No Internet connection, not even internal calls allowed...is this normal??

[markiper]

Hello,
I just experience something that I think sounds very strange. I lost my internet connection, and my PBXiaF server was not able to route any calls, even between local extensions. Is this normal? My PBXiaF server is sitting on my local network getting the IP address dynamically (DHCP), and I was able to access to it bt no calls could be completed until the internet connection was restored. Any help on this case will be greatly appreciated.
Regards,

 

[markiper]

For anyone else that might experience this same issue; that is, when you loose your internet connection your SIP extensions (local) remain registered to the PBXiaF server, but calls cannot be completed at all, it will get solve if you add to the sip_custom.conf the line:

srvlookup=yes

Apparently this was reported back from Asterisk version 1.2, but apparently it as been carried all the way to version 1.4.15 which is the one that PBXiaF is using. For further details, please check the following links:

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+SIP+srvlookup
http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=9057

If anyone else has a better explanation to this issue, please let me know as I am still a little puzzle by it.
Regards,

 

[dghundt]

I tried srvlookup=yes and it did not work even after a reboot. All phones in office do not work internally and not even pstn calls can go out.

If I remove all sip trunks, but leave my IAX2 trunk alone, everything works fine (as expected) when the internet goes down.

If I resolve the numerical ip address of my sip voip provider DNS name, and use it to register, everything works fine (as expected) when internet goes down.

I have dug through all kinds of forum posts, and from what I can tell Bind seems to be a way to fix this, but the solution is not well described, and I still want to use my router as the DNS server.

Additionally, if my sip provider changes its IP address, I'll have to resolve it each time to get things working.

Any other fixes out there to this sip turnk/dns chain reaction that shuts down the pbx?

 

[cosmicwombat]

For some reason...

I thought setting up a caching DNS server on the PBXiaF box took care of this. Haven't testing it...

 

[mtennant]

Surely this is the subject of a bug report with Digium. I've seen it myself and this type of behavior makes no sense at all.

 

[dghundt]

Can you point me to or describe what is and how to implement a dns cache and if this also avoids having to know the actual ip address?

 

[jroper]

Hi

If you go to webmin, servers, bind DNS, you will be able to install, and configure a DNS server. It's all pretty automatic.

If you want to use the PBX as a DNS server for extenal hosts, then you will need to open the appropriate port on the firewall in webmin, networrk, linux firewall.

Joe

 

[dghundt]

Great, thanks.
If I use bind on my pbx as you mention in the first sentence, will it affect my router's dns service along with the computers/scanners/credit card machines connected on the same lan? I'd like to keep the main dns server on my router.

 

[jroper]

Hi

No not at all. You can have more than one DNS server in the same network. When you set up a client o the network, you tell what IP address to get its DNS services from.

Joe

 

[dghundt]

Thanks.
Since I never like to brick my production server, I have set up all IAX trunks for the time being. Voicepulse was already IAX, just not the others. This gives me time to set up and test a dns server on asterisk.

 

[dghundt]

I poked around webmin and the forum, but installing BIND elludes me. The webmin interface has changed, so it is even harder to figure out how to setup bind.

Pointers? please

 

[jroper]

In Webmin | Servers | BIND DNS Server

Joe

 

[stuck]

Setting up Bind DNS server on PiaF was a bit of a PIA in my case. Much more difficult than my old TB. I think I finally got it to work by adding a line (which I don't remember currently) in my /etc/hosts file. If you need to, I can find the line I modified and post that...

 

[dghundt]

I'd certainly appreciate your setup. I have not anything in webmin yet as far as bind either.

 

[dghundt]

In Webmin | Servers | BIND DNS Server

Joe

Thank you. I see three options to set up. I assume I need to pick the (2) internet server option as opposed to just (1) internal name server?

 

[stuck]

Dr. Hundt,
Hope you got your DNS server working...

 

[Alex728]

any chance of posting up how you did it? I tried installing bind a while ago and got it to work but it still all went pear shaped when I disconnected the broadband

at the moment I use the router to provide DNS, this works most of the time until broadband goes off

but what I want to be able to do is be able to even physically remove the router (to simulate a total hardware failure) and the internal phones and zaptel trunks stay working (of course any external SIP trunks would not work)

is this possible?

 

[stuck]

You'd have to setup your PIAf as a DHCP server as well if you want that. I don't have mine setup as DHCP server.

 

[dghundt]

Dr. Hundt,
Hope you got your DNS server working...

Thanks for your tips. I'm still working on it. I want to back up my system first. Not enough time in the day....

 

[jeffmac]

I had this kind of problem this morning. Now I only have a couple of local extensions, but they weren't working with the internet connection. But I DO use externhost= in my sip_custom.conf. I recall reading some cautions about this and how often Asterisk does the DNS lookup - and I'm guessing that the issue is that since Asterisk can' determine the external address, he can't determine whats local and whats not - so nothing works. I'm trying a script Ward provided here: http://pbxinaflash.com/community/threads/solved-one-way-audio-remote-extension.1058/?t=1058 to do the "lookup" externally and update sip_custom.conf with externip= instead of a host name. I'm hoping that will allow things to stay up. I'll do some testing tonight.

I suppose a caching dns server on the localhost would suffice until the "time-to-live" value expired for the dns entry - so the caching server option is not very valuable if the TTL is short for your dns name.