The ss7view command is a multi purpose tool for monitoring the operation
of the SS7_D7 Custom Server. It has the following functions:
- Monitoring the service state and call connection states of all circuits
- Monitoring the internal event log
- Monitoring the SS7 and Blueworx Voice Response message flows
- Control event capture through error message triggers
- Monitoring call statistical information
- Translating release cause code
- Providing information about the signaling state table
The following sections describe how to use the ss7view command for each
of the functions in the above list.
ss7view – help options
If you run ss7view without any argument, or with the –help argument,
the following screen is displayed, listing all the possible operations and
how to view help information for each of them :
Prompt> ss7view -help
ss7view :: SS7_D7 monitoring tools
----------------------------------
For help on ....
SS7-D7 Event ............. Type ss7view -help event
SS7 ISUP Messages ........ Type ss7view -help message
Monitors circuits ........ Type ss7view -help circuit
SS7 Stats ................ Type ss7view -help stats
Event triggering ......... Type ss7view -help trigger
Trace level monitoring ... Type ss7view -help trace
Cause Code explanation ... Type ss7view -help cause
Information .............. Type ss7view -help info
ss7view – monitor
circuits
This monitor circuit option shows the current service state and call state
of all circuits on the current
Blueworx Voice Response client. To use it, enter
ss7view –circuit [<trunks>] The
[<trunks>] is optional, and
defines how many trunks to display at one time. The default is 16. A typical
screen might look like this:
SS7 Circuit Status on b80h []
│0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────
1│*
2│
3│
4│
5│
6│
7│
8│
9│
10│
11│
12│
13│
14│
15│
16│
────┴────────────────────────────────────────────
Selected Circuit ... 0
Call state = answ
Near End Service state = Ubk
Far End Service state = Ubk
Press Q to quit
The central area of the screen shows a real-time updating interpretation
of the current state of each circuit. This is ordered in rows of trunks and
columns of circuits within trunks. Note that the number of the column is 0-23
for T1 and 0-31 for E1. The E1 display will show the letters F and S in the
zero and sixteenth column. This is to indicate the frame and signaling timeslot.
Within the table a single character is used to denote the current state.
For an SS7 cluster with more trunks than that are being displayed, others
can be shown by either using the up and down cursors keys or the Page Up and
Page Down keys to scroll through the display.
Although all the circuits of the SS7 cluster are displayed, only those
pertaining to this client will show their call state. Trunks for other Blueworx Voice Response clients
show only their redundancy state relative to this client.
The lower part of the screen shows details of an individual circuit. The
CIC value of the circuit being viewed is shown in the first line. This can
be selected using the cursor keys to move the reversed video character to
the desired circuit. The other three lines show the internal states of Call,
Near End Service and Far End Service. Refer to ss7view –info for
a legend to interpret the characters and phrases that are displayed on this
screen.
ss7view –event
The SS7_D7 custom server is based on a state table design (this is different
to a Blueworx Voice Response state table). Each time a message is received, the SS7_D7 state
table engine is run to generate the required reaction and also log events.
These events are logged in shared memory which can in turn be read by ss7view.
The simplest form of ss7view –event shows all logged events since
SS7_D7 started running, or when it wrapped. Other options are as follows:
- –t
- Tail event buffer. Once the current events have been displayed, ss7view
continues to monitor the event buffer and display new events as they are detected.
Use Ctrl + C to exit from this mode
- –c <cic> or –c <cic>–<cic>
- Filters the event display so that only events relating to the <cic>
or the <cic>–<cic> range are displayed.
- –s
- Use with the –c option to re-enable displaying of non cic-based
events.
- –R <filename>
- Copies the event buffer in raw mode into a named file for later processing.
This option is used in the ss7view – trigger option (see ss7view –trigger).
- –f <filename> or –f <filename>,<state
table>
- instead of using the current event buffer, this option processes data
stored in <filename> that was previously created with the –R option.
The additional <state table> is for machines that are not currently using
the same state table as the originating machine.
ss7view –message
The ss7view –message option uses the event information to interpret
the message flows through SS7_D7 custom server,
Blueworx Voice Response and SS7 Stack. Below
is an example output from ss7view for a single inbound call on CIC 0.
13:29:38.264:0000: IAM/ISUP_SETUP[1234] ---------->>
13:29:38.265:0000: SL_CALL_SETUP_IND ---------->>
13:29:38.265:0000: <<---------- ACM/ISUP_OGC_SELECTED
13:29:38.265:0000: <<---------- ACM/ISUP_ALERT
13:29:38.268:0000: <<---------- SL_CALL_ANSWER_REQ
13:29:38.268:0000: SL_CALL_ANSWER_CNF [SL_REPLY_SUCCESS] ------->>
13:29:38.269:0000: <<---------- ANM/ISUP_SETUP
.......
13:29:41.846:0000: <<---------- SL_CALL_TERMINATE_REQ
13:29:41.846:0000: <<---------- REL/ISUP_RELEASE[Cause:CSV_NORMALCALLCLR]
13:29:41.861:0000: RLC/ISUP_RELEASE ---------->>
13:29:41.862:0000: SL_CALL_TERMINATE_CNF [SL_REPLY_SUCCESS] ---->>
The information show is:
- hh:mm:ss:mmm
- The time stamp of the event down to milliseconds
- cccc
- CIC number of circuits
- Message flows
- From left to right, these are:
- Network/SS7 Stack
- SS7_D7 custom server
- Blueworx Voice Response
The arrows show the direction that the message travels. In the above
example, the first line shows IAM message being sent from the SS7 Stack to
the SS7_D7. The next shows that SS7_D7 has converted this message into a SL_CALL_SETUP_ID
message, which is then passed onto
Blueworx Voice Response, and so on.
The following arguments are available:
- –t
- After displaying the current message, monitor the event buffer for new
messages, and display when detected. Use Ctrl + C to exit from this mode.
- –<cic>
- filters events to show only messages for the given CIC.
ss7view –trigger
This option allows ss7view to define to SS7_D7 which errors, when detected,
should cause the execution of a predefined command. This is generally used
to capture event-buffer information prior to an error being detected. The
collected information can then be subsequently examined to discover the reason
for the error.
The command that is run is defined in the Logevent.cfg (see
Logging and event file for further information). The ss7view –trigger option
can define and redefine which errors trigger a dump of the event buffer. The
format of the command is ss7view -trigger <trigger options>, with possible
options as follows:
- d<event>
- Deletes event <event>
- i<event>=<times>
- Inserts event <event> to trigger a maximum of <times> times.
- r<event>
- Refreshes event <event>. The maximum <times> is reset.
- u<event>=<times>
- Updates event <event> as that the maximum time is <times>
- s
- Shows the setting of all current active triggers.
For example
ss7view -trigger i30000=2d30002s performs the following:
- Insert event 30000 to trigger twice
- Delete event 30002
- Show the resulting setting
Note: only errors within the range 30000 and 31999 that are
generated by SS7_D7 can be used as triggers.
ss7view -trace
The ss7view –trace option controls a secondary tracing facility
that involves writing text messages to a file. This form of tracing
can be used to identify specific problem areas in very low call volumes and
is not recommended for general use. An example of such a use would be to identify
message and parameter problems in SS7 when used on a new or different variant
of an SS7 network. The command takes the format ss7view -trace <option>,
where the options are list below. Each option is used with either a + or –
preceding them. The + and - mean enable and disable the mode respectively.
- A
- Action class
- i
- Information class
- z
- Maintenance
- S
- Subsystem (AIX operations) class
- m
- Blueworx Voice Response and ISUP messages
- t
- Dump of table information
- c
- clear – disable all modes previous enabled
- d
- display the currently enabled modes
For example,
ss7view -trace +iA-td :
- Enables information
- Enables actions
- Disables tables
- Displays current settings.
Trace information is appended to
/usr/lpp/dirTalk/db/current_dir/oam_log/SS7/SS7-Trace.
ss7view –stat
The SS7_D7 custom server can collect some basic statistical information
about call rates and process waiting times. The enablement of this feature
and its sampling rates are defined in the LogEvent.cfg file (see Logging and event file for more information). To run the command enter ss7view –stat. This command continuously updates the screen with new information
as each time period is complete. To exit this program use Control + C.
The columns are defined as follows:-
- Time Range
- The timestamp for the end of the period just sampled.
- Busy Ratio
- A rough calculation of the ratio of time spent waiting for messages
against the time processing messages. A typical value of 14% indicates that
in one second, approximately 1/7 of that second was spent processing messages.
This is a useful indicator to show when the SS7_D7 custom server is not getting
sufficient processing time.
- Network IAM
- A count of inbound call setup messages.
- Network REL
- A count of release messages from the network.
- Network ABRT
- A count of inbound calls that have been aborted (calls that did not
reach the answer state).
- Blueworx Voice Response IAM
- A count of outbound call setup messages.
- Blueworx Voice Response REL
- A count of release messages generated by Blueworx Voice Response.
- Blueworx Voice Response ABRT
- A count of outbound calls that have been aborted.
- BHCA
- A rough projection of the Busy Hour call attempts. It is a calculation
of the number of call setups over the current sample period and the previous
five sample periods as if consecutive over an hour.
- BHCC
- A rough projection of the Busy Hour call completion. This is calculated
in the same way as BHCA, but is based on the release messages.
ss7view –info
Information that relates to the Signaling State Table can be displayed
through the ss7view –info option.
Enter ss7view –info –p to display the current
protocol and variant information of the loaded Signaling State Table.
Enter ss7view –info –c to display a legend of
the possible circuit states as shown in ss7view –circuit, with brief
and full descriptions.
ss7view –cause <name/value>
This option interprets a Release cause code into a full description. The
option takes a single argument of either a numerical value or a mnemonic label.
For example ss7view –cause 16 or ss7view –cause
CSV_NORMALCALLCLR.
All mnemonics start with the letters CSV and may appear in other ss7view
options.