Dial Command - timeout option

Hi

When you add a timeout (x seconds) to your Dial command. From when does it count?

Initiation of dial command
or
From first signal that reaches through to the callee?

My guess is the first alternative - if it is indeed so - can you in another way make sure that it is actually x seconds with signals and not x seconds from initiation of command? (With dial command or another workaround)

(I use Asterisk 1.6 and I use AEL to script my dial plans.)

Thanks!
/Tomas

The second option isn’t possible, because the network may not tell you. E.g. if you dial someone on BT in the UK, with caller ID enabled, you will hear ringback tone, but the called line will still be executing the caller ID notification sequence, silently.

Also the phase of the ringback tone cadence isn’t generally matched to that of the ringing current, so the caller may hear more or less rings than actually happened.

I’m assuming that, by first signal, you mean when the called phone starts ringing.

Thanks for a quick reply!

That makes things clearer to me.

Yes I do mean “when the called phone starts ringing”.

In other words - one can never be sure how long the called phone will ring, only how long the dial command will try.

In my experience it sometimes might takes several seconds to just hear a ringback tone for the calling party - Is this also time passed in regards of the timeout option?

Even where the networks signals a ringing state (FXO lines don’t do so in a way that a normal PABX would detect) app_dial only uses incoming RINGING indications to set up earlier media, so that the caller can hear network ringback, or to forward to the caller channel, so that it can generate ringback.

It doesn’t affect the dialling state machine.