Communications Manager Express BLF and presence

[Chris Campbell]

Hello, I am working with CUCME and Busy Lamp Field (blf).  I am using all SIP phones (8861).  I am getting inconsistent results for the busy lamp and I'm not sure why.  Sometimes the lamp lights, but not on every phone that's watching.  Sometimes the lamp doesn't go out after the dn is freed from use.  When I give the command: 

sh presence subscription presentity 101

The router gives an accurate depiction of the state of the phones, even though the busy lamp is wrong about the state.  When a dn is showing on a watcher phone as still in use when it isn't, I can go into voice register pool of the watched phone, and give the restart command for the phone (that has the line supposedly still in use), and once the phone re-registers, the router sends the appropriate update to the watcher via a SIP notify, which I can see if I set up a monitor session on a switch and monitor with Wireshark.  I don't understand why this is happening.  The router presence server doesn't seem to be doing its job correctly.

You can see below that 102 is the only watcher who has the correct status for a line in use in one of my tests.  All watchers should have the blf on for 101 but only 102 has its value changed to "Available" from "idle".

Can anyone offer a suggestion?

Presence Active Subscription Records:

=============================================

Subscription ID         : 38

  Watcher               : 104@10.0.0.34

  Presentity            : 101@10.0.0.1

  Expires               : 3600 seconds

  Subscription Duration : 337 seconds

  line status           : idle 

  watcher type          : local 

  presentity type       : local 

  Watcher phone type    : SIP Phone

  subscription type     : Incoming Indication

  retry limit           : 0

Subscription ID         : 49

  Watcher               : 103@10.0.0.33

  Presentity            : 101@10.0.0.1

  Expires               : 3600 seconds

  Subscription Duration : 352 seconds

  line status           : idle 

  watcher type          : local 

  presentity type       : local 

  Watcher phone type    : SIP Phone

  subscription type     : Incoming Indication

  retry limit           : 0

Subscription ID         : 57

  Watcher               : 102@10.0.0.32

  Presentity            : 101@10.0.0.1

  Expires               : 3600 seconds

  Subscription Duration : 3566 seconds

  line status           : available 

  watcher type          : local 

  presentity type       : local 

  Watcher phone type    : SIP Phone

  subscription type     : Incoming Indication

  retry limit           : 0

[Carlo Poggiarelli]

Hi Chris,

Can you please activate a debug ccsip non-call on your VG , pickup the handset on 101 phone wait 5 secs and then hang up?

Please attach the output here.

Thanks a lot.

Regards

Carlo

[Maren Mahoney]

Are phones that are receiving correct presence information and phones not being updated correctly consistent?

What I'm asking is: Is it always the same phone(s) that show the correct status, and also always the same phone(s) that don't show the correct status?

Could you provide the output of "show presence global" and "show presence subscription summary"? (And maybe the "voice register global"?)

Maren

[Chris Campbell]

Hello and thank you both for the responses. Carlo, I activated debugging and terminal monitor and did the handset pickup on 101 and there was no output:

debug ccsip non-call

SIP Out-of-Dialog tracing is enabled

#sh debug         

CCSIP SPI: SIP Out-of-Dialog tracing is enabled (filter is OFF)

Maren, no, it isn't always the same phones that have the issues.  It seems to be random.  FYI, I included additional information with everything connected now.  In my original post, I was testing with only part of the full setup, but it's all working just the same.

#show presence global

Presence Global Configuration Information:

=============================================

Presence feature enable            : TRUE

Presence allow external watchers   : TRUE

Presence max subscription allowed  : 128

Presence number of subscriptions   : 17

Presence allow external subscribe  : TRUE

Presence call list enable          : FALSE

Presence server IP address         : 0.0.0.0

Presence sccp blfsd retry interval : 60

Presence sccp blfsd retry limit    : 10

Presence router mode               : CME mode

#sh presence subscription summ

Presence Active Subscription Records Summary: 17 subscription

  D indicate as device-based blf-speed-dial monitoring

Watcher                    Presentity               SubID  Expires SibID  Status

========================== ======================== ====== ======= ====== ======

  103@10.0.0.33            107@10.0.0.1             516    3600    0      idle                     

  201@10.0.6.1             104@10.0.0.1             519    3600    0      idle                     

  104@10.0.0.34            101@10.0.0.1             520    3600    0      idle                     

  102@10.0.0.32            103@10.0.0.1             521    3600    0      idle                     

  201@10.0.6.1             101@10.0.0.1             522    3600    0      available                

  101@10.0.0.31            102@10.0.0.1             523    3600    0      idle                     

  101@10.0.0.31            104@10.0.0.1             524    3600    0      idle                     

  101@10.0.0.31            103@10.0.0.1             525    3600    0      idle                     

  107@10.0.0.36            101@10.0.0.1             526    3600    0      available                

  107@10.0.0.36            102@10.0.0.1             527    3600    0      idle                     

  107@10.0.0.36            103@10.0.0.1             528    3600    0      idle                     

  103@10.0.0.33            102@10.0.0.1             529    3600    0      idle                     

  201@10.0.6.1             102@10.0.0.1             530    3600    0      idle                     

  103@10.0.0.33            101@10.0.0.1             531    3600    0      idle                     

  104@10.0.0.34            102@10.0.0.1             532    3600    0      idle                     

  102@10.0.0.32            101@10.0.0.1             533    3600    0      idle                     

  102@10.0.0.32            104@10.0.0.1             534    3600    0      idle    

[Maren Mahoney]

Is this device-based BLF? When you configured the voice register pool for BLF did you include the "device" keyword?

Like: blf-speed-dial 1 5555 label Bob device

The reason I ask is that there is a bug where devices that register via TCP can't use device-based BLF. It's in the config guide as a "note" but the note is unclear. Here is the bug itself: Add Support for Device Based BLF when phones register using TCP (CSCvf55877) 

Maren

[Chris Campbell]

No, I didn't have device at the end of those blf configuration lines.  I just added and will test.  Hopefully that was the missing element.  Thank you, I'll report back on whether it works after that change.  Not sure if I'll have to reregister the phones but we'll see.

[Maren Mahoney]

Just the opposite: I was thinking that if you had the device keyword that it might have been the underlying problem. The bug is about that keyword breaking BLF for TCP-registered devices.

That said, if your devices are TLS registered that might fix the issue.

Maren

[Chris Campbell]

Could you explain or direct me to an explanation of TCP vs TLS registered?

[Maren Mahoney]

FWIW: TLS requires that certificates are in place for authentication and encryption. If you were doing TLS registration, you'd know it. So it is likely that you are doing (as the vast majority of folks do) TCP registration. 

Maren

[Maren Mahoney]

More importantly, I think it might be time to call TAC. Nothing is jumping out as a cause. -- Maren