asterisk users - May 2004 - Asterisk and Cisco 7960 problems persist (for me, anyway)

It seems that each time I get a new checkout of * from CVS my Cisco 7960 
works worse than before. I know this stuff's in flux, so I mention this 
in case it's news.  Anyone else having trouble?  What I'm seeing (er, 
hearing) is really choppy audio. The previous version I had installed 
had fairly frequent audio dropouts (not present when I make the same 
calls through the same * box using a TDM400P interface).

Cheers,

Brian

What kind of switch do you have your phones plugged into?  If your switch is
highly loaded, or you are doing lots of multicast or broadcast, your SIP streams
are going to suffer unless you are filtering that traffic at the port level or
have separate VOIP VLANS.




-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com]On Behalf Of Brian Cuthie
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 10:43 AM
To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk and Cisco 7960 problems persist (for
me, anyway)



It seems that each time I get a new checkout of * from CVS my Cisco 7960 
works worse than before. I know this stuff's in flux, so I mention this 
in case it's news.  Anyone else having trouble?  What I'm seeing (er, 
hearing) is really choppy audio. The previous version I had installed 
had fairly frequent audio dropouts (not present when I make the same 
calls through the same * box using a TDM400P interface).

Cheers,

Brian
_______________________________________________
Asterisk-Users mailing list
Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users

I've had this too, reported it as a bug last week and got my butt kicked 
for not being responsive enough in providing support to sort it out.  You 
could file another bug report but be sure to have a thick book ready to 
stuff down your trousers.

  Iain


--On Friday, May 7, 2004 10:43 am -0400 Brian Cuthie <brian@systemix.com> 
wrote:
>
> It seems that each time I get a new checkout of * from CVS my Cisco 7960
> works worse than before. I know this stuff's in flux, so I mention this
> in case it's news.  Anyone else having trouble?  What I'm seeing
(er,
> hearing) is really choppy audio. The previous version I had installed had
> fairly frequent audio dropouts (not present when I make the same calls
> through the same * box using a TDM400P interface).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Brian
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>

At 09:43 AM 5/7/2004, you wrote:
>It seems that each time I get a new checkout of * from CVS my Cisco 7960 
>works worse than before. I know this stuff's in flux, so I mention this
in
>case it's news.  Anyone else having trouble?  What I'm seeing (er, 
>hearing) is really choppy audio. The previous version I had installed had 
>fairly frequent audio dropouts (not present when I make the same calls 
>through the same * box using a TDM400P interface).
No dropout problems or choppy audio running Asterisk CVS-04/19/04-14:31:03 
with 4 Cisco 7940/60 SIP 6.3 phones on a 2.4GHz P4 Supermicro 
server.  Analog phones through our TDM400P do sound much better but the 
audio problems on our Cisco SIP phones are echo problems.  People are 
working on solutions.

Tom
>Cheers,
>
>Brian
>_______________________________________________
>Asterisk-Users mailing list
>Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
>http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users

I've got Asterisk STABLE-CVS-4/19/04 with 12 Cisco 7960 phones 6.0 Firmware
using ulaw, 6 Polycom IP500 ulaw phones, and 192 Zap channels.  I have Gig-E
Copper to my server and 100Mbit-Full to all my phones.  I haven't had any
choppy audio at all.  My switch is a Cisco 4500.

-sb



-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com]On Behalf Of Tom
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 11:30 AM
To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk and Cisco 7960 problems persist
(for me, anyway)


At 09:43 AM 5/7/2004, you wrote:
>It seems that each time I get a new checkout of * from CVS my Cisco 7960 
>works worse than before. I know this stuff's in flux, so I mention this
in
>case it's news.  Anyone else having trouble?  What I'm seeing (er, 
>hearing) is really choppy audio. The previous version I had installed had 
>fairly frequent audio dropouts (not present when I make the same calls 
>through the same * box using a TDM400P interface).
No dropout problems or choppy audio running Asterisk CVS-04/19/04-14:31:03 
with 4 Cisco 7940/60 SIP 6.3 phones on a 2.4GHz P4 Supermicro 
server.  Analog phones through our TDM400P do sound much better but the 
audio problems on our Cisco SIP phones are echo problems.  People are 
working on solutions.

Tom
>Cheers,
>
>Brian
>_______________________________________________
>Asterisk-Users mailing list
>Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
>http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
_______________________________________________
Asterisk-Users mailing list
Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users

> It seems that each time I get a new checkout of * from CVS my Cisco 7960 
> works worse than before. I know this stuff's in flux, so I mention this
> in case it's news.  Anyone else having trouble?  What I'm seeing
(er,
> hearing) is really choppy audio. The previous version I had installed 
> had fairly frequent audio dropouts (not present when I make the same 
> calls through the same * box using a TDM400P interface).
Brian,

Are you having the choppy audio only on iax2 links or on other calls as
well?

There was an issue with erratic iax2 timestamps which caused the Cisco
phones to effectively drop any sip packet that had uneven timestamps
causing extremely choppy audio. The choppy audio (as I seen it) was
only in one direction (from the iax2 source with the erratic timestamps
towards to 7960 phone).

If your issue is not associated with iax2, then be aware the Cisco v6.x
code changed DSP firmware internally, and any sip/rtp packets arriving with
uneven timestamps (within the rtp pkts) will be dropped and cause the
choppy audio. You should be able to see the timestamps with ethereal.
The timestamp difference between successive pkts should be exactly
160 milliseconds; if its anything else, the phone will drop the pkt.
(Not sure if that is a real Cisco bug or a planned change, but it
certainly has a hugh negative impact on voice quality.)

I'm running CVS-HEAD-05/02/04 with no problems today.

Rich

I checked-out CVS Head today to get realm support,  I have over hundred 
Cisco phone on my servers and I have
not noticed any Qos problems.  You may want to check the duplex of your 
switches and Asterisk boxes. If you
don't have full duplex, that is more then likely your problem.

Brian Cuthie wrote:
>
> It seems that each time I get a new checkout of * from CVS my Cisco 
> 7960 works worse than before. I know this stuff's in flux, so I 
> mention this in case it's news.  Anyone else having trouble?  What
I'm
> seeing (er, hearing) is really choppy audio. The previous version I 
> had installed had fairly frequent audio dropouts (not present when I 
> make the same calls through the same * box using a TDM400P interface).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Brian
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users

On Fri, 7 May 2004, Brian Cuthie wrote:
> It seems that each time I get a new checkout of * from CVS my Cisco 7960 
> works worse than before. I know this stuff's in flux, so I mention this
> in case it's news.  Anyone else having trouble?  What I'm seeing
(er,
> hearing) is really choppy audio. The previous version I had installed 
> had fairly frequent audio dropouts (not present when I make the same 
> calls through the same * box using a TDM400P interface).
I had jittery audio with dropouts on a 7960 with SCCP, and started testing
SIP hoping it would be better (based on the reports of the SIP-to-IAX2
timestamping issue).  Here's my experience:

* As Brian mentions, when the other end of the call is from a non-VoIP
path (e.g. Zaptel interface) the audio is fine.

* Calls over IAX start out okay, but within a few seconds the audio starts
jittering.  It gets progressively worse until about a minute into the call
(often less), by which time audio is unintelligible.  Calling the same
number over the same IAX connection from an analogue phone attached to a
SIP-image ATA-186 which in turn is plugged into the "PC" port of the
same
7960 gives perfect audio.

* Calls over SIP are stable; I had an intermittent problem where audio
into the 7960 would stop completely for up to three seconds, but that
seems to be gone after doing a CVS update.  Side note: when I had this
audio dropout problem, making the same call without * in the audio path
(by using canreinvite=yes and removing t and T from Dial) resulted in
perfect audio.

I'll try someone's suggestion to disable the jitterbuffer to fix the
IAX2
problem, but I thought that the jitterbuffer was supposed to help this 
kind of problem...  Besides, the same call over an ATA or using X-lite is 
perfect.

Before anyone jumps in, yes, as soon as I can get there I will hit the bug 
tracker.

Cheers,
Vic Cross


PS: I know that folks generally dislike 'me too' messages, but this time
Too Bad -- I'm trying to provide more info to help anyone that might be
working on problems.

<rant>
I hope that Iain was exaggerating when he described his bug-reporting
experience.  Many * users are unable to commit the time to poring over
hundreds of lines of uncommented C code and ethereal traces with thousands
of packets captured.  So, as our way of trying to help, we provide e-mails
like this either in response to or as an attempt to gather more
information about the problem.  To try and get people talking about a 
problem.

How is does it help to jump on someone who is trying to get resolution to 
a problem -- by driving them toward OpenPBX or VOCAL?  A few former 
colleagues of mine may soon be about to learn (unfortunately) that you can 
only piss off a customer so many times.

To the Asterisk developers, bug marshals, and coders: I am jealous of you!  
You've created a wonderful thing.  I'd love to be able to spend the
amount
of time I'd like to on Asterisk.  I'd love to be able to do more to fix
bugs and develop features.  But I can't.  Don't think less of me because
of that. 
</rant>

VC