We have Asterisk running over here, using FreePBX to manage it. We have an issue that calls keep getting dropped and also for a while now, people sometimes complain about call quality.
We from the IT dept here generally manage the extensions and have someone who occasionally comes to do work for us who apparently knows Asterisk. We would like to be able on our own to see logs, and why things are happening.
Why are our calls dropping? We performed an upgrade today in the morning, and do not know if that is what is causing the problems.
How can we access some information about what is happening? A certain extension says quality issues, how can we trace it back in the PBX??
hmmm… I need to get a handle on this. How can I do what you mentioned? Are there tutorials etc?? The guy we work with, he works as a consultant and never tells the full staff whats going on. Everyday there are few little glitches that always come up:
-random quality fluctuations
-dropped calls
-calls not coming in smoothly through the dialer (could be a dialer issue or the PBX issue not sure yet how to decide)
There are logs, I need to get to those logs! I need to learn Asterisk and FreePBX now it seems…
anyhelp is MUCH appreciated!
usually logs are in /var/log/asterisk … there should be a file “full” that has detailed logs of what asterisk is doing. you can control the logging level in /etc/asterisk/logger.conf … usually the freePBX default install will log everything.
As noted previously though, random drops and random quality are more usually associated with network issues.
What kind of trunks do you have? Are the problems only associated with calls over the trunks or is this happening on extension to extension calls over the LAN? If it is just with trunks, you may want to talk to the carrier as well.
You also mentioned “dialer”… you have a predictive dialer running somewhere? That could open a whole other can of worms. If the dialer is not configured properly it could be doing all of the issues you listed.
He may also need to use core set debug and the specific command (e.g. sip set debug on) for the channel type he is using. He didn’t say the channel type.
We had this same problem here but it was affecting 1 office and not the other.
I’d check your internet connection download and upload speeds - I found our upload speed was terribly slow and that was affecting our call quality - we upgraded our internet and calls work great now.
Plus we had an issue where the handsets would say “this device is not registered to make calls on the internet” and since we upgraded to faster internet these problems have also vanished.