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Are we the only ones having Call Quality Issues with our 8x8 Phone System?

Justin Braun posted 02-01-2023 12:01

We recently switched to 8x8 from another phone system that was working perfectly for years, and so far our experience has been less than desirable. We are consistently having intermittent problems that include poor audio quality audio (i.e. choppy, glitchy, staticky), customer complaints that they cant reach us and are getting a busy signal, dropped calls, 10 second delays when transferring calls to an internal extension, ghost calls, etc.

We're having the same types of problems with two different physical office locations in Florida (Fort Lauderdale and Orlando) each with a different Internet Service Provider (Comcast Business and Spectrum Business).

I opened a support ticket on 1/16/2023, ran their network utility several times, provided logs, and have so far received very little support or technical assistance. Yesterday they apologized for a delayed response and said the case was escalated, but I feel I'm getting the runaround here. Its been 17 days since I opened the support ticket and there's no end in sight!

Is anyone else having problems or is it just us?

Ben Elsden posted 02-02-2023 00:39

Morning Justin,

1) Was your old phone system a voice over IP solution as well?
2) Did you install the system yourselves, or was there a reseller?
3) Do you have quality of service setup on the network?
4) What are your network speeds?

Thanks,
Ben

Justin Braun posted 02-02-2023 06:21

1) Yes our old phone system was VOIP as well.
2) We had a reseller install the ssytem for us and work with our IT Managed Service Provider.
3) Yes we have a QoS policy for VOIP setup in our Sophos Firewall
4) Just ran speed tests in both locations. In the Orlando office we're getting 46.06 mbps download, and 45.85 mbps upload. In our Fort Lauderdale office we're getting 542.4 mbps download, and 41.7 mbps upload.

Ben Elsden posted 02-02-2023 06:41

Thanks for the update Justin.

What have the network utility tests looked like? Have your IT company followed the Sophos setup guide from 8x8? https://support.8x8.com/equipment-devices/network-devices/Configuring_Sophos_XG_firewall_for_8x8

Is the network using VLANs?
What handsets do you have?
I would recommend adding in 8x8's GTM servers on the handsets to see how it goes 8.28.0.9 and 192.84.18.11

Justin Braun posted 02-02-2023 13:53

8x8 did get back to us and suggested we change our DNS server because its using internal DNS and it looks like there are some routing issues. The DNS is internal because we have a local domain and domain controller and we cant change that because it will cause issues with user account authentication. So they set the primary and secondary DNS to 8.28.0.9 and 192.84.18.11 directly on my phone. We'll see how that goes.

The IT company says they have followed the Sophos setup guide from 8x8.

We do not have any VLANS.
Our handsets are as follows: sixteen Polycom VVX 410, ten Polycom VVX 411, and five Yealink T46S phones.

Ian Measures posted 02-03-2023 01:25

Justin,

Just reaching out here as I had a similar issue with a customer (I am a reseller). SOPHOS firewalls and 8 x 8 dont really like each other, so we have implemented the 8 x 8 GTM servers (8.28.0.9 and 192.84.18.11 as the Primary and Secondary DNS servers) directly onto the handsets and this resolved pretty much ALL of the customer issues. Hope this helps you out. Ian

Ben Elsden posted 02-03-2023 01:51

Thanks for the addition Ian :)

I have one more point as well, 8x8 can push the 8x8 GTM servers to the Poly handsets (they need a reboot). The Yealinks will need manual changes though

Hope this resolves the issues Justin

Justin Braun posted 02-03-2023 05:22

Thank you. I appreciate the feedback. We'll push the GTM servers to all of the handsets.

Justin Braun posted 02-10-2023 10:34

Pushing the GTM servers to the handsets did NOT solve our problems. We had 8x8 push the GTM servers directly to the Polycom phones, and I manually updated my Yealink to use 8.28.0.9 and 192.84.18.11 as the Primary and Secondary DNS servers. Phones were restarted and same problems were happening. Does doing this completely bypass the network DNS servers which are our local domain controller (x.x.x.x) and 8.8.8.8 (google) as primary and secondary DNS servers?

We're now using our ISP's DNS server as secondary DNS on our network instead of google (8.8.8.8) because we were told google was trying to route our traffic through hong kong at some point. We just made this change yesterday afternoon so not sure if this make any difference yet.

I ran the 8x8 network utility with and without our firewall in place [from our fort lauderdale office] and they say there is packet loss and bandwidth throttling with traffic going through the firewall. We've followed the recommendations from the following article: https://support.8x8.com/equipment-devices/network-devices/Configuring_Sophos_XG_firewall_for_8x8. The UDP Timeout Stream is set to 660 and strict policy is off. SIP ALG is currently turned on but we are being told that depends on the specific model and firmware version and that article is referring to a Sophos XG 85.

The Ft. Lauderdale firewall is a Sophos XGS107 - Sophos Firmware Version SFOS 18.5.0 GA-Build264 (There is a firmware update available to SFOS 19.5.0 GA-Build197 but 8x8 will not advise on this)
The Orlando firewall is a Sophos XG310 - Sophos Firmware Version SFOD 18.5.3 MR-3Build408

Are there any specific firmware version reccomendations or configuration settings? Should SIP ALG be turned on or off for our specific model firewall?

Any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Ian Measures posted 02-13-2023 00:49

Morning Justin,

Sorry to hear this issue isnt going away for you. We have had an instance whereby turning SIP ALG off on the Sophos unit has worked. The firewall guys arent 100% sure WHY it has rectified the issue as the recommended is to have it running on SOPHOS units, but it has worked. If it looks like there is a throttling issue, make sure there isnt any DPI enabled on any 8 x 8 rules/routing.

Ken Sauer Jr. posted 02-28-2023 12:54

Happened to us as well 3 weeks of phones not working.

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