User experience with calling out

We replaced several Asterisk 1.8 based systems with Freepbx systems running Asterisk 13 recently. Almost from the very start we had problems with the users experiencing what they call “dropped calls” We have gone and done many things, reworked the Sonicwall routers, changed timers. But still we get complaints. Packet captures show calls being rejected for one reason or another. It dawned on me that maybe the way Asterisk is handling the “Rejected” calls and what it does with them is the issue between the two different versions. Can someone tell me if there was a difference between versions? My theory is that in version 1.8 the system got a rejected message and presented to the user a “Fast Busy” where now the call is dropped. Personally I would prefer only two responses from the phone system, busy for a rejected call or ringing on a call progressing. Where woud I change this in the dialplan?

Thanks for any ideas

For any failed DIal, Asterisk will return form Dial with DIALSTATUS and HANGUPCAUSE set. The dialplan can continue from there and do anything that it could do with any live incoming channel.

I suspect the behaviour you are talking about relates to FreePBX, not Asterisk. In particular, I think with the simplest Dialplan, Asterisk on its own would drop the call the moment the Dialplan ended, without answering the call. As a result, it will be in a position to send a SIP rejection on to the caller, and the caller will be generating the fast Busy.

I think the FreePBX dialaplan always answers the call, meaning it is too late to reject it. When the dialplan terminates, it will be seen, by the caller, as a normal completion of a successful call, so will terminate with no tones.

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Thanks david551,
I didn’t think it was either an asterisk or Freepbx thing per se. Just want to be able to give this customer that experience they had before and they were happy with. I will look into the dialplan and see what I can com eup with.