obi202 needs to be rebooted at least weekly for ip phones to call out

[evergreen]

My modest obiplus setup works fine for the most part but I've noticed that my ip phones cannot call out until I reboot my Obi202 on a weekly basis.  While downtime's been generally hitting me at good times, I'd still rather have it set up so I don't have to worry about having to reboot the unit.  Just as I felt accomplished for having set this up on my own.  Any help would be much appreciated.  Thank you!

[Mango]

Next time you're having the problem, check your OBi202's status page and report if it says anything that could give us a clue about the problem.  Also, let us know what service provider and router you are using, if the OBi202 is connected to a router.

[drgeoff]

evergreen

You have an OBiPLUS set up.  Presumably your IP phones can call each other when everything is working normally.  Do they lose that functionality too or just the ability to reach the outside world before you do the required reboot of the 202?

[evergreen]

Drgeoff- actually, the IP phones do seem to have an issue with calling each other. didn't think of that!

Mango-unfortunately I wasn't able to find any clues in the status page.

[RFC3261]

Next time you're having the problem, check your OBi202's status page and report if it says anything that could give us a clue about the problem.  Also, let us know what service provider and router you are using, if the OBi202 is connected to a router.

A bit of a "me too", with some additional (debugging) details:

I have seen a similar problem.  In all cases, the IP phones (Cisco SPAs) have shown loss of registration.  Looking at the OBI202 itself (via the web interface), it shows the client (IP phone) registration status as expired.  Connection to the service provider (anveo in my case) is still shown as active/current.  I checked the network, and registration packets are still being sent from the IP phones to the OBI.  Just now (when this was happening) I checked and there is a "reboot required" icon on the obi202 web interface (I cannot say that I noticed that before, but I may simply not have been paying attention).  I have syslogs from both the OBI202 and the phones, and the last "interesting" log that seems to be sent from the OBI202 just before the phones fail registration is attempts by the OBI202 to obtain name resolution to root.pnn.obihai.com (at least those messages start about the same time as the registration starts failing from the phones) for about 3 minutes, after which dns resolution seems to be completed, but the OBI202 never allows the IP phone re-registration to complete.  My "WAG" is that the firmware is too pedantic regarding the OBIPlus license validations in the face of failures to resolve/connect to the obihai servers, and never recovers.  A reboot of the OBI202 fixes it until the next time some sort of dns/network/obi_server failure interrupts connectivity to the obihai servers.  I suspect I will need to set up a span port and capture the detailed network packets in order to open a ticket.

[evergreen]

Thanks, RFC3261 for the help.  I think your response gave me something to bounce off of since I wasn't sure what level of detail would be appropriate for troubleshooting this matter the next time my phones acted up. So now, my phone is having this issue again and I jotted this information down before rebooting:

Obitalk dashboard
SP1-SP4 as registered with no issues

Obi202:
System Status:
    Obitalk service status:
       Status: Acquiring Service (0);ex-addr=76.234.229.234:10075(10075)
       CallState: 0 Active Calls
Call History:
   Fork to:
       PH1
       OP1(101);(Failed: No Service)
       OP1(100);(Failed: No Service)

OBiPLUS status:
    (ip address of IP phone 1) -> Ext 1 Status -> Registration state: Failed - No Response
    (ip address of IP phone 2) -> Ext 1 Status -> Registration state: Failed - No Response

One thing that I've noticed that while internal communication between IP Phones is down, I can still dial out and receive calls using phones connected to PH1 and PH2. 

Hopefully, this contributes a bit to the conversation and isn't a mere longhand repeat of what you had just stated, since I didn't fully understand your diagnosis and possible solution regarding setting up a span port.  I'm wondering if your solution is fairly easy to implement and if you've tried it out with some success.  Thank you everyone!

[azrobert]

You can try pointing your IP Phone directly to your OBi without OBiplus. The phone doesn't register to the OBi, so turn off registration. If the phone doesn't have a no registration option it will fail to register, but still might work.

See: http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=6865.0

[RFC3261]

... So now, my phone is having this issue again

While I do not know the exact time, my IP phones also failed about mid-day, losing SIP registration.  I am starting to suspect that the OBihai servers (running on AWS, last I checked) experienced a "glitch", resulting in some set of individuals to experience the loss of ability for IP phones to continue registration.

I wonder if paid OBIPlus customers are seeing the same issue?  Perhaps I am getting what I paid for?  I am sort of hoping OBihai will release fixed firmware, but if not, I guess I will have to consider installing FreeSwitch or Asterisk on my BBB to stop these annoying outages.  One more job to add to my infinite to-do list....

[evergreen]

I

... So now, my phone is having this issue again

I am sort of hoping OBihai will release fixed firmware, but if not, I guess I will have to consider installing FreeSwitch or Asterisk on my BBB to stop these annoying outages.  One more job to add to my infinite to-do list....

yeah, I thought it might be firmware related, either on my obi202 v1.4(3.0.1 (Build: 4350)) or my Cisco SPA504g, but they seem to be up to date.  I had two more mini outages today and it's happening less regularly and more sporadically now. I'm not sure if I should report an outage here just to compare notes or what.  Would installing Freeswitch or Asterisk be another free solution meant to supplement obiplus or are those complete replacement solutions?

[RFC3261]

yeah, I thought it might be firmware related, either on my obi202 v1.4(3.0.1 (Build: 4350)) or my Cisco SPA504g, but they seem to be up to date. 

My guess of the OBi firmware is that there is a bug there (not that it is not the latest) with communications to the OBi host in the cloud that results in the OBi device not continuing to serve the IP phones.  My test POTS phone continues to work fine during the period.  The observation is that the IP phones registration packets are being ignored.  Whether it is a license issue, or something else, is just conjecture.  Since OBi does not provide support via the forums, I do not expect any real updates or acknowledgement of issues.  I have sort of waited for a new firmware image in the random hope that the issue might get fixed.  But my patience is starting to come to a middle.

I had two more mini outages today and it's happening less regularly and more sporadically now. I'm not sure if I should report an outage here just to compare notes or what.  Would installing Freeswitch or Asterisk be another free solution meant to supplement obiplus or are those complete replacement solutions?

I also had a few outages today.

Asterisk/Freeswitch are complete replacements (for the OBi).  I would have to build a Linux image for my ARM based system, and build and run Asterisk and/or Freeswitch, and do the configuration there (which is somewhat harder than the OBiPLUS solution, although there are GUI tools to do it).  I believe the OBi is an ARM based system too, but it is a "black box" (which is also a bit grey :-).  Since I only use IP phones (I just keep a POTS phone for testing), I do not really need the OBi202 Ph/Li ports, making a move to a (new) dedicated system easier for me (if one has real POTS needs, you would need to keep the OBi as part of the solution for its FXO/FXS capabilities).  I prefer to use the OBi and OBiPLUS, but if it continues to be unreliable (as it appears to be), I am going to have to consider doing the work to change to another solution, and retire my OBi202.  That will be a sadness, but times change.

[evergreen]

also, by the way, may I ask what SIP services you've been using with Obihai while having these issues?  I just added a Google voice line after hearing about there now being official support, but even then I'm still having issues with all my SIP lines.

[DanielA]

Add one more to this problem.

We've had no problems with our IP phones for months since we started using this service.  Once we took the upgrade for the official Google Voice support, our IP phones have been loosing registration to OBIPlus almost daily, usually at very inconvenient times.

Same issues as reported here, a reboot of the OBI202 seems to fix the problem, POTS line still works even the IP Phones are down.

[Dranon2]

Asm much as I would like to use and keep the ip phones, they seem to have been nothing but problems! Suing the obis with regular phones have been very good almost great! Adding the i.p. phones as nice as they are seem to be a headache. The person on the other side seems to get a poor connection even though I hear them well. They cannot seem to intercom or call each other or the phones connected to the obis---not terrible but it would be nice to have them work. At this point I am ready to sell them and just stick with normal phones connected to the obis

[RFC3261]

Add one more to this problem.

It was happening pretty much all the time today, so I captured a complete network trace, and have opened a ticket with OBi.  We shall see if they are able to determine the root cause(s) from my traces.

[evergreen]

awesome.  Please keep us posted!  One thing I also noticed was that there's now a firmware upgrade. I'm wondering if I should go with that now or wait.  I'm still having these issues, by the way, with the same frequency of incidents after the gv official support announcement as before.

[Mango]

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WAIT ON THE FIRMWARE UPGRADE

[RFC3261]

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WAIT ON THE FIRMWARE UPGRADE

Do you know something specifically we do not, or is this just FUD?

[Mango]

My comment was based on historical experience with Obihai's firmware upgrades.  I haven't tested this specific upgrade.

[lrosenman]

not on this problem, but my upgrade from 4420 to 4477 was flawless.....

[evergreen]

so now my issue's gotten worse where my ip phones are seeing downtime for extended periods of time and reboots are not working.  The firmware upgrade had initially helped with my phones being online, but now I'm seeing a new issue where my online dashboard on obitalk.com is showing as my phones being offline and my ip phones have now been down for 6 hours.

I'm just relieved that my phone ports are still working at this point.  I had contacted obihai about this a couple days back and will report back once I hear back from them.