UCCX Recordings are slow and garbled

[kylebrogers]

I have just replaced an IPCC 3.5 server with a brand new UCCX 7.1 server.  As with the 3.5 server, I used a workflow to force UCCX to record all inbound calls to the helpdesk queue.  Unfortunately, all of the recording sound like they're being recorded at 60-70% speed and are highly garbled(I have checked this both through the supervisor's desktop which are reading the RAW files and by exporting/listening to the WAV files directly) .  My first inclination was that it was a SPAN issue with duplicate packets but I don't know how that could be since we simply swapped out the servers.  None of the network equipment or configuration was changed.  CUCM was also upgraded at the same time but that shouldn't affect the recordings.  I have Wireshark installed on the UCCX server and when I watch the monitoring NIC on the UCCX server, I receive no duplicate packets.  If I decode the RTP streams and have Wireshark play it back, it comes through clear with no speed or distortion issues.   Anyone have any other ideas why this might be happening?

Thanks,

Kyle

[michael-luo · Accepted solution]

When you look at the packet capture, what's the source/destination address of the RTP packets?  Were you applying any filter during packet capture?  Removing the filter might give you a bigger picture.

You may alrady know that UCCX can do desktop monitoring or server monitoring (SPAN).

Recording works on top of monitoring.  I guess during the "swap", someone accidentally enabled both.

Thanks!

Michael

[kylebrogers]

Thanks for the suggestion.  When you say "desktop monitoring", do you mean the on-demand recording that can be done via the Supervisor Desktop?  If so, the supervisor rarely has it open.  He only opens it when he needs to listen to a recorded call.  If I'm misunderstanding, please let me know because it is entirely possible some sort of duplicate recording got enabled.

A couple of extra notes since my original post:

Live monitoring works fine.  No speed or garbling issues.

If I remove an agent from the WorkFlow Group that does the automatic recording and I instead perform an on-demand recording from the supervisor desktop, it is slow and garbled.

[kylebrogers]

Sorry.  I just realized I didn't answer part of your question.  I don't have any filters going on Wireshark.  I thought perhaps it might automatically filter out duplicate packets but everything I can find online suggests that it shows them unless you make it filter them out.

[kylebrogers]

I seem to have accidentally marked this thread as solved.  Is there a way for me to correct this?

[michael-luo · Accepted solution]

If you have both Desktop and SPAN enabled, recording server will pick up two audio streams.

Those two steams will have different source/destination IP addresses.  So it won't be displayed as "duplicated" packets.  You might want to double check this.

Michael

[kylebrogers]

I have VoIP monitoring enabled on Side B of the Desktop Administrator to record SPANed calls to/from the agent phones but I am not actively recording anything from the Supervisor desktop.  The captures only show traffic to/from the agents and the voice gateway (with the exception of random EIGRP, ARP, DHCP, etc packets).  TAC keeps insisting that it must be a network issue despite the fact that the RTP sessions I capture with Wireshark don't seem to be duplicated and they are completely clear.  It seems to me that the packets are reaching the server correctly but then something happens with UCCX before it is recorded to the RAW file.  It thought it might be the Desktop+SPAN recording you mentioned and double checked that I wasn't telling it to record the calls with the Supervisor Desktop.  For good measure, I unchecked the phones in the VoIP Monitoring Devices section of Side B and all recording stopped immediately for all agents.  Am I correct that this area is only used for controlling SPAN recording or does this also affect other recording methods?

[michael-luo]

Try to do a packet capture on the Agent Desktop.  If you're using SPAN, you should NOT seeing any RTP/UDP packets from Agent Desktop.

Attached is a "mix and match" table of using two different kinds of monitoring (i.e. recording)

Michael

[kylebrogers]

I've attached a screenshot of the packet capture I performed on the agent desktop.  I see 3 different RTP streams.  10.0.160.196>10.2.20.4 is the user's desktop talking to the UCCX server.  10.2.21.223>10.1.20.12 is the user's phone communicating with the voice gateway.  10.2.21.217>10.1.20.12 is another agent's phone communicating with the gateway.

So if I understand correctly, I should only be seeing the 10.2.21.223>10.1.20.12 stream.  Is that correct?

If so, how to I get rid of the PC>UCCX stream?

***Side Note:  None of the streams come up as RTP.  I manually go to each UDP stream and tell it to decode as RTP.  The only reason I bring this up is the possiblity that the PC>UCCX traffic is actually just info like call statistics, agent state, etc. being exchanged and I am improperly telling Wireshark to decode it as RTP.  ***

Thanks for all of the help.

Kyle

[kylebrogers]

I think I just realized something.  The reason I'm not seeing multiple streams at the server would be that the SPAN audio and the Agent Desktop audio are arriving on seperate interfaces.  I will try watching both interfaces at the same time and see if I see the issue.

[kylebrogers]

Sure enough.  I'm getting the same audio (one from SPAN and one from the Agent Desktop) on both NICs.  So how do I turn off the non-SPAN recording?

[Anthony Holloway · Accepted solution]

You disable desktop recording in Cisco Desktop Administrator.  It is enabled by default for all users.  If you are on UCCX 7 or higher, it's the web page version of CDA, and if on 5 or lower it's in the thick client app.

[kylebrogers]

I actually went the other way around and removed all of the SPAN configs and left the workflow on and it works great now.  Thanks to both of you for all of your help.