Event ID 14499 - Federation Issue

Just recently I can across this issue TWICE!
Thats enough to warrant another glass of...never mind, a post on the blog will have to suffice ;-)

Federation was failing and I got the following error message in the event log on the Edge Server I was building...

Running a S4 and SIPStack trace on the Edge also reported a 504 error between the two environments but most interestingly the highlighted error.

This alluded to the real issue, the new Edge server was unable to resolve the federation partners Edge Server discovered address.

Ahhh...gotta love DNS issues

Some Outgoing Calls timeout

I was working on a strange issue at a customer regarding Enterprise Voice from Lync.
The issue:
Some calls fail before call setup completes...In my case it was mostly landline calls, cell calls worked fine.

A wireshark trace showed that Lync was "getting bored" waiting for a response from my SIP gateway. Then sends a CANCEL to which the gateway sends a SIP 487.

The Lync Mediation Server is sending a CANCEL on call setup, after a very short time (seemed like 8 seconds but must have been 10 seconds all up)

The culprit...
After the Lync 2010 CU4 update from Microsoft, Lync has become impatient  and if the remote party has not responded with more that “100 Trying” during 10 sec the Mediation Server sends a CANCEL ! 

This timer was earlier 30 – 40 seconds, but is now only 10 !!
The remote party can’t respond with more that “100 Trying”, until they have received anything from the Called Party.

The fix:

Configuring Parameters

Some of the above timeouts can be configured. The file which has the configurable parameters is ‘OutboundRouting.exe.config”  Use caution when changing these values, as a rule of thumb try not to increase or decrease the value by more than 25% of its original value.

From OutboundRouting.exe.config

<configuration>

    <appSettings>

      <add key=”FailOverTimeout” value=”10000″/> – The culprit
      <add key=”MinGwWaitingTime” value=”1″/>

      <add key=”MaxGwWaitingTime” value=”20″/>

      <add key=”FailuresForGatewayDown” value=”10″/>

      <add key=”FailuresForGatewayLessPreferred” value=”25″/>

      <!– Valid values are between 5 and 600 –>

      <add key=”HealthMonitoringInterval” value=”300″/>

      <!– Valid values are between 60 and 3600 –>

      <add key=”GatewayStateReportingInterval” value=”1800″ />

  </appSettings>

</configuration>

The FailOverTimeout should be increased to the desired time limit.
The file is found under 
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Lync Server 2010\Server\Core on the Lync 2010 FrontEnd Server.
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Lync Server 2013\Server\Core on the Lync 2013 FrontEnd Server.

Changing the value from 10000 (10 sec) to 15000 (15 sec) solved the issue.
After changing this value, it’s recommended to reboot the server. I tried restarting services but wasn't successful.

Warning
Next time you run Lync updates this value may be reset to 10000 - Keep a record!
This one caught me out a second time after an update reset the timer to 10 seconds