VoIP/SIP services monitoring

Considering the VoIP services as one of the most important things to provide the connectivity between the workers and professionals in companies, it’s good to know that these services are properly running in our environments. In this article, let's have a closer look at the SIP sensor, which allows us to ensure the reliability of implemented VoIP/SIP services.

Why we should implement the voice over IP solutions?

VoIP as the service allows us to learn and resolve audio connectivity issues as part of the IT architecture in the company. In relation to solutions based on analog systems, VoIP provides much better quality of the connection and audio between participants of the conversation, lower costs of the digital central’s infrastructure maintenance and a lot of possibilities of integrating additional features like calls queuing, conferences or call centers configuration in a user-friendly way.

The SIP protocol is used to implement the mentioned solutions. Through a standardized scheme of the messages by which devices(user agents) communicate with the SIP servers configuration and ensure that VoIP packets flows proceed correctly. NetCrunch allows us to monitor the behavior of proper execution of SIP messages on devices working under SIP protocol.

In relation to the obsolete analog architecture of telephony – solutions based on VoIP infrastructure guarantee more advanced and scalable ways to provide communications between people within the company and beyond.

Basic SIP Sensor

The usage of Basic SIP Sensor NetCrunch allows checking the connection to the VoIP server and proper initiation of running sessions. Monitored parameters describe the response time for request “OPTIONS” and “INVITE” requests executed on the SIP server node. The sensor is also checking the actual state of the server, with the returned code of monitored appliance and detailed text description of the state. Basic SIP Sensor supports the following SIP platform services: FreeSWITH, Asterisk, OnSIP, FreeSWITCH Legacy, Asterisk Legacy.

By default, the following parameters are monitored by this monitoring sensor:

• Counters:
  • Response time
• Alerts:
  • Invalid response
  • Connection error

Configuration of Basic SIP Sensor

On the configuration process for this sensor we can define in which mode the sensor will be performing the monitoring tasks:

• Connection only – which will be only testing the proper connection to the monitored SIP server, with the short status info and returned code from connection attempt,
• Session Invitation – this mode requires to provide the SIP User Credentials to establish the session to the server and execute the “OPTIONS” and “INVITE” messages. This mode returns the information about a response for these requests and detailed notification about the state of the device if the sensor returns the error code.

Like other sensors available in the NetCrunch – for this one administrator can configure additional actions, based on the response from the sensors, which will perform additional actions on the SIP server, like restarting it, or switching the current mode of server availability to other audio communication devices in the monitored network.

sipvoip