Any PBX gurus here? One way audio for outbound calls to single carrier...

-Dragon-

2[H]4U
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Apr 6, 2007
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I've recently added Lync and a SIP switch to my home lab because it sounded like it would be fun (a PBX is next on the list). So far it has been. I'm having one small little issue I'm trying to shake out though and none of my personal troubleshooting or google searches have come up with anything.

The setup seems to be working great for the most part, I can mostly send and receive calls on PCs, forward calls, and use simultanious ringing to my hard line. Mostly. There's one thorn in my side right now, dialing OUT to AT&T mobile numbers. I can receive calls from AT&T mobile numbers and get two way audio but if I dial one from my PC, I can hear the audio from the cell phone to my setup but not the audio from my setup to the cell phone. The calls that don't work don't seem to have any issue other than the one way audio, I've left them connected for 15+ minutes so it doesn't seem to disconnect due to some other problem...

I've tested with Verizon cell phones, comcast residential phone service and both of those carriers work 100% both inbound and outbound calls with full two way audio. I've also called the support numbers for all of the major carriers including AT&T and was able to navigate their menus with DTMF tones from the lync dial pad (which I can't hear if dialed during a AT&T cell phone call).

So, again, only for calls from my system to AT&T mobile numbers has one way audio and always from my system to the cell phone, all other calls complete perfectly including inbound AT&T mobile calls.

I've done debug logging on the SIP trunks and the setup and tear down of outbound calls that work and don't work seem to be practically identical. The only real difference I saw was on the tear down but it just seems like cell phones and landlines hang up differently. I also checked the inbound calls from AT&T vs comcast voice and again, practically identical.

The setup is behind a NAT but I'm watching the firewall logs and it's not dropping any pertinent packets.

My setup is:
  • Lync 2010 Enterprise in about 20 VMs (ok not really 20 but if you've ever setup enterprise lync/ocs you know what I mean)
  • FreeSwitch in a seperate VM
  • 3 DIDs and 2 trunks from sipstation
  • Lync 2010/2013 client
  • TMG firewall
Am I missing something here somewhere? I used to work in a network ops center and would hear of one way audio issues both small and large scale due to some intermediate network between the source and destination so I'm wondering if the problem is even on my end at all since everything but works.
 
I did but just trying to cover all my bases, I already fixed several other one way audio issues I worked myself into so I wouldn't be surprised if I managed to screw something up.
 
I actually encountered something similar with AT&T mobile numbers but in my case, we couldn't even dial mobile numbers from Lync at all. It had to do with the E.164 format that Lync follows and how some AT&T mobile CLEC's do not honor the 11 digits being sent to it. We had to manually have our gateways strip the 1 and send only 10 digits to get these specific AT&T mobile numbers to work.

In your case though, you can at least get the call to connect but only get 1 way audio. Basically what I am getting at is that AT&T does some weird stuff to there mobile numbers. I am guessing it something to do with the E.164 format as that's really the only different player here that is different. I will admit though this is weird as E.164 is just a number format standard, if the call is connecting, I would think it wouldnt be an issue?

What may be worth it if you have this capability with your gateway, can you strip the +1 off the number as it leaves the gateway?
 
My SIP provider actually only accepts 10 digits anyway so I'm already sending that. Honestly at this point it seems the only logical thing is it's a problem somewhere between my provider and AT&T but as I'm sure most of us who deal with these kinds of things know it's not always easy to get support on these weird issues... heaven forbid the problem be on AT&T's end. In my experience if you call their NOC and detail out exactly what the problem is and what you need them to do to fix it, the response you get back is generally

....................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
.................../..../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
.........\.................'...../
..........''...\.......... _.·´
............\..............(
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My SIP provider actually only accepts 10 digits anyway so I'm already sending that. Honestly at this point it seems the only logical thing is it's a problem somewhere between my provider and AT&T but as I'm sure most of us who deal with these kinds of things know it's not always easy to get support on these weird issues... heaven forbid the problem be on AT&T's end. In my experience if you call their NOC and detail out exactly what the problem is and what you need them to do to fix it, the response you get back is generally

....................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
.................../..../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
.........\.................'...../
..........''...\.......... _.·´
............\..............(
..............\.............\...

Oh yeah, telecom carriers will not admit to a problem until you absolutely have every kind of log known to man kind to prove that the issue is on there end...that Lync/AT&T issue I described above took a 13 hour phone call with AT&T to get that answer.
 
Yeah, I have a VoIP WATS line and CenturyLink gives a 'number not in service' message if you dial it as 10 or 11 digits, instead of 'It is not necessary to dial a 1 when calling this number'. I submitted it to CenturyLink and they basically said they wouldn't fix it until they support 10-digit dialing- something I thought was supposed to happen several years ago.
It is never, not ever the phone company's fault.
 
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