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Avaya phones get locked in discovery mode
Consider the following. Office 1 that hosts the IP Telephony server have no problems. Office 2 are experiencing problems with their Avaya phones getting locked in Discovery mode every now and then.
We don't manage the telephony server but the technicians who do can't find anything wrong with it.
The two offices have Zyxel Zywall firewalls and there's a ipsec tunnel between the offices where the telephony traffic is routed.
The problem comes and goes with different phones where a phone can suddenly start or stop working.
We have seen packages being dropped in the firewall logs but we can't find anything wrong with the firewalls in question. We have even switched the office 2 firewall for a new one.
A collegue of mine tried some Telnet tests from office 2 to the telephony server and could only get through every now and then. It seems the Telnet call to the server goes through the tunnel but the reply from the server to the computer he used gets lost and generates a package dropped entry in the firewall log.
All other data that is routed through the tunnel seems to work without error.
We're really stumped here. Any help on what to try to do to solve this would be very appreciated.
If any clarification of the problem is needed let me know. This is an urgent issue!
Kind regards
Alex
We don't manage the telephony server but the technicians who do can't find anything wrong with it.
The two offices have Zyxel Zywall firewalls and there's a ipsec tunnel between the offices where the telephony traffic is routed.
The problem comes and goes with different phones where a phone can suddenly start or stop working.
We have seen packages being dropped in the firewall logs but we can't find anything wrong with the firewalls in question. We have even switched the office 2 firewall for a new one.
A collegue of mine tried some Telnet tests from office 2 to the telephony server and could only get through every now and then. It seems the Telnet call to the server goes through the tunnel but the reply from the server to the computer he used gets lost and generates a package dropped entry in the firewall log.
All other data that is routed through the tunnel seems to work without error.
We're really stumped here. Any help on what to try to do to solve this would be very appreciated.
If any clarification of the problem is needed let me know. This is an urgent issue!
Kind regards
Alex
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Hi!
The Telephone server is reachable at that Point. The issue won't affect all phones at once at office 2. It will basically jump from a couple of phones to Another so at all times there will be working phones at the same time as phones stuck.
We've made sure the tunnels are alive. We see no indication it's ever been down.
We seem to get the packet drops at most times but I'm not sure how often the renegotiation you mention happen.
Office 1 is a Zyxel Zywall USG 50 and Office 2 is a Zyxel Zywall USG 60.
The Telephone server is reachable at that Point. The issue won't affect all phones at once at office 2. It will basically jump from a couple of phones to Another so at all times there will be working phones at the same time as phones stuck.
We've made sure the tunnels are alive. We see no indication it's ever been down.
We seem to get the packet drops at most times but I'm not sure how often the renegotiation you mention happen.
Office 1 is a Zyxel Zywall USG 50 and Office 2 is a Zyxel Zywall USG 60.
Got it..
Since you saw packet drops on the firewall, there are two options which may cause this issue.
1. high utilization on the office 2 wan link and voice packets may not get priority to go out, hence the packets are in queue and phones will disconnect from telephone server(voip packets are more sensitive)
2. Same as office 1 wan link high utilization.
have you checked the link utilization on both site links? if the firewall has QoS option, you can prioritize voip packets
Since you saw packet drops on the firewall, there are two options which may cause this issue.
1. high utilization on the office 2 wan link and voice packets may not get priority to go out, hence the packets are in queue and phones will disconnect from telephone server(voip packets are more sensitive)
2. Same as office 1 wan link high utilization.
have you checked the link utilization on both site links? if the firewall has QoS option, you can prioritize voip packets
If you by link utilization mean bandwith usage there should be plenty of room for the voip packets. we are nowere close to maxing out our bandwidth at either site. VOIP is also the only thing that's having problems. Other traffic through the tunnel seems to work and their internet based applications run smoothly. Perhaps voip is more sensitive though...
I'll check if there are a QoS setting.
Do you have any other ideas on what might be causing this.
We experienced the same thing 1 month ago but the problem perished on its own after 2 Days. Then all of a sudden it stopped working again this monday. There are even fewer people working at the sites at this time because of vacations so there should be an even lesser strain on the bandwidth.
I'll check if there are a QoS setting.
Do you have any other ideas on what might be causing this.
We experienced the same thing 1 month ago but the problem perished on its own after 2 Days. Then all of a sudden it stopped working again this monday. There are even fewer people working at the sites at this time because of vacations so there should be an even lesser strain on the bandwidth.
Can't find any QoS settings on the Zywall but I'm no expert on their configuration I'm afraid. Any further recommendations would be much appreciated.
Thinking of other options.. I too not expert in the Zywall firewall
If you have options to capture the packet in switch level, you can try to capture the packets from switch, while the phones are in discovered mode
Packet captures will give an idea about the reason of dropping packets.
If you dont have option to capture the packets in switch level, you can install avaya soft phone and capture the packets on the system
If you have options to capture the packet in switch level, you can try to capture the packets from switch, while the phones are in discovered mode
Packet captures will give an idea about the reason of dropping packets.
If you dont have option to capture the packets in switch level, you can install avaya soft phone and capture the packets on the system
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Hi! For someone who has no previous experience with Avaya soft phone could you please instruct me how I would do this?
Kind regards
Alex
Kind regards
Alex
This url may help you to collect logs from the avaya ip phone
https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101011107
https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101011107
Thank you. I don't have access to the endpoint which I guess is the telephony server so I will check with the Company resposible for it if they can help me out with this.
There are two options you can check the logs
1. Telephone server
2. IP Phone logs on the IP Phone itself. Every phone will have option to store few logs; I assume avaya also has the option
1. Telephone server
2. IP Phone logs on the IP Phone itself. Every phone will have option to store few logs; I assume avaya also has the option
It seems these guides aren't appliable to the phones and telephony server the customer possesses. Is there anything else I can do to try to figure out what's happening with the voip traffic on the network without having access to the telephony server?
i have seen this before. normaly the avaya phone does a tftp to youre phone server to get its configuration. put an helper address on the vlan and point it to the phone server.
you can check this with a packet analyser like whireshark. start a capture and power on the phone.
see wat is going on. i think the helper will solve youre problem.
you can check this with a packet analyser like whireshark. start a capture and power on the phone.
see wat is going on. i think the helper will solve youre problem.
We did go the wireshark route and found some strange activity in the Zyxel FW on the other side of the tunnel. A call to Zyxel support made us patch the firmware extensively which seems to have solved the issue.
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have you checked the tunnel keepalive timers in both firewalls?
Every few hours/mins, tunnel will renegotiate between peers ? i believe on that time, you might be getting the packet drops.
between, what firewall you are using in office 2 site?