Receiving calls takes too long.

[jess_austin]

I recently signed up for the premium lite $15 service, and I regret that purchase. On the first day, things seemed to almost work -- connections would take a while, but they happened eventually. At that point I thought all issues were with my DID provider.

No more. All SIP calls to my number@voxalot fail to ring my connected client (snom 300), and connect to utter silence after 20 seconds or so. Actually, most of them result in the snom ringing up to several minutes later. Furthermore, voicemail is apparently listening in, it just isn't playing my voicemail message, since I get messages (of background noises of the room I'm using for testing) sent to my email, and the message light on my snom turns on about the same time.

To eliminate the possibility that either my softphone or my snom are misconfigured, I just switched to using the snom connected to another provider to call a softphone (Twinkle) connected to voxalot, with the exact same results.

In the other direction, I find I can use voxalot to call other SIP providers without issue, with both snom and twinkle.

I find this service unsatisfactory in its current form.

[boatman]

So you have your Voxalot voice mail turned off, and yet it's still intercepting your inbound calls? Which proxy are you using?

[jess_austin]

No I haven't turned my voicemail off; the only thing I've done to it is set my outgoing message. It certainly isn't working the way I would expect, however.

Voicemail isn't the main issue here. Please see my original post.

[jess_austin]

I'm using us.voxalot.com as proxy.

[boatman]

Originally Posted by jess_austin

Voicemail isn't the main issue here. Please see my original post.

How do you know that?


From reading your post it looks like voice mail is malfunctioning in two ways;

All SIP calls to my number@voxalot fail to ring my connected client...

Firstly, it is intercepting all your calls before your phone has time to ring.

connect to utter silence after 20 seconds or so

Secondly, when it answers, it doesn't play your recorded greeting.

Actually, most of them result in the snom ringing up to several minutes later

If your phone rings just once then this is normal. Within 5 minutes of receiving a voice mail Voxalot will send a SIP notify message which causes the phone to ring once and set the message waiting light on.

I haven't turned my voicemail off

Why not? It's obviously something one should do when trying to pinpoint the problem.

[jess_austin]

Originally Posted by boatman

If your phone rings just once then this is normal. Within 5 minutes of receiving a voice mail Voxalot will send a SIP notify message which causes the phone to ring once and set the message waiting light on.

Why not? It's obviously something one should do when trying to pinpoint the problem.

OK I have turned off voicemail. This hasn't changed anything, other than the fact that I'm not getting any weird recordings in my inbox, and Twinkle is now giving me a [perhaps?] more helpful message:

Mon 15:20:46
Line 1: call failed.
480 Temporarily Unavailable
Warning: 392 Noisy feedback tells: pid=5225 req_src_ip=69.150.180.36 req_src_port=5060 in_uri=sip:317410@voxalot.com out_uri=sip:317410@voxalot.com via_cnt==0 (72.51.47.59:5060)

This is after ~30 seconds of the "Trying - your call is important to us" status.

I'm still getting the phantom call a minute later. This is not a single-ring: if I don't pick it up it continues ringing indefinitely. The point is, the caller has already dropped off the call due to some failure, and then the callee is informed much later. That can't be how it's supposed to work?

thanks,
Jess

[boatman]

Well, I did a test call to you (if that was your number in the noisy feedback message). I got SIP/2.0 480 Temporarily Unavailable and also SIP/2.0 477 Unfortunately error on sending to next hop occurred (477/SL).

I also saw this message

Warning: 392 64.34.173.199:5060 "Noisy feedback tells:  pid=11520 req_src_ip=72.51.47.59 req_src_port=5060 in_uri=sip:*010317410@64.34.173.199:5060 out_uri=sip:317410@192.168.1.105:4221;transport=tcp;line=qi34n984 via_cnt==2"

Is the address 192.168.1.105 something on your LAN?

[jess_austin]

Originally Posted by boatman

I also saw this messageIs the address 192.168.1.105 something on your LAN?

That is the IP address currently assigned by DHCP to my snom 300 hardphone, which is the device I currently have connected to voxalot. Can we assume that if I connected the twinkle softphone on my desktop instead, it would have my desktop's IP instead?

Thanks

[boatman]

I am not sure how to interpret the "Noisy feedback" line, but it seems that your phone may be configured to use tcp transport, normally SIP uses udp transport. The NAT settings on your phone may be wrong, and it may be inserting it's LAN IP address where the public IP address should appear.

You can check the NAT settings by calling this SIP number: *0@proxy01.sipphone.com. If it says "you are behind a SIP compatible router" then your NAT settings are probably okay.

As another test, you could make a direct IP call from your Snom phone to my Linksys VoIP unit at my direct SIP address while I have Wireshark capturing packets. The call doesn't have to be answered as the SIP exchange will happen either way. I'd just have to know about when to expect the call.

[jess_austin]

Originally Posted by boatman

I am not sure how to interpret the "Noisy feedback" line, but it seems that your phone may be configured to use tcp transport, normally SIP uses udp transport. The NAT settings on your phone may be wrong, and it may be inserting it's LAN IP address where the public IP address should appear.

You can check the NAT settings by calling this SIP number: *0@proxy01.sipphone.com. If it says "you are behind a SIP compatible router" then your NAT settings are probably okay.

I called the service; it confirmed that I am behind a SIP-compatible router.

Originally Posted by boatman

As another test, you could make a direct IP call from your Snom phone to my Linksys VoIP unit at my direct SIP address while I have Wireshark capturing packets. The call doesn't have to be answered as the SIP exchange will happen either way. I'd just have to know about when to expect the call.

The thing is, calling out has always worked fine, even through Voxalot. I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that Voxalot is just failing to forward inbound SIP requests in a timely fashion. When I connect the same hardware and software to other providers, I don't have this issue.

If you don't mind my asking, boatman, are you a representative of voxalot? I appreciate your advice, but it seems to be that of a fellow user without access to logfiles and configuration details. Since I have paid money for this service, my expectation is that an actual agent of Voxalot will investigate my issue and either advise me on a fix, fix it for me, or issue a refund and apology. Is that not how it works? Is there some other forum I should be using? In any case, I'm investigating non-Voxalot options for my VOIP service.

Thanks