How to troubleshoot PSTN issues: Often times the user will find some trouble when trying to configure

the PSTN lines connected to the back of the GXE. The issues will vary from echo on either side of the communications, calls not being disconnected when terminated, or DTMF tones not being recognized.

Troubleshooting echo on the PSTN lines: We will try to guide the user through some of the recommended steps in order to troubleshoot these issues. The first issue we will explain how to troubleshoot is the echo present on the line. Often times the user might hear himself (near side echo) or the person on the other side of the PSTN may complain that they are hearing themselves (far side echo). In either case the root of the problem lies in the fact that the impedance setting on the FXO port of the GXE does not match the impedance present on the PSTN line connected to it. Depending on which impedance is greater one of the sides will hear echo. In order to avoid getting into technical details, Grandstream has developed an automatic impedance mechanism embedded in the GXE. To run the auto-detection click on the Trunk/Phone lines menu on the left side and go to the internal PSTN trunk submenu, next click on the advanced tab on the upper right corner; the automatic detection tab should appear at the bottom of the page.

The system requires the user to enter 2 PSTN lines to be tested. The first line will be the one we will be detecting values for; meaning this will be the line we will detect values like impedance, call progress tones and current disconnect threshold for. Please enter the line port number for the lines to be used for the test. For example you can enter line 1 as the detected FXO and line 2 as the called FXO. Next enter the PSTN (telephone) numbers for each one of the lines. Enter the telephone number as if you were to dial locally. In other words enter the telephone numbers you would use to dial these lines from a local analog phone. Next select the Impedance check box and click on Start Detect. Wait a few minutes while the GXE performs a series of tests. After the tests are done a pop-up window should come up giving

you the recommended impedance setting for the FXO line we detected values for. You will also see the results for all the 15 impedance schemes models available. The number we are trying to get should be lower than -20dB. Please make note of this recommended setting. It could be expresses as a value in Ohms, Ohms plus a capacitance or maybe a complex model from 1 to 10. Like mentioned above, make a note of this value and then go into the internal PSTN trunk line parameter configuration. Select model for the AC terminal impedance scheme and then select the value you obtained from the drop down menu right underneath it. Click on submit to save this value. Next make a few calls to see if this solved the echo issue. NOTE: You will have to reboot the GXE after the tests are done in order to get some of the services back up running. Troubleshooting PSTN line disconnection settings: Sometimes the user might experience a case where the GXE might be holding the line after the far end has already hung up after a call. This is because the GXE FXO ports have not been configured correctly according to the parameters established by the service provider. These parameters vary greatly from country to country and even from provider to provider. By default the GXE will have both current disconnect and tone disconnect enabled, however the user should disable one of these methods and configure it with the corresponding disconnect one. Busy Tone Disconnect Settings: For a quick reference of these parameters please take a look at the following ITU document:
http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/inr/forms/files/tones-0203.pdf

The values we are looking for in this document are the busy tone frequency (ies) and the cadence of them. The cadence is simply a term for how many milliseconds the tone is reproduced and how many milliseconds silence is reproduced completing a single cycle. The GXE will start listening for the busy tone configured in the internal PSTN trunk line parameter configuration page at the end of a call to release the line. This means that the GXE will try to check if the tones heard matches the ones configured in the busy tone settings with its corresponding cadence. We will use an example from the document to illustrate this case. By default the GXE has the North American busy tone settings configured with its respective cadence:

In this case frequency one equals 480 Hz played at -24dB; frequency 2 equals 620Hz played also at -24dB, and the cadence is 500ms on and 500ms off, meaning we will hear the tones for 500ms and then we will hear silence for 500ms. Now take a look at the information for South Africa in the document from the ITU. From the document we can see that South Africa as well as a great number of countries uses a single frequency to signal a busy tone; in this case it is 400Hz. We can also see from the document that the cadence for this tone is 0.5 seconds on and 0.5 seconds on, meaning 500ms on and 500ms off. To configure the busy tone in the GXE we would write the setting like this: f1=400@-24,c=500/500 Remember these are the tones (busy tones) that the GXE will be listening for in order to disconnect a call once it has been finalized. As a precaution make sure there are always at least 25Hz of difference in between the busy tone, ring back tone and the dial tone in order to prevent false tone detections. Additionally the user can also try to confirm the tones by using the Auto-detection functionality. Once the user has configured the impedance correctly he can go ahead and run the Call Progress Tones detection. Remember, you will need at least 2 PSTN lines connect to the GXE with their respective PSTN numbers. Run the test just like the impedance test and dont forget to write down the values obtained, once you get these values go ahead and type them under the busy tone settings. If this doesnt work, we can still try to use the values obtained from the ITU document, but there could be too much noise in the lien so we have to decrease the detection level, meaning that the dB level has to be lowered. For the case of South Africa we can write the busy tone value again like this: f1=400@-35,c=500/500 , keep decreasing the values by 5 or 10 dB until you can get the FXO port to release the line, however this could introduce problems with some calls getting dropped prematurely. To avoid this issue, please increase the BT event (busy tone) value right next to the enable tone disconnect radio button. By default this value is 1 but you can increase it up to 4, meaning that the GXE will require 4 full cadences in order to confirm that the call been indeed disconnected.

Current Disconnect Threshold Disconnect: Some countries, like the US, use current disconnect as their method for signaling a call termination. This means that there will be a sudden drop in the voltage on the line to signal the termination. This drop will have a minimum length of time measured in milliseconds as well. From the factory the GXE has a value of 100ms as the current disconnect threshold, but this value can be adjusted from 70ms to 10000ms. The easiest way to determine this value is to perform again the Automatic detection with 2 PSTN lines but this time selecting only the current disconnect box. If the detection fails, it is recommended to start trying values. We can start at 100ms and then move to 200, 300, 400, etc until we find the value that corresponds to our lines.