do a restart of the phone switch.

pmcook - The IPO is directly connected to the internet via WAN2, so there aren't any routers on my end that are in the way. It's always something they do on their end that resolves the issue but I've haven't had anyone tell me what it is.

krufka - Overall I wouldn't recommend phonepower for SIP trunks, when the trunk works it works great, when it doesn't it's a mess and I always have to prove that it's not on my end. I don't like that, I'm the only person that works on the phone switch and network at my company. I know what needs to be checked before placing a support call and trust me calling support is the last step on my list.

 

[amriddle01]

This is all pointing to it being their issue then, there is little/nothing that can be done your end..... other than start looking for a better provider



"No problem monkey socks

 

[pmcook]

All I can say is I abandoned Phone Power on an NEC DSX80 I was tasked with adding SIP truinks to. Never could get it working properly. Switched to Accessline and all issues went away. I am not plugging Accessline, it was just one of several we considered. If you have no firewall or other gateway appliance in the way then that really only leaves the SIP provider.

You can try SIP trunks from another vendor with no commitment usually. That's how we decided on Accessline - free trial.