provided by Star2Billing S.L.

Hello everyone,

I am using A2Billing with Asterisk which are set to work as a prepaid calling card. The problem that I am facing is that the interval time between the moment the user finishes entering their PIN Number and the IVR says the available create is around 10 seconds.

I have also set both the verbosity_level and logging_level to "0" but I am not seeing any changes and still the waiting time is around 10seconds.

Can someone let me know how I can improve on the time that a caller has to wait before they hear their credit?

Thanks,

Avestan

What happens if you press the # key after the pin?

Hello jroper,

Thank you for your replay. I tried pressing the # key right after the PIN Number. Doing so results in reduction of waiting time from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.

I guess that means some how the A2Billing is waiting for more digits for the PIN Number before it starts process of looking up in the DataBase!

Is it possible to reduce this waiting time without pressing the Key #?

Is it possible to even reduce the waiting beyond this?

Thank you for helpping out.

Avestan

Hi

Not easily, as A2Billing has to be told when not to expect any more digits, so this is a simple instruction to your customers.

In respect of the second part, when you watch the logging, you will see A2Billing call the desired number, measure the time from A2Billing calling to ringing. This is determined by the carrier, and there is nothing you can do about this, however, you may be able to do something about the rest of the time.

Joe

Hello,

If the A2Billing knows that the length of the pin number is 10 digits by setting "cid_auto_create_card_len = 10", then why the A2Billing has to wait longer even though when the 10 digits are entered?

In regard with the A2Billing calling the desired number, I am not facing any delay. The only delay that I am seeing is between the time the user enters the last digit of the pin number and the time that the available credit is announced to the user via the IVR.

As you mentioned in your replay, using the key # right after the last pin number reduces the delay from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. This is a great improvement, but still why there should be 5 seconds delay?!

Please note that I have only 100 pin numbers in the database and the delay is not due to the large database search.

Thanks,

Avestan

That setting is to simply automatically create a card, the number of digits for the cards is set in the Global Settings.

I am not getting any notable delay on any of my installations, so I can only assume there is an issue with either your installation or your hardware.

Joe

Hello again,

My installation is on a P4 2.4GHz with 2GB RAM. Initially, I thought reduction of the RAM can illustrates the system limitation. Therefore, I reduced the RAM to 500MB but I am not seeing any change in the delay. I also have a total of 100 pin numbers (Phantom Users) in the database of the test setup.

Here is the two different setup which I use for testing and I am seeing a similar waiting time on the both setups.

Test Setup One:
A2Billing 1.4
Asterisk 1.4

The A2Billing and Asterisk are installed on the same machine which is a P4 2.4GHz with 2GB RAM.

Test setup Two:
OpenSIPS 1.5
A2Billing 1.4
Asterisk 1.4
DRBD 8.3
HeartBeat 2
mon 1.2

The entire system is installed on total of 6 machines which are P4 2.4GHz with 2GB RAM.

1 x OpenSIPS 1.5
2 x A2Billing 1.4 - with DRBD 8.3, Heartbeat 2, and mon 1.2
3 x Asterisk 1.4

The OpenSIPS is used to load-balance the traffic between the 3 Asterisk boxes. The billing is done with two separate boxes which both runs the A2Billing. The DRBD, heartbeat, and mon are used to create the High-Avalibity testing and at any given time only one A2Billing box does the billing.

Would you be able to guesstimate the delay I should expect from the time the user finishes dialing the last digit of their pin to the time the A2Billing/Asterisk announces back the credit via the IVR?



Does this means once the user enters the last digit of their pin number, they get the credit announced back immediately (less say with less than one second waiting)?

Can I ask others to share their waiting time with their hardware to create some guidelines?

Thanks,

Avestan

I would say:-

Does this means once the user enters the last digit of their pin number followed by the # key, they get the credit announced back immediately (less say with less than one second waiting)?

Joe

Hello everyone,

I have some interesting finding which I would like to share here and will be glad to hear your experience on the subject.

It appears whenever "iphone" is used to make the call, the waiting FROM the time that the last digit of the PIN Number is entered TO the announcement of the available credit, is around 5 seconds more. The iphone used is on AT&T network. I also used other mobile hand-sets on AT&T network and also other providers and the result was as jroper suggested, "The credit is announced via IVR almost immediately after pressing the key #"

The testing was carried out using number of DIDs from various providers and the result is identical.

There seems to be something about iphone which results in the additional 5s seconds delay. I am puzzled and would like to hear about your experience on the same topic.

Most probably, I am going to run wireshirk later and hopfully dig out some more information.

Thanks,

Avestan