Test Call Hammer Report
Besides the actual test, you receive a test call “hammer” report of the calls made. Below is summary report for a very small test.
The actual delivered Excel report is available here. Test Call Hammer Report The example is for a very small test. Most reports cover hundreds of phone calls.
Options
Recorded audio as a wav
The PCAP of the call
Explanations
Most fields are obvious. We will explain the others
CID : The caller ID we sent you. It’s always 804-222-1111 and the caller ID name should say TESTCALL.COM. This helps you find the calls in your SMDR.
Disc Code : The SIP disconnection code. We are locking for a 200 code to know the call terminated normally.
Disc Status : Verbal form of 200.
Who Hung Up : Should be caller. We typical hang on for as long as your audio file plays and let you hang up.
MOS : This is the MOS value through our PSTN switch to you.
RTP Packets-Rec : How many audio packets we collected on the test. This should match you end if you are performing a “wireshark”
RTP Packets- Lost : Should be zero. This is a test QC measure.
Non silent % : A simple way to prove we heard your audio file. You could record a target file and edit half of the audio to zero. The value would then be 50%.
Audio File Name : It does not really say “on file”. This field has a value we use to find the file for you.
PCAP : Likewise, we can return the entire SIP trace to you. Understand this is a trace from us to our PSTN switch used to call you via PSTN. It would be the same as any caller would experience. In some cases, you may want a direct IP call to you bypassing the PSTN. Talks to us about that as it’s more complex.
Test Call Monitor Report
You are provided a URL to run these report on your own at any time. These reports are real time.
ANI : The caller ID we sent you. It’s always 804-222-1111 and the caller ID name should say TESTCALL.COM. This helps you find the calls in your SMDR.
DIALED : Your target PBX to be monitored once a minute.
REPORT : Did we hear a tone or not. And it’s three strikes, your emailed. So, while we call every minute, you do not get notified for 3 calls (3 minutes).
RECORDING URL : We provide a recording of the failed call for you to hear. (in beta)
Separate from this report, you are notified by email upon 3 failures, 4 failures and 5 failures to detect a 1004hz tone. Continued failures don’t email you. A tone success resets the fail counter to zero.
Reasons for a failed test
Testcall records a failure because during the test call, your 1004 hz tone had a distortion with some of the samples during the 10 seconds it listened.
Upon request, we interleave integrity “loopback” tests on our system with your test calls to insure the test failures are outside our network exit point which is a Northern Virgina switch.
So, a call failure is due to;
- Our system (we rule that out with interleaved call loopback test to our Northern Virgina switch and back to us.)
- the call transport path PAST our Northern Virgina switch toward your PBX. (Get a second test number on another carrier for us to test.)
- your PBX performance such as CPU overload, a pbx software service or process hung or maybe hard drive access issues.
Testcall is a monthly monitoring service. The testcalls represent a typical call you may recieve. Some failures are normal. To determine why some calls fail, we must charge for our time to analyze the failed calls.
This article explains the complexity of finding (PSTN) Public Switched Telephone Network transport problems. The article inspired our testcall test methodology as the article addresses audio problems in establishing radio links for radio show remotes such as “Hello, I’m Les Nessman with WKRP coming to you from the Pinedale Shopping Center”.