Knowledge Share – ISDN Se0/2/1:23 **ERROR**: L3_BadPeerMsg – Part I

Just when you think you have seen it all comes a humbling experience and strike you in the face. It started like any other typical day two support issue. Some users are experiencing issues, we look and find something, fix it, call to verify and they are still having problems. Calls from the outside to one of their numbers are not coming through. But when I try it myself it works. Weird. Decided to head down there and see for myself, it takes some interviewing and testing when I finally get a clear symptom demonstration, a call I make to that number from another phone, the called phone (Cisco 7942) is ringing one short half ring and that’s it. On the calling phone I hear a single ring back tone and then a message saying ‘no circuits available’. Let’s try again; it happens almost every time I’m calling from one cell phone, but not when calling from the other. Strange … Ssh into the voice gateway and executing the good old ‘debug isdn q931’, making a call and looking at the output, perhaps that will make sense. The output looked like that: 041165: Nov 5 10:43:17.412 PDT: ISDN Se0/0/0:23 Q931: RX <- SETUP pd = 8 callref = 0x0298 Bearer Capability i = 0x8090A2 Standard = CCITT Transfer Capability = Speech Transfer Mode = Circuit Transfer Rate = 64 kbit/s Channel ID i = 0xA98395 Exclusive, Channel 21 Facility i = 0x9F8B0100A10F02016606072A8648CE1500040A0100 Progress Ind i = 0x8283 – Origination address is non-ISDN Calling Party Number i = 0x2183, ‘7025566778’ Plan:ISDN, Type:National Called Party Number i = 0xA1, ‘7024566543’ Plan:ISDN, Type:National 041166: Nov 5 10:43:17.420 PDT: ISDN Se0/0/0:23 Q931: RX <- FACILITY pd = 8 callref = 0x0298 Facility i = 0x9F8B0100A117020167020100800F4C61732056656761732043616E696E 041167: Nov 5 10:43:17.428 PDT: ISDN Se0/0/0:23 **ERROR**: L3_BadPeerMsg: event 0x62 cr 0x8298 callid 0x0 041168: Nov 5 10:43:17.428 PDT: ISDN Se0/0/0:23 Q931: TX -> RELEASE_COMP pd = 8 callref = 0x8298 Cause i = 0x80D1 – Invalid call reference value Trying to search for “L3_BadPeerMsg” in Google, netpro, Cisco’s web site – nothing really makes any sense. No documented bugs in Cisco that fit in as well. Am I going to have to upgrade IOS on that router? Just did that a few weeks ago to make it support ILBC. Should I open a TAC case – that will take forever. Also, why is this problem not systematic, how come one phone call in without any problems and another can’t? And how come there are no outbound problems? As I said, just when you think you’ve seen it all. Before I finish the story, calling on all experts and asking what would you do? what do you think is the problem? *** The answering readers will get to participate in the next Cisco Subnet giveaways 😉