VQ for Asterisk: Free Call Quality Monitoring for Asterisk PBX

Free to use

VQ for Asterisk adds call quality monitoring to the Asterisk PBX you already run, free of charge. One command installs it: from then on, every call the PBX carries gets a network MOS score, packet loss and jitter figures and SIP call analytics, shown in a web dashboard and available through a REST API. Asterisk keeps running while it installs, and calls are never touched.

Install itSource on GitHub

Free call quality monitoring for Asterisk

VQ for Asterisk runs Sevana’s VQ Monitor engine, the same one as in the standalone VQ Monitor server, next to your PBX. The engine watches the PBX’s own network interfaces like a packet sniffer, so it never sits in Asterisk’s channels or media path, and a small Asterisk module starts it, keeps it running and lets you control it from the Asterisk CLI. There is no probe, mirror port or monitoring server to set up.

Install

On the Linux host where Asterisk runs:

curl -fsSL https://f.sevana.biz/vq-asterisk/install.sh | sudo bash

The installer finds your Asterisk and its configuration, shows the licence agreement for the engine and asks you to accept it. If the compiler, the Asterisk headers or the ZeroMQ library are missing, it offers to install them. It then builds the module for your Asterisk version, installs everything, and loads the module into the running PBX without restarting it. When it finishes, it prints the engine’s status and where to find the dashboard.

Options go after bash -s --, for example --iface eth0 to choose the capture interface or --dashboard-port 8080. The release files, with their SHA-256 checksums, are at f.sevana.biz/vq-asterisk. To install on a host without internet access, download the release and run install.sh --package.

How it works

The engine captures SIP and RTP with libpcap, ties every RTP stream to its SIP call, computes network MOS, and publishes per-stream and per-interval reports on a local ZeroMQ bus. The dashboard subscribes to that bus, stores the results in SQLite, and serves the web UI and REST API. The bus uses the same documented schema as the standalone VQ Monitor server, so your own tools can subscribe to it as well.

Asterisk
 ├─ chan_pjsip / RTP               calls, untouched
 └─ res_vq_monitor.so              starts, supervises and controls:
      ├─ vq-core   capture: SIP + RTP → network MOS → ZeroMQ reports (loopback)
      └─ vq-db     SQLite, web dashboard, REST API (loopback)
                        ▲
      SSH tunnel or reverse proxy with authentication ── your users

Record the calls you need to hear

Statistics are kept for every call. Audio is only recorded on request, because it takes about 1.3 MB per stream for every 10 seconds, against a few hundred bytes for the statistics. Add a pattern such as a SIP address or a Call-ID to the track list, and the matching calls are recorded, including calls already in progress. You can then play or download them from the dashboard. By default, statistics are kept for 14 days and audio for one hour.

*CLI> vq track add 1002@
*CLI> vq show track
*CLI> vq track clear

The dashboard’s Track list page edits the same list, so support staff can record a problem extension’s calls without shell access to the PBX.

Dashboard, SIP call analytics and REST API

• Summary: live stream count, and for the last hour and last 24 hours the share of streams with good network MOS and the average score.
• Streams: one row per RTP stream, with filter expressions such as network_mos < 3.6 && jitter > 20 and CSV export.
• Stream detail: codec, packets, loss, jitter, network MOS for each 10-second interval, the SIP call, and the recorded audio if any.
• SIP calls: every SIP dialog the PBX handled, with its outcome and final response code, and a timeline showing codecs, user agents and which side hung up.
• Call diagnostics: after each call, the engine compares its two directions and flags one-way audio, a codec or packetization (ptime) mismatch, a payload type mismatch, a direction that stopped early, and late media. The warnings show in the SIP call list, on the call detail page and in the REST API.
• Alarms: rules that run a command or call a webhook when network MOS, packet loss, jitter, failed calls, one-way audio or capture drops cross a limit you set; the Alarms page shows their state and the latest alarms.

Everything on the dashboard is also available as JSON or CSV through the documented REST API, so the data can feed your own reporting, NOC tools or billing checks.

Command line reference

Requirements

Add Sevana MOS: what callers actually heard

Network MOS shows what the transport delivered. It cannot see echo, silence, clipping or a badly configured codec, which spoil calls that the network carried perfectly. Sevana’s perceptual PVQA analysis decodes the audio and scores what the caller actually heard, and its detectors name the impairment. The free edition does network analysis only. Sevana MOS, the impairment detectors and support are available with a commercial licence.

Module or standalone server?

Choose VQ for Asterisk when you run one or a few Asterisk PBXs and want quality monitoring without extra hardware, a SPAN port or a separate server. Choose the standalone VQ Monitor server for carrier links, SBCs and mixed networks: it captures mirrored traffic or HEP feeds, scales out with several probes feeding one database, and supports DPDK capture on multi-million packet-per-second links. Both use the same engine, so their network MOS is directly comparable.

Get started

Install VQ for Asterisk on your PBX in a few minutes, or talk to us about Sevana MOS and the standalone VQ Monitor.

Install itContact Sevana