DTMF does not work on incoming calls

[dudu_georgescu]

Hi,

Problem with incomming calls and DTMF. I have a Voice Mail/test menu set up at home with asterisk and have dtmfmode set to rfc2833. I dial in the FPL number, enter selection/digits, nothing happens, IVR times out, call goes directly to Voice Mail...

Pretty sure this used to work just fine last week. The funny part is that for outgoing calls, DTMF seems to be OK ...

Help!

Thx

[zombie999]

Yup....same problem here. It used to work fine.
Also DTMF is not working on outgoing calls to toll free numbers.

[Jake]

I'll put a +1 in here for the DTMF tomes also.

For some reason they don't work on my ATA any more. And no I have not changed anything. I will have to go through the settings and see if there is anything I can change.

If anyone else finds anything, please post it here.

[Jake]

OK, this worked for me on my PAP2T, unless FPL did something while I was trying things.

Under the line menu (line 1 or line 2) go to the bottom and look for this option
DTMF Tx Method:
Mine was set at AUTO, but I found changing it to InBand fixed it for me, or at least on the phone number I was having problems with.

Hope this helps.

[dudu_georgescu]

Hi, were you having problems with outgoing DTMF or with incomming DTMF? I will try that value when I get home ...

[dudu_georgescu]

Yep, inband fixes it for me !!! Many thx.

[Jake]

Yep, inband fixes it for me !!! Many thx.

You are welcome. I have no idea why AUTO suddenly stopped working, and to be honest I have no idea what inband is either, but I did know it had something to do with the DTMF tones due to the option name and it was the first option in the list so I tried it. I didn't try the others, maybe they work also, but I stopped once I got it working.

[dudu_georgescu]

I don't know what inband is either, but according to this: "http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php ... p+dtmfmode"

"auto: Asterisk will use rfc2833 for DTMF relay by default but will switch to inband DTMF tones if the remote side does not indicate support of rfc2833 in SDP."

I think auto should be just fine, and since it is not fine, that means there is a bug on the SIP server side somewhere ...

[FONGO_kris]

InBand is simply In-Band signalling - Which means sending your signalling (metadata) in the same channel as your voice instead of automatically selecting a free channel.

The issue with InBand is that if you have Asterisk or Trix it can destroy INCOMING DTMF, though preserving OUTGOING DTMF, at least that is what happened when I changed mine - Though it has never not worked.

[iiordanov]

Hi,

Yeah, inband works on my Asterisk box, but at least for my version of Asterisk, it causes almost constant 100% CPU usage and very jittery voice playback. Hence, only rfc2833 is really an option for me. (My Asterisk box is an embedded device that uses 5W of power total so there isn't a lot of CPU to speak of). FPL admins, would it be at all possible to change back whatever settings you have made on your server side so that rfc2833 starts working again, please?

Thanks!!!!!!
Iordan

[FONGO_kris]

I'll look into it, but I can tell you now that we haven't changed anything on the server side since Sept 17th 2009.

[iiordanov]

I see. So it is possible that some equipment that Bell is using is not playing nice with FPL? I am experiencing this with some Bell lines, but not with cell phones. I.e. when I call into my IVR with a cell phone, all DTMF tones are detected. When I call in from my work phone or my home phone (probably both Bell), DTMF tones are not detected. When my parents call in from Belleville, DTMF tones are detected, even though they are with Bell. So could it be that Bell changed some equipment in the 416 zone which is causing this? It's very confusing.

If it is Bell's equipment to blame, is it possible for you guys to reconfigure something to make FPL pass the DTMF tones to us (the client boxes) and also pass tones we send out to Bell better? I hope my diagnosis is helpful and not just a muddle .

Thanks!
Iordan

[zombie999]

InBand is simply In-Band signalling - Which means sending your signalling (metadata) in the same channel as your voice instead of automatically selecting a free channel.

The issue with InBand is that if you have Asterisk or Trix it can destroy INCOMING DTMF, though preserving OUTGOING DTMF, at least that is what happened when I changed mine - Though it has never not worked.

Could it be that your SIP server indicates no support for rfc2833, causing asterisk to switch to INBAND and destroy incoming DTMF?

[FONGO_kris]

As far as I know rfc2833 is perfectly okay to use, I will double check though.

[sukasem]

Hi,

I did have problem with DTMF too. It used to work before but it's not working right now.
PSTN -> FPL -> Asterisk -> IVR
Caller (PSTN) calls my FPL number then it will go to IVR but when caller press menu option, nothing happen.

Cheers,
Sukasem

[evilmonkey]

dtmfmode = info in asterisk did the trick for me for inbound.

[zombie999]

If you look at the softphone settings, there is only choice to choose between inband and info. This could have something to do with that. Something must have been changed on the server side.

[iiordanov]

DTMF tones are still not working for me with rfc2833. Admins, are you sure your server supports rfc2833 at the moment?

What are some things I can try other than using info/inband? Both of these methods put significant strain on my server, resulting in audio choppiness and such.

[FONGO_kris]

I am 100% certain, yes. The server we use supports rfc2833 both incoming and outgoing.

[keithl]

I'll add my DTMF failure to the list.

PSTN->FPL->SipX->X-Lite:
When I try from the PSTN origin to type an extension, SipX doesn't see it. I know that SipX supports 2833 and does NOT support inband (i.e. audio) or SIP Info. Since FPL supports 2833, it shouldn't be a problem yet...

I suspect that a month or two ago the DTMF decoders at FPL (i.e. detecting DTMF tones in PSTN audio) stopped working.

X-Lite->SipX->FPL->PSTN
Works fine (i.e. FPL correctly generates DTMF audio from 2833)

X-Lite->SipX
Works fine (i.e. don't think this is a SipX or X-Lite issue)

Help Please. Love FPL but NEED DTMF

[FONGO_kris]

Hope you all know that I'd love to help, but we as a company, do not support Asterisk or any other PBX, software or otherwise, when used on our residential gateway.

[keithl]

I respect that, but I'm not convinced the problem has anything to do with PBXs. It still looks as if FPL is not generating 2833 messages for DTMF tones on the PSTN - but it used to.

[zombie999]

I still have an older version of software and it has 'rfc2833' and 'info' under DTMF settings. If you look at the newest version, it has 'inband' and 'info' under the same setting. So obviously they did disable support for rfc2833, even though server supports it.

[zombie999]

Hope you all know that I'd love to help, but we as a company, do not support Asterisk or any other PBX, software or otherwise, when used on our residential gateway.

Can you clarify this. You don't support asterisk as in "we do not support it but if it works for you it's fine"?

Or as in "we do not allow it and we'll cancel your account if you are using it with asterisk"?

Or is it "we do not support it, we do not like you using it but if it's residential use, it's fine"?

[FONGO_kris]

More or less.

We can tell here if you're abusing the service and of course if we see tons of simultaneous calls from one account (phone number) than of course we'll keep an eye on your usage and if it keeps up we would contact you.

But I do know that there are quite a few people here and on FPL in general who want to use Asterisk/PBXes/Trixbox or what have you for the IVR and other advanced options (ie. having separate extensions for different rooms, people, etc...)

It's safe to say that though you do not need to lose sleep over whether or not you'll get that dreaded call from Freephoneline.ca saying your account will be closed, we rarely get abuse on our system and when we do it's fairly isolated and resolved for the most part painlessly.

To answer your question I'd have to say #3 is at least my stand on this policy - We won't provide technical support for it, yet don't have a severely strict policy on using it with our gateway; But still want to realize that it is in fact a residential gateway and if you are using it for business purposes we'll most likely find out and take appropriate action.