Tips for Installing PBXMate in a Distributed VoIP Network
- On November 19, 2016
- Audio Quality
Background
Many VoIP network administrator face a common problem that their users complain about the quality of their phone calls. The most common complains are about noise, echo and other artifacts.
If the network is distributed, it becomes very difficult to analyze and control the multiple components in the network starting from the end devices (phones/computers) moving to the network components (Cables/Wiring/Gateways), and ending with the centralized units (PBX/ Media Device/Conference Bridge).
The PBXMate is popular software that is used to help monitoring the network and actively resolve quality issues regardless the cause of the problem.
In this post we will review few practical tips for PBXMate installation in a distributed network.
Firewall
By default the PBXMate is using the below ports. You need to make sure your firewall does not block them.
- 5061 UDP. This is the default listening port for SIP messaging. Note: the default is port 5061 and not port 5060 in order to avoid conflicts with any other SIP software that might already exists on the computer.
- 4000-4100 UDP. These ports are used for the RTP messaging. If these ports are blocked then you might not hear audio that is send from phones that are located in a remote location.
- 8083 TCP. This port is used for the web-based administration. If you are unable to view the web interface then you should open this port. Note: for Elastix users, that installed the PBXMate addon, this port is not used since all the web interface is handled directly by the Elastix server.
Internal and External IP Address
If the PBXMate is installed on a server that has both internal IP and external one, there are two parameters that you should be aware of and you should set the values of these parameters bases on you specific configuration:
SipUAIP – This parameter is the IP that the PBXMate will publishing in the SIP/SDP messages as its own IP. Depending on the situation/architecture you might want PBXMate to publish the internal IP (for example when the traffic from PBXMate is always analyzed by internal computers) or to publish the external IP (for example when the SDP generated by PBXMate is forwarded to remote phones).
SipUAIPForBinding -This parameter is the IP that the PBXMate will use in order to open the socket. By default the value of this parameter equals the value of SipUAIP. But, in case in the errLog you get an error message like “unable to bind socket…” it means that you should specifically set the value of this parameter (usually to the internal IP but in some cased you need to set it to the external IP).
Don’t forget to restart PBXMate after you have changed the configuration file.
Symmetric Response Routing
In some cases, not all the equipment you are using fully complies with this extension to the SIP standard. If this is the case, in your network, the audio might not be heard by remote phone. In such a case modify the following parameter in the configuration file:
UseConnectionSessionDescriptorForFarEndMediaAddress=0
Don’t forget to restart PBXMate after you have changed the configuration file.
Sip Debug
If after implementing the above, there are unresolved issues, activate SipDebug in the configuration file. This is done by setting
SipDebug=1
After the PBXMate is restarted, all SIP messages (incoming & outgoing) will be recorded to the errLog file that is located in the log subdirectory. Please send this file together with the configuration file to support.