Richard Fall
2004-Aug-10 10:00 UTC
[Asterisk-Users] Intriguing * problem with voicemail signalling
Has anyone seen the following problem? Until recently, I couldn't understand why some extensions on my * system would have a "congestion tone" as soon as I picked up the handset. A little sleuthing through the logs and the source code led me to understand that * thought it had seen the extension go off-hook, send some DTMF tones, and then wait. * treated this situation as a timeout, and switched on the congestion tone. For some reason, * never saw the extension go back on-hook, so the only way to clear the problem (other than a * restart), was to physically take the extension off-hook and then back on-hook. A little more thinking and poking, and I think I know what's happening, but not exactly why: All three extensions where this happens are phones with voicemail waiting indicators. So, I believe the phones go off-hook for a short period of time after each incoming call to determine if there is now voicemail waiting. I had thought that they used the stutter tone provided by * to make this determination. However, in at least two cases, and probably all three, the phones can use either stutter tones or FSK signalling to make this determination. It appears that, by default, when these phones are first powered-on, they use FSK, and switch to stutter tone only when that "fails". My theory is that this attempt at FSK signalling by the extension is confusing *. The TDM400P interfaces, which I use for the extensions, must think that the FSK signalling is DMTF signalling, and misinterprets the signalling attempt. It then goes downhill from there. Any reports of such behavior with * and the TDM400P interfaces? If so, is this likely to be a software issue or a hardware problem specific to the TDM400P? The only hope I have this there might be a software solution is if the phone doesn't actually go off-hook for the FSK signalling--then I believe I could change zaptel.c to ignore any DTMF tones that occur when the phone is on-hook (if it doesn't already do so). Finally, any ideas how to solve this problem (other than finding phones that only use stutter tone voicemail signalling)? Thanks, in advance. - Rich