Asterisk Dropping Hint Subscriptions

Hi,

We’re on Elastix 1.0, so Asterisk version is 1.4.19. I believe this is an Asterisk issue, which is why I’m posting here.

We have an issue that are phones are dropping hints subscriptions, ever so slowly. If you do ‘core show hints’, initially, it’ll say 7 Watchers for all watched extensions. After a day or two, some of the numbers will start saying 6, and after a few more days, some of them will say 5.

We’re using GrandStream GXP-2010 phones, and I know they’re not top notch, but we can’t afford to buy Snom phones and sell the GrandStream phones. But I also don’t think it’s phone related necessarily.

One thing I’ve noticed is that we sometimes had a problem with Asterisk/GrandStream not properly syncing BLF buttons, so if the phone rang and all buttons blinked, after you had picked up, one button would keep blinking. In order to resolve this, I had to set the SIP register interval to 1 minute on all phones (down from 60, default).

This caused two things. First, it triggers a memory leak in Asterisk, and that’s perhaps a separate issue to look at (developers, try this, Asterisk will balloon and crash after a few days). But it also cause this Hint Subscription dropping to accellerate, so that after about 24 hours, I would have lost about 10 or 15 subscriptions total. Changing the SIP register interval to 10 minutes lowers the incidence of subscription dropping, and setting it back to 60 minutes, default, almost eliminates. I say almost, because if you leave it running long enough, it will eventually drop subscriptions.

Now, I realize that it’s easy for someone to just say that this is a phone problem and that we should get different phones, given that GrandStream doesn’t have a fantastic reputation. But I’m hoping not to get a blanket answer that really doesn’t analyze the situation. Certainly, a different phone might behave differently. It also might be that it simply doesn’t trigger a bug that is actually a bug and ought to be fixed.

I’m hoping that someone has some expertise in this area.

Best,

Per

I have a site that uses Grandstream GXP2000 phones and I have issues with hints as well, but it seems that the hints are slow, when someone picks up a phone it waits to send the hints until they actually dial out of the zap channels…I have a test system here at the house using the same phones and same firmware, but do not have that problem. If you find an answer to the issue please post it, thanks

Hi,

Thanks. I’ve read in several places I’ve found on the internet that people seem to think the problem is caused by the phones and not by asterisk. One person said he had analyzed the logs, and the phones would literally stop updating the subscriptions.

It’s amazing that GrandStream are not fixing this. But I think it was a mistake for us to buy these GrandStream phones, because there are all kinds of problems, and not mysterious problems… they’re problems that any idiot would spot in a standard configuration within a day or two of use.

Everybody on every forum recommends to not get GrandStream phones, and I think I’ll have to finally admit that buying these phones was a huge mistake. We have about 10 of them. As soon as we have some margin in the budget, I think I’m going to get Snom phones or something else with lots of BLF buttons.

If GrandStream had a minimal commitment to fixing this, I think they could. I’m a programmer, and this kind of debugging is not terribly complicated.

But bummer. I really don’t feel like I can trust these GrandStream phones. I can’t trust the BLF, I can’t trust they they won’t crash, I can’t trust the speakphone which has an unusually high audio threshold so the other person can respond and you can’t hear it. And so on and so on. The Snom phones we tested had none of these problem.

Bummer.

Best,

Per