Tracking H.

323 Calls in CUCM SDI Traces

VERSION 6
Disclaimer: This document is written with CUCM 5+ in mind, but will be applicable to all
CUCM versions with small amounts of tweaking.
Disclaimer 2: This is a first draft and I'm extremely open to input and user contributed edits. If
you see something wrong, or that could be better, comment on the doc and I can make you a
contributor.

Enable Traces
Recreate Issue / Place Test Calls
Download Relevant Traces
Download Advanced Analytical Application
Dissect Traces
Locate the problem call
Locate the calling party
Find the Process ID for this call and Process ID for the
called party
Track the called process to the correct node
Find the Outbound H.225 Setup
Find the Negotiated H.245 Port
Locate the H.245 TTPid based on H.245 Port
Find the Capabilities in the Terminal Capability Set
Find the Codec, IP addresses, and UDP Ports used

Enable Traces
Follow this excellent document for turning on CUCM traces. Pay particular attention to the
H.225 and H.245 check boxes.
Recreate Issue / Place Test Calls
Get the calling party number, called party number, and time of the call.
Download Relevant Traces
Follow these instructions to download CallManager traces from all nodes in the cluster during
the time of the call.
Download Advanced Analytical Application
I prefer Notepad++, but any text editor with highlighting or searching will work. If you want to
run unix2dos on the trace files beforehand you could even use the standard Windows Notepad.
Downloading a tool like TripleComboTool or TranslatorX is basically cheating, but can be
useful.
Dissect Traces
This is where all of the fun comes in. We now have folders full of trace files. You can download
the traces I used for this example in the attached file H323Trace.zip. Somewhere in the
potentially Gigabytes of files we collected is our call. Here's how to find it then track it.

Locate the problem call
I like to use a tool like WinGrep, or even Linux grep to just get an idea of which trace files to
look at.

My example call has the following details:

Calling Party - 7021004
Called Party - 8011000
Calling Time (Taken from Placed Calls phone menu) - 11:45

The seach queries would be things like
cn="7021004
dd="8011000

These two strings will find the Digit Analysis line in CUCM. cn stands for Calling Number. dd
stands for Dialed Digits. Let's take a look at using grep to find the trace file we're interested in.
jasburns@jasburns-gentoo ~/trace/H323Trace $ grep -REi --include "ccm*.txt"
"dd=\"8011000" *
cucm7-sub1/2010-06-24_11-47-16/cm/trace/ccm/sdi/ccm00000002.txt:06/24/2010
11:45:32.095
CCM|Digit analysis: match(pi="2", fqcn="7021004", cn="7021004",plv="5",
pss="",
TodFilteredPss="", dd="8011000",dac="0")

The grep command used the flags

-R recursive
-E extended regular expressions (in case we want to get fancy with regex)
-i case insensitive search (in case we want to get lazy)
--include to search through only files that had names like ccm*.txt

If we only knew the calling number we could change our search string accordingly. If we
received no resutls we could remove the cn or dd portion and just search for the number. If
searching for the 7 digit number didn't work we could search for just the last 4 digits until we
found our call.

Based on the search we see that our file is located in
cucm7-sub1/2010-06-24_11-47-16/cm/trace/ccm/sdi/ccm00000002.txt

We also see some interesting things about the digit analysis line:

pss="" and TodFilteredPss="" means that the calling phone has a Calling Search Space set to
<None>. This value is usually the ordered list of partition inside the calling party's CSS.

Let's open the trace file ccm*02.txt in our text editor and look at this line above.

Locate the calling party
If we track back up just a few lines we can see the SCCP phone that made the call
06/24/2010 11:45:32.089 CCM|StationInit: (0000003) SoftKeyEvent
softKeyEvent=1(Redial)

The TCP Handle of that particular IP Phone is 0000003. That indicates this phone was the 3rd
one to register since starting the CCM process on this node. We could do a grep for that
particular TCP handle to get all SCCP messages sent to and from the phone.

StationInit - The phone sent this message to CUCM
StationD - The CUCM sent this message to the phone

Let's use Notepad++ to highlight this in the trace. Highlight the handle, right click, select "Using
1st Style". Now this will be light blue anywhere in the trace file.

Find the Process ID for this call and Process ID for the called party
Each call leg has a CallID. This is a unique identifier for that leg of the call. It's commonly
referred to as a CI.
Each call also has a cdcc process. This is primary call control process for the call.
Each called party has a process associated with it. This is where CUCM is going to send the call.

We can learn all of these in the few lines after the Digit Analysis Block
06/24/2010 11:45:32.095 CCM|Digit analysis: insert daResEntry to daResCache.
KeyCi=42514739 ,PID:Cdcc(2,174,4)

Here we learn the Ci for the call 42514739, as well as the cdcc(2,174,4). It's helpful to highlight
these in the trace as well.

Through the dmpidreq and dmpidres (Request and Response) we can get the Process ID (pid) of
the party we're going to extend the call to:
06/24/2010 11:45:32.096 CCM|Digit analysis: wait_DmPidRes- Partition=[]
Pattern=[801XXXX]
Where=[], cmDeviceType=[AccessDevice], OutsideDialtone =[1],
DeviceOverride=[0],
PID=RouteListControl(1,100,61,2)

We see that the Route Pattern I matched was 801XXXX, and that this pattern points to
RouteListControl. The Process ID for this is (1,100,61,2).

Track the called process to the correct node
The Route List Control process exists on Node 1 (the publisher) and we're currently on the
subscriber. It exists inside the CUCM process (100). This means the subscriber will now have to
send a message to Route List Control on the publisher.

I typically match Node IDs to server names by looking at the SDL trace files. For example, here
we can see that cucm7-sub1 is Node 2 (SDL002_*.txt)


Since we know the signal was sent to Node 1, and Node 2 is the subscriber, we can search the
SDL trace folders for Node 1. Node 1 is always the publisher server (but your publisher might
not always be Node1 based on your CCM version and whether or not you've activated and
deactivated servces).

Let's open the CCM trace on the publisher at the time in question, 11:45:32.096

cucm7-pub\2010-06-24_11-47-15\cm\trace\ccm\sdi\ccm00000002.txt
06/24/2010 11:45:32.100 CCM|RouteListControl::idle_CcSetupReq -
RouteList(ICT_RL)

Here is the inbound request from the sub to the pub. We can see the call is going to a Route List
named "ICT_RL".

The Route List parses through the Route Groups, and you can see we pick a member of the RG
in the following trace
06/24/2010 11:45:32.101 CCM|SMDMSharedData::findLocalDevice - Name=ICTto801
Key=005cee5b-ef72-4919-4855-5983ba8b23f2 isActvie=1 Pid=(1,153,7) found

Lucky for us the PID of this device inside the Route Group is also on node 1. If we scroll down a
bit in the traces we should see the outbound H.323 call over this InterClusterTrunk.

Find the Outbound H.225 Setup
Here we see the process created for this H.225 outbound session. The CUCM is trying to
establish an outbound TCP connection.
06/24/2010 11:45:32.188 CCM|H225D::restart0_TcpConnectionInfo:
H225Cdpc(1,100,154,3)

Next we'll see the actal H.323 outbound setup:

06/24/2010 11:45:32.193 CCM|SPROCRas - {
h323-uu-pdu
{
h323-message-body setup :
{
protocolIdentifier { 0 0 8 2250 0 5 },
sourceAddress
{
dialedDigits : "7021004",
h323-ID : {"7021004", {0, 0, 0, 0}, ...}
},
sourceInfo
{
vendor
{
vendor
{
t35CountryCode 181,
t35Extension 0,
manufacturerCode 18
},
productId '436973636F43616C6C4D616E61676572'H,
versionId '31'H
},
terminal
{
},
mc FALSE,
undefinedNode FALSE
},
destinationAddress
{
dialedDigits : "8011000"
},
activeMC FALSE,
conferenceID '807B41849C7D31C2030003010E302CCF'H,
conferenceGoal create : NULL,
callType pointToPoint : NULL,
sourceCallSignalAddress ipAddress :
{
ip '0E302C15'H,
port 1720
},
|<CLID::StandAloneCluster><NID::CUCM7-PUB><LVL::State
Transition><MASK::0100>
06/24/2010 11:45:32.193 CCM|callIdentifier
{
guid '807B41849C7D31C2030003010E302CCF'H

The most important part of this message for tracking the rest of the call is the guid
'807B41849C7D31C2030003010E302CCF'H. This is an identifier unique to the call. We can
use grep or wingrep now to search on this guid. We can find out how many traces this guid
appears in and then open all of these traces in our editor of choice.

Along with the exploded H.225 message body there is also a compact printout of the H.225
message:

11:45:32.193 CCM|Out Message -- H225SetupMsg -- Protocol= H225Protocol
11:45:32.193 CCM|Ie - H225BearerCapabilityIe IEData= 04 03 80 90 A2
11:45:32.193 CCM|Ie - H225CallingPartyIe IEData= 6C 09 00 81 37 30 32 31 30
30 34
11:45:32.193 CCM|Ie - Q931CalledPartyIe IEData= 70 08 80 38 30 31 31 30 30 30
11:45:32.194 CCM|IsdnMsgData2= 08 02 00 03 05 04 03 80 90 A2 6C 09 00 81 37
30 32

11:45:32.212 CCM|In Message -- H225CallProceedingMsg -- Protocol=
H225Protocol
11:45:32.212 CCM|IsdnMsgData1= 08 02 80 03 02 7E 00 55 05 21 80 06 00 08 91
4A 00

This gives us an extremely succinct way to track all of the messages in a call. We can see the
first message is an Outbound Setup and it contains the ASCII values of the called and calling
numbers.

Calling 37 30 32 31 30 30 34
Called 38 30 31 31 30 30 30

Since these are in ASCII and they're digits all you need to do to get he numbers is just remove
the leading 3 from each group of numbers. This is very handy for double checking which number
gets sent to the far end H.323 device.

The second message is a Inbound Proceeding message.

We tie these messages together based on the ISDN identifier, which starts at the third octet.

The identifier portion is 0 03. The first character indicates direction. 0 stands for the outbound
direction in this case. The outbound direction will be inbound + 8 (hex), or 8 in this case.

Find the Negotiated H.245 Port
Messages like Setup, Proceeding, Alerting, Connect, and Release Complete will be exchanged
over the H.225 protocol. These messages are for call control. There is a completely different
protocol called H.245 that is used to negotiate the IP addresses, UDP Port numbers, and codec
that will be used for the media streams of the call.

In either the Alerting, or Connect message the called endpoint will put in a section called H.245
address. This port triggers the calling party to setup a new TCP session to the called party for the
purposes of exchanging H.245 messages.

I used Notepad++ to search for the guid in all trace files, then browsed through all of the H.225
messages until I find the one with the port:


Here you can see that the H.245 port is 58820 and it comes in the Connect message at 11:45:34
(when the called party answered). I've highlighted this port as it is crucial to our next step.

Locate the H.245 TTPid based on H.245 Port
Now that we have the H.245 Port we can look for the process identifier that will allow us to find
all H.245 messages for this call.

Note
This procedure below only applies to "Slow Start" calls. I will document "Fast Start" at another
point in time.

If the H.245 port comes on an Inbound H.225 message, search down in the traces for the port
number. We have to do post processing to create the H.245 process.
If the H.245 port is sent on an Outbound H.225 message, search up in the traces for the port
number. We have already done the processing to make the H.245 process and THEN we send out
the message with the port number.

This is an Inbound H.225 message in our example, so we will search down for the H.245 port
number until we see a line that looks like this:
06/24/2010 11:45:34.167 CCM|H245Interface(3)::start_Transition, (H245Client
session)
ip = (14.48.44.80), port = 58820, TA provided by Callee

In this instance we see that the H.245 interface created has a process ID of 3 H245Interface(3).
All H.245 message for this call will be exchanged on that process. Search down until you see a
message like the following to get the full process ID:
06/24/2010 11:45:34.181 CCM|H245ASN - TtPid=(1,100,16,3) -Outgoing -value
MultimediaSystemControlMessage ::= request : terminalCapabilitySet

This is an Outbound TCS. The identifier that we'll use as our future search string is
TtPid=(1,100,16,3). Go ahead and make this some other interesting color.

Use Notepad++ "Find in all Open Documents" (or similar search in your text editor) to get the
full H.245 session output from the start of the call to the end:


Find the Capabilities in the Terminal Capability Set
Each side will advertise the supported capabilities in the Terminal Capability Set (TCS) message.
One side will initially advertise all capabilities supported. The responding side will respond with
the matching supported capabilities.

Here the outbound TCS advertises support for:

{
capabilityTableEntryNumber 3,
capability receiveAudioCapability : g711Ulaw64k : 40
},
{
capabilityTableEntryNumber 4,
capability receiveAudioCapability : g711Alaw64k : 40
},
{
capabilityTableEntryNumber 5,
capability receiveAudioCapability : g729wAnnexB : 6
},
{
capabilityTableEntryNumber 6,
capability receiveAudioCapability : g729AnnexAwAnnexB : 6
},
{
capabilityTableEntryNumber 7,
capability receiveAudioCapability : g729 : 6
},
{
capabilityTableEntryNumber 8,
capability receiveAudioCapability : g729AnnexA : 6
},
{
capabilityTableEntryNumber 9,
capability receiveAndTransmitUserInputCapability : dtmf : NULL

G.711U/A @ up to 40 msec packetization (4 data samples per frame with each sample taking
10msec)
G.729/A/B @ 6 data samples per frame (60 msec packetization, since each sample takes 10msec)

Note:
G.711 uses the msec packetization interval between RTP packets in the TCS
G.729 uses the number of 10msec data samples per RTP packet inside the TCS

If you understand that each sample is 10msec in length then the conversion between the two is
pretty simple.

The most common packetization is 20msec, or 2 voice samples per RTP packet.

If we look at the capabilities Inbound we see that all of the same capabilities are supported.

Find the Codec, IP addresses, and UDP Ports used
When we go back to the subscriber traces, where the calling phone is registered, we can see that
Region configurations are setup for G.711 (64kbps as printed in the traces)
06/24/2010 11:45:34.194 CCM|RegionsServer::MatchCapabilities -- kbps=64,
capACount=6, capBCount=8

On the publisher we tell the far end H.323 node we're using G.711 @ 20 msec
06/24/2010 11:45:34.246 CCM|H245ASN - TtPid=(1,100,16,3) -Outgoing -value
MultimediaSystemControlMessage ::= request : openLogicalChannel :
{
forwardLogicalChannelNumber 1,
forwardLogicalChannelParameters
{
dataType audioData : g711Ulaw64k : 20,

We also get an inbound message for G.711 @ 20msec


On the subscriber we can go back to our TCP Handle and see that the SCCP calling phone is told
to Open a G.711 audio channel. The phone responds (StationInit) saying it will listen on UDP
port 24418.
06/24/2010 11:45:34.255 CCM|StationInit: (0000003) OpenReceiveChannelAck
Status=0,
IpAddr=IpAddr.type:0 ipAddr:0x0e302ccf000000000000000000000000(14.48.44.207),
Port=24418, PartyID=33554435

If we go back to the node where the H.245 session is ongoing, we see the following outgoing
OpenLogicalChannelAck. Notice that the UDP RTP port number we send out on the H.323 leg is
the exact port that the phone responded with in the SCCP ORCAck, 24418.
06/24/2010 11:45:34.257 CCM|H245ASN - TtPid=(1,100,16,3) -Outgoing -value
MultimediaSystemControlMessage ::= response : openLogicalChannelAck :
{
forwardLogicalChannelNumber 1,
forwardMultiplexAckParameters h2250LogicalChannelAckParameters :
{
sessionID 1,
mediaChannel unicastAddress : iPAddress :
{
network '0E302CCF'H,
tsapIdentifier 24418
},

The incoming OpenLogicalChannelAck says the called party will be listening on 23362
06/24/2010 11:45:34.259 CCM|H245ASN - TtPid=(1,100,16,3) -Incoming -value
MultimediaSystemControlMessage ::= response : openLogicalChannelAck :
{
forwardLogicalChannelNumber 1,
forwardMultiplexAckParameters h2250LogicalChannelAckParameters :
{
sessionID 1,
mediaChannel unicastAddress : iPAddress :
{
network '0E302CCC'H,
tsapIdentifier 23362
},

Going back to the publisher server where the Calling SCCP phone is registered we see CUCM
instructing to send RTP to this new IP and port using the previously established codec.
06/24/2010 11:45:34.260 CCM|StationD: (0000003) startMediaTransmission
conferenceID=42514739 passThruPartyID=33554435 remoteIpAddress=IpAddr.type:0
ipAddr:0x0e302ccc000000000000000000000000(14.48.44.204)
remotePortNumber=23362
milliSecondPacketSize=20 compressType=4(Media_Payload_G711Ulaw64k)

Further on in the call the Called party presses Hold, Resume, and End Call. You can use all of
the previously discussed techniques to track through the behavior of these steps in detail.