Echo, Phone Loads and General CM Frustrations

[scrasmussen]

I am starting to feel that Cisco is not very forthcoming with information on problems that they know exist with CallManager. I keep running into different issues with the product and spend hours trying to debug the issue report it to TAC to then findout that it is a known bug that has been around for many weeks that hasn't been published yet and they don't have a resolution for it.

My current question is anyone having echo issues on 7960's and they have padded their PRI and had no luck in getting rid of the echo? I have phones and we are using the load P00303010104 we have tried P00303010102 and P00303010100 with no success. Does anyone have a different phone load that possibly solved their problems? I have posted an internal Cisco email at the bottom of this messages for everyone to ponder.

A couple of examples of unpublished bugs:

For example--Did you know that if your customer uses park and you have a cluster and load balance your clients between the servers that if a phone on server A parks a call and a phone on server B picks up the call that it will create a loop on both callmanagers that will take the CPU utilization to 100% and not allow any of the phones to work on either system until you stop and restart callmanager. Workaround is to only allow phones to register to 1 callmanager (no failover)

Or did you know

if using park that calls will sometimes become lost because the call park feature does not check which partition the call was parked to which means that the call becomes lost or that ocassionally you can not park calls because when you keep hitting park it can't find the correct partition to put it in. Workaround: Not resolved in any publically availabe version yet. (I do have a special build which supposedly fixed this issue, but created two other problems)

-- attached email removed by ciscomoderator --

[vcornett]

We have an on going problem with echo and 7960 phones also. We have padded our PRIs both the input gain to -6 and the output attenuation to 14 and no luck. This was at the suggestion of Cisco but what I don't understand is how these commands have an effect on a DIGITAL signal.

Furthermore, echo is even worse if you use a headset on the 7960. I use one and almost every caller complains of being able to hear themselves echo back.

That includes calls originating from the PSTN and local calls to other IP phones.

I have never heard echo on an IP phone to IP phone call, except in rare cases where I have conferenced other people in.

Here is another unpublished bug: if you are running CatOS 6-2-2 or earlier, it is possible while creating a VLAN to crash the network. It seems that VTP advertisements can become garbled and will crash all of your 6500s. This happened to me in the middle of the day on a network with VoIP. It is fixed in 6-3-3.

If you find a solution please email me a vince_cornett@hotmail.com

[Tom Dillon]

I have a 3.1(2c) system with 6608 gateways and P00303010102 phone load. I have less echo complaints than my 3.0(11) system with 6608 gateways and P003D310 phone load.

I have adjusted the padding with no improvement on the echoes, but the overall quality dropped noticeably, so I removed it all and just take the beating from the complaining customers.

I did discover and found a forum entry that talked about the volume setting on the IP phone will cause echoes if it is set to high. This was the source of my IP phone to IP phone echoes. We have had mixed success with headsets, some report echoes and others say it works fine. We only use Plantronic sets that are listed as tested by Cisco.

The Singapore VoIP install notes on Cisco’s site talks about the “Echo Beach” project that is integrating a third party Echo HW/SW into their product. If this is true, then it sure would be nice to hear more about it and when it will be available.

I agree with your assessment on the amount of bugs that are not viewable by customers. I have spent many hours attempting to get 3.1(2c) features to work, and then to find out that it doesn’t work and there is fix that Cisco will send you. I am holding off upgrading my larger site that is running 3.0(11) to 3.1 until 3.1(3) or what ever is released that is more reliable with the new features.

[Pabloduarte]

I will agree with you 100%.

We have been going through the same upgrade pains you have. Our current fix is to run the Old Phone Load P003D310 this help with the Echos but created some other problems. Like no corporate directory or the ocasional unexplained phone unregisters. Overall you have to see which bugs you can live with and which bugs (ECHO) you absoluty can accept.

I am disappointed with Cisco and all their Buggy Software. Is it me or can someone smell Microsoft programers in thier staff.

The rule of thumb to live by is never upgrade unless

it is ABSOLUTLY Needed. New bells and whistles are not worth the Heart-ache the cause trying to implement them.

Good Luck on with the Echo's and please post any good result when your able to get them.

[a.wells]

New phone load available P00303010103 supposed to fix the echo in 7940/7960 Though it didn't resolve the issues we are experiencing. 3.1 2c perhaps it fix yours.

[m-ketchum]

We too have had a number of problems since upgradiong to 3.1(2c). The worst of which is the unexplained occurance of IP phones unregistering. I'm starting to lose count of how many times I've had to tell users to unplug the power from the phone and then plug it back in to get the phones to reregister. Its getting ridiculous. Maybe there is a fix or a phone load that I missed during research, but if the answer is not being readily provided, whats the point!?

[a.wells]

tacs answer to echo issues 3.1 2c unfortunatly the issue is still here.

The way to solve the problem is applying a new load for the IP Phones.

I am sending you the load for CCM 3.1.1 and a new load for the echo problem with CCM 3.1(2c)

The reason why I am also sending you the load for CCM 3.1.1 is because I have seen cases that were solved with that load.

CCM 3.1.1 load is P00303010030

New load for the echo problem is P00303010103

To install the load, follow these steps

1. Copy P00303010103.bin and .bin to the C\Program Files\Cisco\TFTPPath directory on the TFTP server.

2. Open the CallManager Administration page and enter the username and password.

3. Click on System -- Device Defaults

4. Click on the first server in the list on the left and change the default load of the device in question to P00303010103.

5. Click on the update button.

6. Repeat steps 4-5 for every server listed on the left.

7. Reset the devices in question and they will get the new load.

Please try the new load first and if you still have problem try the load from CCM 3.1.1

Let me know if you still have problems after installing the loads.

Thanks and have a wonderful day !

[jtvedte]

Could you please provide the P00303010103 phone load to me as well...we are also having echo complaints after upgrade to 3.1(2c).....

[Leigh Smith]

Just curious where to find the new load P00303010103 - couldn't seem to find it.

We just have a few users out of our 70 that are hearing the echo - hope we can just address those phones instead of the entire system...

Thanks,

Leigh

[dconstantino]

I may be way off here. A couple of things that you should look into is what type of gateway you are using and IOS. Look at the facillties that your PRI are terminating and the Coding and signaling. B8ZS has quite a bit of signaling overhead associated with it. As far as the headsets go I have discovered that the ability of the 7960 to provide full duplex speaker also effects the headset quailty because of feed back. Also to elimnate the Telco as a issue call Ditec for a demo echo cancellar and put it on your Network side of the PRI. Just a thought. I have had some of the same growing pains as you all. Running 3.09 and 3.1.2c and can not wait to load 3.2 in the first of the year ?

[danallison]

I got load P003030105 today and set the dbpadding at "into = -1dB" and "from = -6dB". This seemed to work this evening. I'll see in the morning if this is the fix.

I'm using a DT-24+ with load D00303010022.

[tmiller]

I can't find that load either (P00303010103). Could someone point me to the right place or send it via e-mail.

Thanks

[msmith]

Echo has been a sever problem for our system as well. We had a P2 call open for 3 months and Cisco concentrated on the phone load and the load for a DT24+ we have. It was never resolved by Cisco. We are in the process of replacing the DT24+ with a NM-HDV 2 Port device. We found that the DT24+ was causing most of the echo. We have also done echo-cancelation coverage on the gateways, cable-lenght short 133 and played with the volume level,which may of helped. Do a search for the article on "Echo Analysis", good stuff. Cisco has sent me 3 different phone loads. We are now using P003030101P3, seems to be functional. I dont know if this has been released on the web or not. Will be glad to send any and all versions. Pls let me know. thanks marc

[risilver]

We ran the 3.12c upgrade process (BIOS, Win2K SP's,etc.) and after upgrading, couldn't get a single phone to register. After 3 hrs, I gave up and rebooted back to our 3.09 disk.

Upon seeing the responses on this list, I'm going to cancel my upgrade project and wait on future revisions AND the problems fixed/created with them.