Poor Fax quality

[robmas0871]

Hi,

i'm experiencing some fax quality issues after connecting 3845 gateways to ISDN PRI (with CUCM 7.1.3). I explain the steps of my Voip migration:

7 days ago i had this situation:

- Nortel Meridian PBX connected to 10 E1 PRI lines

- fax server running on Nortel Meridian receiving faxes

- all Nortel phones

- CUCM and Voice Gateway configured and ready to get connected to PSTN

Now i started migration to CUCM 7.1.3 doing these steps:

- disconnected PRI lines from Nortel Meridian

- connected 5 3845 Voice Gateways to PSTN (10 E1 PRI lines)

- connected 15 QSIG from 3845 to Nortel Meridian

- no Cisco IP phones in production (want to test complete infrastructure before deploying Cisco phones)

- all phones and faxes are still Nortel: they go through Meridian PBX and the QSIG lines to reach gateway and PSTN

All was working fine (calls are perfect and everything seemed good) but today i noticed this problem: faxes received by Nortel Fax server are not good quality. I mean that fax connections are fully estabilished and completed but if receive, for example a 6 pages fax, one of these pages is completely black or not correctly received. This problem was NOT present before putting Voice Gateway between PSTN and Nortel (so before migration)

I tried to configure many options especially on gateways. For example:

- T38 Fax Relay enabled (default: disabled)

- Cisco Fax Relay enabled (default: disabled)

I had no success. Is there any other configuration or workaround to troubleshoot fax quality ? My problem is not about connection (fax send and receive is good) but i think is more difficult because issue is inside 1 or 2 pages of a fax that is generally well transmitted.

Thank you.

[Adrian Saavedra]

Hello,

Sometimes slip errors present in the controllers can cause problems with faxes, due to a clocking issue between Voice Gateway and PSTN. Check with show controllers e1 if you have slip errors.

Hope it helps, please rate if it does.

Kind regards,

- Adrián.

[robmas0871]

Thank you Adrian,

i will check, but what about solving if i see slip errors ? I mean that i obtain clock from PSTN line and this is the only correct value: what i can change if i see slip errors ?

Thank you.

[Adrian Saavedra]

Hello,

If the problems are caused by slip errors, you must configure network-clock-participate and network-clock-select commands.

Here are some references:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_3t/voice/command/reference/vrht_n1_ps5207_TSD_Products_Command_Reference_Chapter.html#wp1016893

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk713/tk628/technologies_tech_note09186a00800f99bb.shtml#slipsecs

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/customer/products/hw/routers/ps259/products_tech_note09186a008031a072.shtml#config

Hope it helps, please rate if it does.

Kind regards,

- Adrian.

[robmas0871]

Hi Adrian,

maybe the issue could be because i have 2 E1 controllers connected to PRI for each router. I tried to set (as the documentation said) only one as primary clock. The problem is that i reloaded the router and the command "clock source line primary" is disappeared: maybe because MGCP ovveride my manual command. So i checked in CUCM web interface but there is no place to set a controller as a primary clock source.

[robmas0871]

Hi, i noticed that i have the problem only with digital faxes while with analog ones is all right.

Thank you.

[Steven Holl]

This is one of three issues:

* Faxes failing to swtichover to a fax protocol (g711, modempass, or T38).

* Controllers slipping

* Packet loss on RTP traffic.

Please collect the following from the PSTN gateway, as well as from the PBX gateway (if a different device):

sh controller t1

sh controller e1

sh call history voice br

sh run

If any of your controls report slips, also respond with a description of where each controller is connected to, and who is set to send clocking, since there may be a clocking design issue which needs to be addressed.

[robmas0871]

Thanks,

problem solved with analisys you suggest and correct clocking configuration on Voice gateways.