Asterisk crosstalk cause

Hello,

I have configured an Asterisk machine, and usually it works OK. However, sometimes the users complain about their calls crosstalking (that is, they hear the conversation of other user in their calls). This happens from time to time, randomly.
I have to clarify that our system uses analog phones that are connected to Asterisk using a FXS gateway (so each phone is linked to the gateway using it’s own regular phone line cord, which due to the size of our office, are pretty long).

I have read a lot of cases about no sound in calls or one way audio, but crosstalking is something that seems pretty unusual in VoIP calls. Could it be related to some kind of Asterisk misconfiguration? Or it’s more likely that it has to do with other external factor, like the network, VoIP provider or the phone line cord?

Best regards!

If the path through Asterisk is purely digital and you’re not doing any analog stuff like recording then it’s pretty unlikely it’s occurring in Asterisk. Same for the VoIP provider. It could be the gateway but my guess would be the line cords especially if they’re the flat gray line cords and are bunched up together (bad) or run parallel for any distance (very bad). Replace them with Cat 3 or Cat 5 cables and see what happens. You can also try just re-routing them and making sure they’re not running parallel with other power or data cables.

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