Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
Hi, On 09/16/2010 05:28 PM, Gareth Blades wrote: > One of the main benefits of qualify=yes is to detect network problems > with peers. > We send a lot of calls via a service provider using SIP but we have > qualify-yes set so that if it becomes unreachable the dial fails > immediatly without having to wait for a timeout which enables us to > seamlessly failover to an ISDN connection. In have some experience with IAX qualify. Might not be of direct benefit though to this particular thread. I have the following IAX peer as the outgoing IAX trunk at one of my sites: [outgoing_trunk] type=peer host=iax-out.our_iax_host.net username=my_username auth=plaintext secret=my_password qualify=no To start with, I used qualify=yes. Which worked well for about 6 months. But after that, the peer would become unavailable every few days - and nobody could do outgoing calls. I would login remotely, and check that I can ping ok the IAX provider. However, Asterisk kept on showing the peer as unreachable even though it was clearly online. It looks to me like, from time to time, the IAX provider would become unavailable for a period of time (maybe maintenance at night) and Asterisk would just give up after some retries, and mark it as unreachable. The problem is that Asterisk wouldn't change its mind unless I did a full Asterisk restart. After I turned off the qualify, no more problems. It looks like Asterisk is searching now for the IAX provider every time a call is attempted - so it doesn't matter if they are unavailable for a period of time. At least this is the conclusions I have reached. So it seems that sometimes qualify is not a good idea. Sebastian > > Chris Owen wrote: >> We have a tenant who has been having issues with a congested connection and >> in trouble shooting it we've noticed that there seems to be a lot of SIP >> traffic even when none of the phones are doing anything. >> >> We've determined that this traffic is mostly INFO packets generated by >> setting qualify=2000. I understand that 2000 ms is the default value for >> the qualification parameter but what I'm unclear on is exactly what the >> purpose of having asterisk qualify the phones is. >> >> I know that in a NAT situation, qualifications can help keep UDP sessions >> open in the firewall but in our case most phones are not behind NAT. >> >> I realize qualifying phones is also how asterisk keeps track of who is >> available for things like BLF but surely it doesn't need to do that every 2 >> seconds to keep the BLFs reasonably current. >> >> So I guess my question is what is the real purpose of the qualify setting in >> a non-NAT situation and can one safely set the qualification as something >> higher. I'd think something like 15 seconds would be more than enough for >> BLFs and the like. >> >> Chris >> >> >> > > -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 12:03 PM, Chris Owen wrote: > On Sep 16, 2010, at 10:44 AM, Steve Totaro wrote: > >> The other purpose is for DCHP and the IP address of a particular phone >> may change. If you hard code the phone and the corresponding entry in >> sip.conf, you don't need to register or use qualify. >> >> If the phone is reachable then it will reply and the call will go >> normally. If it doesn't reply, then on with the dialplan. > > Now I'm not sure that makes sense to me. If the IP address of the phone > changes and the phone doesn't reregister then yes calls can't get to it but > neither can the qualify packets. I'm not sure how sending a qualify helps > here. > > Chris > > -- > - > Chris Owen - Garden City (620) 275-1900 - Lottery (noun): > President - Wichita (316) 858-3000 - A stupidity tax > Hubris Communications Inc www.hubris.net > - I think if you re-read my post, it will make more sense. Look for, "If you hard code the phone and the corresponding entry in sip.conf, you don't need to register or use qualify." If it is static, how is it going to change? Thanks, Steve T -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
One of the main benefits of qualify=yes is to detect network problems with peers. We send a lot of calls via a service provider using SIP but we have qualify-yes set so that if it becomes unreachable the dial fails immediatly without having to wait for a timeout which enables us to seamlessly failover to an ISDN connection. Chris Owen wrote: > We have a tenant who has been having issues with a congested connection and > in trouble shooting it we've noticed that there seems to be a lot of SIP > traffic even when none of the phones are doing anything. > > We've determined that this traffic is mostly INFO packets generated by > setting qualify=2000. I understand that 2000 ms is the default value for > the qualification parameter but what I'm unclear on is exactly what the > purpose of having asterisk qualify the phones is. > > I know that in a NAT situation, qualifications can help keep UDP sessions > open in the firewall but in our case most phones are not behind NAT. > > I realize qualifying phones is also how asterisk keeps track of who is > available for things like BLF but surely it doesn't need to do that every 2 > seconds to keep the BLFs reasonably current. > > So I guess my question is what is the real purpose of the qualify setting in > a non-NAT situation and can one safely set the qualification as something > higher. I'd think something like 15 seconds would be more than enough for > BLFs and the like. > > Chris > > > -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
qualify=2000 does not mean it sends a qualify every 2000ms, 2 seconds. It means that the qualify timeout is 2000ms, so if it receives a response at 2600ms, it counts that phone as down. I believe the timing of qualifies is still every 60 seconds, unless explicitly changed by the system admin: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+sip+qualify So 20 phones with qualify is 40 packets/minute (1 packet out and 1 packet in per phone). I've always liked qualify as it lets me know if a phone is alive or not, even in non NAT scenarios. If someone calls in and says "my phone doesn't work", I can check the qualify and if it shows it down, have them reboot. If it shows up, then I debug them trying to place a call. It is just easy extra help in troubleshooting. -Original Message- From: asterisk-users-boun...@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-boun...@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Chris Owen Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2010 11:02 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes On Sep 16, 2010, at 10:45 AM, Zeeshan Zakaria wrote: > I prefer to keep qualify=on for all the extensions, as it gives you an idea which extensions are going to give you trouble. For extensions with qualify value greater than 300 ms you should definitely worry. For extensions at 2000ms delay or more, turning qualify off simply means to ignore the obvious problem. Such extensions have communication or network issues which require serious attention. You can set this parameter to, e.g. 3000 ms or more if dealing with 2000 ms delay is unavoidable, but don't turn it off. Afterall even at 2000 ms conversation is not truly real time and not easy. In our case the problem isn't that the phones are experiencing high latency per se but rather than a full pipe plus all these SIP messages is playing hell with the QOS stuff. 20 phones in one location times say 4 SIP packets every 2 seconds equals 40 SIP packets a second. That normally isn't a problem but when the pipe gets congested then we start seeing issues when a call comes in and 400 BLF notices go out etc. Obviously we can increase the amount of bandwidth reserved for SIP traffic but I'm just not sure why we're sending all those packets in the first place. In other words, the qualify traffic is actually causing the problem, not revealing it. Chris -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
On 09/16/2010 12:01 PM, Chris Owen wrote: well that just means you need a trunked satellite pbx where all the phones are, and that would take load off the main connection. half those people have got to just be talking to each other and don't need to use the gateway at all. > On Sep 16, 2010, at 10:45 AM, Zeeshan Zakaria wrote: > > >> I prefer to keep qualify=on for all the extensions, as it gives you an idea >> which extensions are going to give you trouble. For extensions with qualify >> value greater than 300 ms you should definitely worry. For extensions at >> 2000ms delay or more, turning qualify off simply means to ignore the obvious >> problem. Such extensions have communication or network issues which require >> serious attention. You can set this parameter to, e.g. 3000 ms or more if >> dealing with 2000 ms delay is unavoidable, but don't turn it off. Afterall >> even at 2000 ms conversation is not truly real time and not easy. >> > In our case the problem isn't that the phones are experiencing high latency > per se but rather than a full pipe plus all these SIP messages is playing > hell with the QOS stuff. > > 20 phones in one location times say 4 SIP packets every 2 seconds equals 40 > SIP packets a second. That normally isn't a problem but when the pipe gets > congested then we start seeing issues when a call comes in and 400 BLF > notices go out etc. Obviously we can increase the amount of bandwidth > reserved for SIP traffic but I'm just not sure why we're sending all those > packets in the first place. > > In other words, the qualify traffic is actually causing the problem, not > revealing it. > > Chris > > > > -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
On Sep 16, 2010, at 10:45 AM, Zeeshan Zakaria wrote: > I prefer to keep qualify=on for all the extensions, as it gives you an idea > which extensions are going to give you trouble. For extensions with qualify > value greater than 300 ms you should definitely worry. For extensions at > 2000ms delay or more, turning qualify off simply means to ignore the obvious > problem. Such extensions have communication or network issues which require > serious attention. You can set this parameter to, e.g. 3000 ms or more if > dealing with 2000 ms delay is unavoidable, but don't turn it off. Afterall > even at 2000 ms conversation is not truly real time and not easy. In our case the problem isn't that the phones are experiencing high latency per se but rather than a full pipe plus all these SIP messages is playing hell with the QOS stuff. 20 phones in one location times say 4 SIP packets every 2 seconds equals 40 SIP packets a second. That normally isn't a problem but when the pipe gets congested then we start seeing issues when a call comes in and 400 BLF notices go out etc. Obviously we can increase the amount of bandwidth reserved for SIP traffic but I'm just not sure why we're sending all those packets in the first place. In other words, the qualify traffic is actually causing the problem, not revealing it. Chris -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
On Sep 16, 2010, at 10:44 AM, Steve Totaro wrote: > The other purpose is for DCHP and the IP address of a particular phone > may change. If you hard code the phone and the corresponding entry in > sip.conf, you don't need to register or use qualify. > > If the phone is reachable then it will reply and the call will go > normally. If it doesn't reply, then on with the dialplan. Now I'm not sure that makes sense to me. If the IP address of the phone changes and the phone doesn't reregister then yes calls can't get to it but neither can the qualify packets. I'm not sure how sending a qualify helps here. Chris -- - Chris Owen - Garden City (620) 275-1900 - Lottery (noun): President - Wichita (316) 858-3000 -A stupidity tax Hubris Communications Inc www.hubris.net - -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
I prefer to keep qualify=on for all the extensions, as it gives you an idea which extensions are going to give you trouble. For extensions with qualify value greater than 300 ms you should definitely worry. For extensions at 2000ms delay or more, turning qualify off simply means to ignore the obvious problem. Such extensions have communication or network issues which require serious attention. You can set this parameter to, e.g. 3000 ms or more if dealing with 2000 ms delay is unavoidable, but don't turn it off. Afterall even at 2000 ms conversation is not truly real time and not easy. Zeeshan A Zakaria -- www.ilovetovoip.com On 2010-09-16 11:38 AM, "Benny Amorsen" > wrote: Chris Owen writes: > So I guess my question is what is the real purpose of the q... The purpose is simply to see if the phone is available. For your particular use it is likely best to simply turn it off completely. If a phone disappears, its registration will eventually time out anyway. /Benny -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocat... -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Benny Amorsen wrote: > Chris Owen writes: > >> So I guess my question is what is the real purpose of the qualify >> setting in a non-NAT situation and can one safely set the >> qualification as something higher. I'd think something like 15 seconds >> would be more than enough for BLFs and the like. > > The purpose is simply to see if the phone is available. For your > particular use it is likely best to simply turn it off completely. If a > phone disappears, its registration will eventually time out anyway. > > > /Benny > > The other purpose is for DCHP and the IP address of a particular phone may change. If you hard code the phone and the corresponding entry in sip.conf, you don't need to register or use qualify. If the phone is reachable then it will reply and the call will go normally. If it doesn't reply, then on with the dialplan. Thanks, Steve T -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
Chris Owen writes: > So I guess my question is what is the real purpose of the qualify > setting in a non-NAT situation and can one safely set the > qualification as something higher. I'd think something like 15 seconds > would be more than enough for BLFs and the like. The purpose is simply to see if the phone is available. For your particular use it is likely best to simply turn it off completely. If a phone disappears, its registration will eventually time out anyway. /Benny -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Chris Owen wrote: > > We have a tenant who has been having issues with a congested connection and > in trouble shooting it we've noticed that there seems to be a lot of SIP > traffic even when none of the phones are doing anything. > > We've determined that this traffic is mostly INFO packets generated by > setting qualify=2000. I understand that 2000 ms is the default value for > the qualification parameter but what I'm unclear on is exactly what the > purpose of having asterisk qualify the phones is. > > I know that in a NAT situation, qualifications can help keep UDP sessions > open in the firewall but in our case most phones are not behind NAT. > > I realize qualifying phones is also how asterisk keeps track of who is > available for things like BLF but surely it doesn't need to do that every 2 > seconds to keep the BLFs reasonably current. > > So I guess my question is what is the real purpose of the qualify setting in > a non-NAT situation and can one safely set the qualification as something > higher. I'd think something like 15 seconds would be more than enough for > BLFs and the like. > > Chris Try it without qualify=yes. I have had phones setup over VSAT links and qualify=yes was a problem. Ping times averaged ~700ms from Equinix to Baghdad, but with packet loss and a wide range (jitter) in ping times, I constantly had phones jumping between "Reachable" to "Unreachable" I kept upping the value of the qualify statement which helped, but I finally just dropped it because everything was on the same subnet, and OpenVPN subnet. It worked just fine besides high jitter buffers and people needing an understanding that there would be a delay so they wouldn't step on each other as they spoke. Thanks, Steve T -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
[asterisk-users] Purpose of qualify=yes
We have a tenant who has been having issues with a congested connection and in trouble shooting it we've noticed that there seems to be a lot of SIP traffic even when none of the phones are doing anything. We've determined that this traffic is mostly INFO packets generated by setting qualify=2000. I understand that 2000 ms is the default value for the qualification parameter but what I'm unclear on is exactly what the purpose of having asterisk qualify the phones is. I know that in a NAT situation, qualifications can help keep UDP sessions open in the firewall but in our case most phones are not behind NAT. I realize qualifying phones is also how asterisk keeps track of who is available for things like BLF but surely it doesn't need to do that every 2 seconds to keep the BLFs reasonably current. So I guess my question is what is the real purpose of the qualify setting in a non-NAT situation and can one safely set the qualification as something higher. I'd think something like 15 seconds would be more than enough for BLFs and the like. Chris -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
