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Issues With Obihai and Phone Power After a Power Outage

Started by lostinqueens, July 25, 2017, 06:41:41 AM

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lostinqueens

Greetings,
I have an Obi 202 with Phone Power on sp1 and Google Voice on sp2. After a power outage, the Obi comes back on line and Google Voice works without any issues.

However, Phone Power takes several hours to reset. During this time, the Obi portal changes the status on sp1 from 'Registered' to 'Register Failed: No Response From Server' to 'Retrying Register' and back again. The Phone Power portal shows that the Obi device is registered.

During this time, Google Voice always works and the echo test works on both sp1 and sp2.

Given that Google Voice works, this feels like a Phone Power issue. I've contacted Phone Power and they say the Obi is registered and there are no errors on their side. This makes sense since the Phone Power portal shows the Obi as registered. But, outgoing and incoming calls either don't make it or drop as sp1 cycles through the three statuses above.

I set up sp1 with the default Phone Power settings. Is there something I should change to prevent this hours long loop from happening?

If this is a known Phone Power issue, can anyone recommend an alternative? I've had Phone Power for 3 years and I think they have a great service but this hours long outage is difficult to deal with.

Thanks.

Taoman

If you haven't done so already I would suggest changing your X_UserAgentPort to 12060.

PhonePowers' servers are extremely slow in recognizing that a device has lost registration. This has happened to me when I used PhonePower. I finally convinced a PP tech to manually go in and delete all instances showing my device was registered. After doing that, I was able to register again.

PhonePower allows a total of 4 simultaneous registrations from the same account. If your device is successfully registering but then losing registration my guess is it is taking up one of those slots each time until you reach the limit of 4.

I would suggest disabling registration for your PP configuration on your OBi for the time being. Wait until it shows on the PP web portal that you have NO devices registered and then try again.

I would also suggest using VoIP.ms, Anveo, or Callcentric over PhonePower. However, a lot of it will depend on your monthly usage and the features you require.

lostinqueens

Thanks for the suggestions. I changed the UserPort to be 12060 and also changed the registration period from 60 to 3600. Unfortunately, neither helped. The registration success/registration failure loop continues.

Is there an easy way to disable registration for Phone Power on the Obi device or do I just delete the entire service, wait for PP to unregister my Obi and then add PP back to the Obi?

I've been very happy with PP, but this occasional issue is so frustrating especially since GV comes back on-line in a few minutes and then never has an issue.

Taoman

Quote from: lostinqueens on July 25, 2017, 09:15:04 AM

Is there an easy way to disable registration for Phone Power on the Obi device or do I just delete the entire service, wait for PP to unregister my Obi and then add PP back to the Obi?

Voice Services-->SPx-->Enable

Uncheck the box, submit and save your settings. Wait until PP no longer shows that you are registered and then re-enable registration on your OBi.

lostinqueens

Wow! This worked perfectly. Thank you! I've reached out to PP many times on this issue and I never received this suggestion. Thank you!

Is there a setting that I can change that would effectively perform your suggested course of action without having to disable the service and then re-enable it? I tried setting the registration interval to 3600 but that didn't do the trick. Is there anything you can think of where I can "set it and forget it" and have my Obi and PP play better with each other?

Thanks again. You should go work for PP.

Taoman

Quote from: lostinqueens on July 25, 2017, 12:22:58 PM
Wow! This worked perfectly. Thank you! I've reached out to PP many times on this issue and I never received this suggestion. Thank you!
This is because you're dealing with 1st tier support personnel that are nothing more than script readers. And unfortunately you have to make quite a fuss before they'll elevate the call to someone who actually knows something.

Quote from: lostinqueensIs there a setting that I can change that would effectively perform your suggested course of action without having to disable the service and then re-enable it?
Somewhere on their portal is an informational box that talks about registration interval. I no longer have an account so I can't see/remember it. But I know PhonePower requires an exceptionally long registration interval. I think it needs to be between 1 and 4 hours.
Found this on the web pertaining to PhonePower:
QuoteRegistration intervals are recommended at 4 hours and can be no less than 1 hour. For example, if using ZoiPer, which registers 10% faster than the defined interval, it is important to modify registration expiry values or service could become completely disrupted.

I would probably bump up your RegistrationPeriod and your RegisterExpires settings but I'm not sure that will fix the issue.

PP's servers take a very long time to realize a client endpoint has lost connection/registration. If something goes bonkers and your client registers successfully but then loses the connection 4 times in a row then you've reached your max simultaneous registrations as far as PP's servers are concerned. At that point your only choices are wait until they timeout or call PP support and demand they manually remove the orphaned registration entries from their servers. I had to do that once. I had to raise holy hell but once I got to the right guy he knew exactly what to do and it was fixed in 30 seconds. Then I could immediately register again.