Offline extensions show as Idle hint

Hi all,

I am having the same issue as this post, which didn’t get many replies so rather continue an old thread I’ve opened up this new one. Here is the original thread - Some extensions remain with idle state, BLF trouble

Pretty much exactly the same problem. Extensions remain with an ‘Idle’ state even though they are offline. The other states seem to be working fine, as I can see some extensions with ‘InUse’ etc. Further, this only seems to affect extensions once they’ve registered for the first time. On extensions which have never registered, they display the ‘Unavailable’ state.

Here is some output that shows the problem…

sip show peers
1097/1097 (Unspecified) D Yes Yes A 0 UNKNOWN

core show hints
1097@ext-local : SIP/1097&Custom:DND1 State:Idle Watchers 3

sip show subscriptions
172.16.8.31 1001 0_3143583332@17 1097@from-inter Idle dialog-info+xml <none> 001800

The problem for users is that extensions which are offline, according to their BLF keys, are showing as online. This creates some confusion with staff, as this is a business with multiple offices so they’re not always aware that “certain users at site X have network problems and are unreachable” for example.

I couldn’t see any other dialplan hints to watch, so I’m sure I am monitoring the right ones. Is this normal, or a bug, am I doing something wrong here?

We are running FreePBX 2.11 and Asterisk 11.14.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: For comparison, here’s the above output for an extension which has never registered (and thus, currently offline) where the hints are correctly showing ‘Unavailable’ state.

sip show peers
1033 (Unspecified) D Yes Yes A 0 UNKNOWN

core show hints
1033@ext-local : SIP/1033&Custom:DND1 State:Unavailable Watchers 2

sip show subscriptions
172.28.10.67 1012 0_1738010103@17 1033@from-inter Unavailable dialog-info+xml <none> 001800

Nuts … the plot thickens … I fired up my test box, which has some Polycom extensions hanging off it. And, the state hints are working perfectly - that is, when I unplug a phone and watch it go Unreachable, the hint changes to state:Unavailable.

The customer is using Yealink phones.