SIP troubleshooting on NS - sngrep and Homer5

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Hello,
Now that freepbx is getting implemented in nethserver I was searching for a way to monitor SIP packets in real time and i have been testing sngrep and Homer5

sngrep is a small and powerful package which can be run from CLI, it shows real time SIP and RTP packet traffic inside the shell

It comes with a binary which can be installed on CentOS and i though it could be added to NS GUI perhaps the same way BandwidthD was, showing the image above inside the GUI itself

The package also offers the possibility to export the gathered data to a PCAP file for later analysis with wireshark and many other SIP/RTP related functions… very handy

The other software is Homer5 (sipcapture), it uses Kamailio, open source session border controller, to handle received SIP capturing, stores it in a mysql DB and enables the user to search through its content from an HTML5 web interface

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It works in tandem with another package from sipcapture, Captagent, which handles VoIP traffic and sends it to the server which hosts Homer, enabling Homer to be a centralized way of storing calls for multiple freepbx servers if needed.

I tried both softwares on NS and they work great!

Homer is obviously way more advanced than sngrep, which only shows useful info while you are looking at it, while homer can store anything it is fed to and has advanced search capabilities.

The downside of Homer is that it has to be built from source, no binary is provided afaik, perhaps making it a no-go for NS, but still worth mentioning as it is the best VoIP troubleshooting platform imho

What do you guys think? Could sngrep be easely implemented as a package inside NS?

Does anyone have any experience with any other software to troubleshoot VoIP on a CentOS machine?

Cheers

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Tagging here some experts like @mrchiao @Stll0 @nethcman

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cc/ @ghost

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@edi @dnutan @alefattorini
yes SIPCAPTURE aka Homer is the best opensource for quality monitoring, and capturing sip traffic.
I do not give it priority, I see it more as commodity on Nethserver since it is not for everyone’s daily/essential use.

I liked @edi 's effort and for shedding the light on it .

What I find unique on this forum, is the enthusiasm of the members and the very nice modules/packages they bring along for discussion/proposition.

I daily learn about new tools, sometimes never heard of. It is very challenging forum it keeps on pushing beyond someone’s limit, but hey no issues I love it. Keep it that way climbing up high as yes the sky should be the limit.

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Hi @ghost, thanks!

I understand homer is nothing a regular pbx user will ever need / want! I just wanted to point out it exists and it is awesome!

What about sngrep tho? Having a quick way of peeking into what’s going on underneath your pbx could be valuable both for troubleshooting SIP related problems and be a good way of learning how SIP works for someone using NS’s freepbx as a “learning server” or something like that

Not really a developer so I’m not sure if this would be a lot of work, making it not worth the effort

A “wider” alternative could also be a button somewhere on the web gui that would download as a pcap file all traffic passing through the server NICs for a given period of time, making it a valuable way of troubleshooting generic traffic and not just for SIP

Just throwing some thoughts here :slight_smile:

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@edi I liked what you just raised as a feature, I am not against it however I cannot personally see it as an immediate need. In Priority I would give the lowest.
You know there are more essential and fundamental modules that need to be refined and tested for the next release or so.

For a technical person, I would recommend it especially if the sip server is exposed to the net.
We are trying to find solutions not to expose the SIP server to the net so far we are halfway through.

A “wider” alternative could also be a button somewhere on the web gui that would download as a pcap file all traffic passing through the server NICs for a given period of time, making it a valuable way of troubleshooting generic traffic and not just for SIP

You can have a link to your homer server through nextcloud if you have deployed it.
Just install external link module into nextcloud and that is it.
Add as much as you wish as external links.
But remember that you will need to expose your homer to the net if you wish to access it from outside your network.

On a side note, installing homer requires some skills. The homer automatic script is experimental for Centos so stay away from it unless you want to have a side ubuntu server.

I encourage all to keep on throwing ideas they really enlighten the community readers and members.
Thank you.

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Sure thing, i agree! It would be just a “cosmetic” enhancement of the GUI afterall

Not a “I want this implemented, thanks” thread :smiley:

Cheers!