There is an issues currently with certain Linux environments that can cause the queue music for Multimedia Skills to stop after approximately 10 minutes. While not affecting the majority of Linux users, we have seen a limited number of customers experience this.
Xima Development has been unable to replicate this issue in house but we have worked with several customers systems in an effort to identify and remedy this issue. Reports have shown that this is not limited to only a certain distribution of Linux, and has been experienced on CentOS 7-8 and Ubuntu.
Using Wireshark packet captures, we can see that up until around the 10 minute mark of a call, audio packets are traveling between the IP Office and the MM server fine. At the point of failure, audio packets continue to move from the IP Office to MM but the packets from the MM server to the IP Office end. The error message "Destination unreachable (Port unreachable)" starts to show on the MM server side indicating that it is unable to reach the IP Office in order to deliver these audio packets. Sites where troubleshooting has taken place have verified that firewalls and port forwarding is not the issue.
There are a couple different paths to work around this issue:
- A few locations have been able to change their Linux distro with success but the majority have not been successful with this.
- It is possible to overflow a skill before the 10 minute mark to an overflow skill that is prioritized higher than the originating skill. This will keep music playing for the caller and ensure that they will still be answered in the order they called in. The unfortunate side affects of this method is that reporting becomes complicated as the calls are not kept to just one skill and also the message that plays for the customer to predict how long they have in queue is inaccurate.
- The most successful work around has been to switch the Multimedia server to a Windows OS. We have not had any reports of this issue on any Windows OS and this has resolved the problem immediately for those that chose to go this route. This is Xima Software's recommended solution.
If you have any questions in relation to this, please reach out to Xima Support.