Constant REACHABLE / UNREACHABLE IAX2 extensions (peers)

[VFRDavid]

I am running the following version of VICIdial :

Menu screens show:
VERSION: 2.14-670a
BUILD: 180424-1521

Admin/System Settings show:
Version: 2.14b0.5
SVN Version: 2973
DB Schema Version: 1542

And the servers each show Asterisk version 11.22.0-vici

The system in question is a cluster of 3 servers located in a hosting facility and is accessed by at least a dozen of our offices. All of our our extensions are setup as IAX, and we use Zoiper for the soft phone). One of our offices (677) is experiencing an issue with their extensions dropping and re-connecting all the time - the CLI shows them as UNREACHABLE and then a few seconds later REACHABLE. Our extensions are numbered with the first 3 digits as the office number, and the last 4 as the actual Agent #. I included a sampling of the CLI messages at the end of this posting.

Comcast is the internet provider in most of our offices - they are not really any help - if they can ping their router without dropping any requests - that's all they need to prove to themselves that they aren't having any problems on their end. I don't have any packet capturing app at their site - is there anything else I can do / dig into to try to figure out why these stations are constantly doing this?

Thank you for any help / suggestions that you can provide...


[Apr 24 14:51:17] NOTICE[2422]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774005' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 75
[Apr 24 14:51:23] NOTICE[2423]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774005' is now REACHABLE! Time: 75
[Apr 24 14:51:23] NOTICE[2386]: chan_iax2.c:11220 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774006' is now TOO LAGGED (15604 ms)!
[Apr 24 14:51:33] NOTICE[2417]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774006' is now REACHABLE! Time: 74
[Apr 24 14:51:39] NOTICE[2410]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774013' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 72
[Apr 24 14:51:45] NOTICE[2389]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774013' is now REACHABLE! Time: 76
[Apr 24 14:51:48] NOTICE[2426]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774101' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 87
[Apr 24 14:51:54] NOTICE[2424]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774101' is now REACHABLE! Time: 102
[Apr 24 14:51:56] NOTICE[2404]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774004' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 104
[Apr 24 14:52:03] NOTICE[2410]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774004' is now REACHABLE! Time: 85
[Apr 24 14:52:07] NOTICE[2405]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774001' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 108
[Apr 24 14:52:08] NOTICE[2392]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774003' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 82
[Apr 24 14:52:13] NOTICE[2422]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774001' is now REACHABLE! Time: 72
[Apr 24 14:52:14] NOTICE[2391]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774003' is now REACHABLE! Time: 78
[Apr 24 14:52:14] NOTICE[2405]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774002' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 72
[Apr 24 14:52:20] NOTICE[2383]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774002' is now REACHABLE! Time: 84
[Apr 24 14:53:45] NOTICE[2390]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774005' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 76
[Apr 24 14:53:49] NOTICE[2405]: chan_iax2.c:11220 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774006' is now TOO LAGGED (15568 ms)!
[Apr 24 14:53:51] NOTICE[2382]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774005' is now REACHABLE! Time: 73
[Apr 24 14:53:59] NOTICE[2407]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774006' is now REACHABLE! Time: 86
[Apr 24 14:54:07] NOTICE[2422]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774013' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 77
[Apr 24 14:54:13] NOTICE[2383]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774013' is now REACHABLE! Time: 71
[Apr 24 14:54:16] NOTICE[2419]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774101' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 81
[Apr 24 14:54:22] NOTICE[2402]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774101' is now REACHABLE! Time: 104
[Apr 24 14:54:25] NOTICE[2412]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774004' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 86
[Apr 24 14:54:31] NOTICE[2422]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774004' is now REACHABLE! Time: 88
[Apr 24 14:54:35] NOTICE[2404]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774001' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 95
[Apr 24 14:54:36] NOTICE[2412]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774003' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 80
[Apr 24 14:54:42] NOTICE[2392]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774001' is now REACHABLE! Time: 78
[Apr 24 14:54:42] NOTICE[2381]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774003' is now REACHABLE! Time: 72
[Apr 24 14:54:42] NOTICE[2395]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774002' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 73
[Apr 24 14:54:48] NOTICE[2385]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774002' is now REACHABLE! Time: 81
[Apr 24 14:56:13] NOTICE[2412]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774005' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 80
[Apr 24 14:56:19] NOTICE[2430]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774005' is now REACHABLE! Time: 61
[Apr 24 14:56:21] NOTICE[2393]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774006' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 75
[Apr 24 14:56:31] NOTICE[2416]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774006' is now REACHABLE! Time: 83
[Apr 24 14:56:35] NOTICE[2388]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774013' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 80
[Apr 24 14:56:41] NOTICE[2428]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774013' is now REACHABLE! Time: 64
[Apr 24 14:56:44] NOTICE[2389]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774101' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 79
...
[Apr 24 17:59:31] NOTICE[2412]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '6774101' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 79
[Apr 24 17:59:37] NOTICE[2423]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '6774101' is now REACHABLE! Time: 75


Here are a couple other messages - but - as you can see - they occur MUCH less frequently vs out 677 office
[Apr 24 15:02:00] NOTICE[2401]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '2154007' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 90
[Apr 24 15:13:29] NOTICE[2415]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '2095006' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 84
[Apr 24 15:13:32] NOTICE[2420]: chan_iax2.c:11214 socket_process_helper: Peer '2095006' is now REACHABLE! Time: 95
[Apr 24 15:16:35] NOTICE[2392]: chan_iax2.c:12384 __iax2_poke_noanswer: Peer '9158001' is now UNREACHABLE! Time: 136

[williamconley]

your firewall is closing ports to the agents before their registration expires. reduce the expiration renewal time OR increase the amount of time your firewall keeps ports open.

[VFRDavid]

Mr. Conley - thank you for your reply!

I switched these extensions from IAX2 to SIP and they are much more reliable - this location doesn't have anything "fancy" for their firewall - basically the router / gateway their ISP provided - I don't see anything in there about port allowed timing - I must mention that most of the external offices use this ISP (Comcast / cable / broadband) - and this is the only office we had this issue with - and of course, Comcast says it's not them. I really don't want to have to do WireShark or similar - but - maybe I will this weekend...thanks again!

[williamconley]

Please remember that menus and terminology in routers are NOT regulated standards.

They will (and DO) call it anything they want to call it. There is usually at least an implication of timing involved in whatever jargon they use. All routers, however, have the same simple concept: They have a huge number of ports available to them, but not unlimited. So they open a port when requested and link the port (on the outside of the router, in the public view) to the internal client who made the request. Then at a specific amount of time later, they close the port if it has had no activity.

One way to resolve this is to activate a "keepalive" in the soft phone. This setting exists for this specific, obvious purpose. It keeps the firewall port open by tossing a packet through the open port at a timed interval (hopefully before it closes!).

You can also reduce the "registration timeout" interval in the Asterisk system to just below the timeout in question.

If you aren't sure how long the timeout is, check the amount of time between "unreachable" for one sip account. Two unreachables for the same sip connection would likely be spaced at the interval in question. But if you set your sip registration expiration to "just lower" than that number, the port would be kept open. Alternately, if you see "unreachable" and later "reachable" for the same sip account, it's like that reducing the existing registration timeout by that value (perhap a couple extra seconds for insurance) would solve the problem.

[VFRDavid]

Thanks - as always - for your replies - I lowered the IAX2 registry expiry to 10 seconds - from the default of 60 - in Zoiper - and that seems to do the trick - seems pretty short - but - I haven't noticed anything adverse from that - voice quality, etc - so - until I do, I think I am going to go with it.

Thanks again for your help and detailed replies!