Checking SIP Peers and Registry from the Asterisk Debug Page

The SIP Peers and Registry view inside the Asterisk Debug Page answers the two most common call-failure questions — is my Carrier Trunk actually up, and is that agent Phone registration current — without requiring you to SSH into the box and run Asterisk CLI commands by hand.

The SIP Peers table

A SIP peer in Asterisk is any SIP endpoint the system has a definition for — a carrier trunk, an agent softphone, or a physical desk phone. The peers table shows every one of them with three key columns:

• Name — the identifier used in the Asterisk configuration. For carrier trunks this usually matches the trunk name you configured in VICIdial. For agent phones it is the extension number.
• Status — either OK or UNREACHABLE. OK means Asterisk sent an OPTIONS ping to the peer and received a response. UNREACHABLE means the ping timed out. A carrier trunk that shows UNREACHABLE cannot carry calls — any dial attempt through it will fail immediately with no audio.
• Latency — the round-trip time in milliseconds for the OPTIONS exchange. A peer showing OK with latency above 200 ms is technically reachable but the high round-trip can cause SIP transaction timeouts and one-way audio if the carrier's own timers are strict.

The Registry table

The SIP registrar registry table is separate from the peers table and covers a different direction of traffic. Where the peers table shows endpoints your box is monitoring, the registry table shows active outbound registrations — the REGISTER messages your Asterisk is sending to your carrier so the carrier knows where to route inbound calls.

Each row in the registry table shows the Registration string (the URI your box registers as), the carrier host it is registering to, and the current state. The states you will see:

• Registered — your REGISTER was accepted and the carrier is holding the binding. Inbound calls will route correctly and outbound authentication will succeed on the next call attempt.
• Request Sent — Asterisk sent a REGISTER but has not received a 200 OK back yet. This is normal for a fraction of a second after a refresh; if it stays in this state for more than a minute, the carrier is not responding.
• Auth Sent or Failed — the carrier returned a 401 or 403. Check your SIP credentials in the trunk configuration. A peer can show OK in the peers table (OPTIONS pings succeed) while the registry shows Auth Sent if the credentials are wrong — the two checks are independent.

flowchart TD
  A["Calls failing on a trunk"] --> B{"Peer status in peers table?"}
  B -->|UNREACHABLE| C["Network path to carrier is broken"]
  C --> D["Check routing and firewall rules"]
  B -->|OK| E{"Registry state for same trunk?"}
  E -->|Registered| F["SIP layer is up - check dialplan and dial prefix"]
  E -->|Auth Sent or Failed| G["Credential mismatch"]
  G --> H["Correct SIP username and password in trunk config"]
  E -->|Request Sent - stuck| I["Carrier not responding to REGISTER"]
  I --> J["Check carrier status page and UDP port 5060"]

Checking agent phone registrations

Agent softphones and desk phones appear in the peers table as well. When an agent reports that calls are not ringing to them, the peers table is the first place to look. Find the agent's extension in the Name column. If it shows UNREACHABLE, the phone or softphone has lost its registration — it is no longer sending SIP keepalives to the box. The agent needs to restart the phone client or check their network connection. If it shows OK with normal latency but calls still do not ring through, the problem is in the Dialplan routing or the agent's session state in VICIdial, not the SIP layer.

The SIP trace in the Asterisk CLI tail below the peers section will show the raw REGISTER and OPTIONS exchanges if you need to go deeper than the summary table. Look for 401/403 response codes to spot authentication failures and 408 or no-response entries to spot network reachability problems.

For the full routine of keeping a VICIdial server healthy, see the guide to monitoring VICIdial server health and capacity. To understand the server load that Asterisk contributes to, the Server Performance Report shows how channel count and CPU correlate over a shift.

On VICIfast the Asterisk Debug Page is enabled from the start so you can check peer and registry state the moment a trunk issue appears. Start a VICIfast trial and have a fully managed VICIdial box live in under 40 seconds.