hi, We have a phone number from third party provider which is used for inbound calls. How could I monitor if this *phone number* is reachable? the initial idea doesn't sound elegant: - on my SIP server I set couple seconds of ringing before Answer(). - the monitoring server calls to that phone number for few seconds, checks if it "hears" the ringing and hangs up the call. ** I use Nagios to check if my services are UP using check_sip, but it this situation I'm more concerned about my DID provider than my server. It's just like pinging a phone number. Thank you, Aurimas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120209/8a4f0daa/attachment.htm>
I would probably set the "calling" server with a specific callerID, match on that caller ID on the recipient server and then log to a database or trigger a script to import my data. By doing that I can confirm the carrier side of things are up and that my server is actually processing calls. With some carriers providing a false ring, I don't rely on hearing ringing as the line is actually doing anything. Thank you, Rebecca Robinson Telecom Administrator Office: 913.648.5858 ext. 291 From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Aurimas Skirgaila Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 8:36 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: [asterisk-users] checking if a phone number is UP hi, We have a phone number from third party provider which is used for inbound calls. How could I monitor if this phone number is reachable? the initial idea doesn't sound elegant: - on my SIP server I set couple seconds of ringing before Answer(). - the monitoring server calls to that phone number for few seconds, checks if it "hears" the ringing and hangs up the call. ** I use Nagios to check if my services are UP using check_sip, but it this situation I'm more concerned about my DID provider than my server. It's just like pinging a phone number. Thank you, Aurimas Confidentiality Statement & Notice: This email is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2510-2521 and intended only for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. Any review, retransmission, dissemination to unauthorized persons or other use of the original message and any attachments is strictly prohibited. If you received this electronic transmission in error, please reply to the above-referenced sender about the error and permanently delete this message. Thank you for your cooperation. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120209/1461e4ca/attachment-0001.htm>
We designed our solution the following way. We have several land line numbers hooked to an asterisk testing server. The testing server places one call every X seconds per line to a number we want to test . We cycle through each number in our testing pool. Each number on average is tested once every 30 min this can be adjusted by the dial rate and the number of test lines in the outbound calling pool. When a call comes from one of our test numbers our inbound dial plans log the call and busy's out. So the test call is not answered and no call charge is assessed per carrier. To verify that a test succeeded the testing server checks the database after it gets a busy. By design if a call comes in it is checked before any line counts are tested so this method never effects the customers line counts. We also have a full audio/dtmf test that is run once a day per number. This means that the first test call of the day is actually answered and a DTMF and audio hand shake is done. Both ends log the result in a database. We catch vendor issues with these methods and it allows us to open tickets and resolve issues before a customer knows there might be an issue. Our vendors hate the system as we tend to catch any hiccup they may be having as well. Several of them are mistified how we can open tickets on issues consistently before they know they have an issue. Bryant ---------------------------------------- From: "Aurimas Skirgaila" <a.skirgaila at gmail.com> Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 9:34 AM To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com> Subject: [asterisk-users] checking if a phone number is UP hi, We have a phone number from third party provider which is used for inbound calls. How could I monitor if this phone number is reachable? the initial idea doesn't sound elegant: - on my SIP server I set couple seconds of ringing before Answer(). - the monitoring server calls to that phone number for few seconds, checks if it "hears" the ringing and hangs up the call. ** I use Nagios to check if my services are UP using check_sip, but it this situation I'm more concerned about my DID provider than my server. It's just like pinging a phone number. Thank you, Aurimas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120209/48b4de09/attachment.htm>
---------------------------------------- From: "Carlos Alvarez" <carlos at televolve.com> Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 11:25 AM To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com> Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] checking if a phone number is UP A very interesting solution. Is there any code you'd share for this? We don't have inbound issues all that often (as far as we know), so I'm curious whether you had a lot of reliability issues before this, or possibly we have more problems than we believe. On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 7:59 AM, Bryant Zimmerman <BryantZ at zktech.com> wrote: We designed our solution the following way. We have several land line numbers hooked to an asterisk testing server. The testing server places one call every X seconds per line to a number we want to test . We cycle through each number in our testing pool. Each number on average is tested once every 30 min this can be adjusted by the dial rate and the number of test lines in the outbound calling pool. When a call comes from one of our test numbers our inbound dial plans log the call and busy's out. So the test call is not answered and no call charge is assessed per carrier. To verify that a test succeeded the testing server checks the database after it gets a busy. By design if a call comes in it is checked before any line counts are tested so this method never effects the customers line counts. We also have a full audio/dtmf test that is run once a day per number. This means that the first test call of the day is actually answered and a DTMF and audio hand shake is done. Both ends log the result in a database. We catch vendor issues with these methods and it allows us to open tickets and resolve issues before a customer knows there might be an issue. Our vendors hate the system as we tend to catch any hiccup they may be having as well. Several of them are mistified how we can open tickets on issues consistently before they know they have an issue. Bryant ---------------------------------------- From: "Aurimas Skirgaila" <a.skirgaila at gmail.com> Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 9:34 AM To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com> Subject: [asterisk-users] checking if a phone number is UP hi, We have a phone number from third party provider which is used for inbound calls. How could I monitor if this phone number is reachable? the initial idea doesn't sound elegant: - on my SIP server I set couple seconds of ringing before Answer(). - the monitoring server calls to that phone number for few seconds, checks if it "hears" the ringing and hangs up the call. ** I use Nagios to check if my services are UP using check_sip, but it this situation I'm more concerned about my DID provider than my server. It's just like pinging a phone number. Thank you, Aurimas -- Carlos Alvarez TelEvolve 602-889-3003 ------------------- Carlos As to code that I can share on this one at present it is a closed solution as we are working on a carrier level testing and monitoring solution for the wholesale markets. The implementation is closed but the concept is straight forward. Our real issue with the carriers that we found is you don't know you have an issue on inbound until you can test. We were getting 1 to 2 reports a week of issues out of thousands of calls a day so we thought we were good. Then we had a large customer that after one four day window. They called us upset because they were starting to receive e-mails and cell phone calls from customers telling them that they had had issues getting through. Now they were getting some calls but a high number were failing during of all things peek times. We had delivered every call our carrier had sent us and they checked and they had delivered every call they had gotten. But remember in the LNP world your phone number has to be routed by a CLEC that has that number in their switch in a region that controls that number. It turned out that AT&T had a switch that was failing to route correctly under load due to a bad firmware update. and our customers numbers just happened to live on that switch. So how do you know there is an issue in this case. Only by testing. Now this issue was effecting all customers on the AT&T switch and they had not caught the issue in 4 days so this would have gone on for days had my customer not complained. We now catch carrier issues like this several times a month. We designed our testing system to solve for these kind of issues. We went from 1 to 2 issues a week to finding about 40 a week. 60% of the time the issue falls on the party controlling the number at the base level the rest of the time it is a carrier in the middle not having capacity or some kind of technical issue. This has allowed us to weed out the crappy carriers where possible and settle for the once that can step up. Once we pounded on the carriers and cut off the bad ones we reduced our issues back down to an average of 3-5 per week and our customers have taken notice. Thanks Bryant -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120209/fbbf0180/attachment.htm>
Markus No we do checks ahead of line count checks in the dialplan code. Thanks Bryant Zimmerman (ZK Tech Inc.) 616-855-1030 Ext. 2003 ---------------------------------------- From: "Markus" <universe at truemetal.org> Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 12:08 PM To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] checking if a phone number is UP But wouldn't that mean that every customer line is busy every 30 minutes for a few milliseconds for real callers? Unless there is more than 1 concurrent call enabled on the customers line. :) Am 09.02.2012 15:59, schrieb Bryant Zimmerman:> We designed our solution the following way. > > We have several land line numbers hooked to an asterisk testing server. > The testing server places one call every X seconds per line to a number > we want to test . We cycle through each number in our testing pool. Each > number on average is tested once every 30 min this can be adjusted by > the dial rate and the number of test lines in the outbound calling pool. > When a call comes from one of our test numbers our inbound dial plans > log the call and busy's out. So the test call is not answered and no > call charge is assessed per carrier. To verify that a test succeeded the > testing server checks the database after it gets a busy. By design if a > call comes in it is checked before any line counts are tested so this > method never effects the customers line counts. We also have a full > audio/dtmf test that is run once a day per number. This means that the > first test call of the day is actually answered and a DTMF and audio > hand shake is done. Both ends log the result in a database. > > We catch vendor issues with these methods and it allows us to open > tickets and resolve issues before a customer knows there might be an > issue. Our vendors hate the system as we tend to catch any hiccup they > may be having as well. Several of them are mistified how we can open > tickets on issues consistently before they know they have an issue. > Bryant > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From*: "Aurimas Skirgaila" <a.skirgaila at gmail.com> > *Sent*: Thursday, February 09, 2012 9:34 AM > *To*: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" > <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com> > *Subject*: [asterisk-users] checking if a phone number is UP > > hi, > > We have a phone number from third party provider which is used for > inbound calls. How could I monitor if this phone number is reachable? > > the initial idea doesn't sound elegant: > - on my SIP server I set couple seconds of ringing before Answer(). > - the monitoring server calls to that phone number for few seconds, > checks if it "hears" the ringing and hangs up the call. > > ** > I use Nagios to check if my services are UP using check_sip, but it this > situation I'm more concerned about my DID provider than my server. It's > just like pinging a phone number. > > > > Thank you, > Aurimas > > > > -- > _____________________________________________________________________ > -- 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120209/a4693dd8/attachment.htm>