Seeing an imposing red warning that reads "ALERT: CHANNEL LIMIT EXCEEDED" as shown below? Worry not, because your trunk and voice service is still active.
This error stems from attempting to utilize more channels than you pay for on your trunk. Our portal displays this error to alert you when there are calls you are either not receiving, or not able to send out due to capacity issues. A channel is equivalent to a single inbound or outbound call at any given time.
Example: You have 6 channels (as shown in the example image above), so you can be on a maximum of 6 active calls at any given time. If you are actively using all of your channels and another call comes in, that caller will receive a busy signal.
We also provide you with a handy Capacity Limit tracker that will display how many times you have exceeded your Channel Limit in the current billing cycle. This issue can only be resolved by purchasing more channels for the trunk or making/receiving less calls.
Additional Info
- Call forwarding occupies 2 channels. One channel for the inbound leg of the forward, and another channel for the outbound leg.
- Any Failover/PSTN Backup routing through the same SIP trunk will FAIL if the capacity limit is reached. A failover option would be to have secondary routing in place. See our article on Failover Options.
- Support can manually clear your ALERT: CHANNEL LIMIT EXCEEDED/Capacity Limit Reached messages if needed.
- While our Unlimited Calling plans do have channel capacity limitations, our Minutes Package plans allow for unlimited channels and are a better fit for some customers. With Minutes Package plans, you are pre-paying for the minutes, so you can use them whenever needed. This is useful if you anticipate specific times where there will be high call volumes for your business.
- We do NOT provide detailed metric tracking for analyzing usage over time. The Capacity Limit tracker only provides the total number of times the Channel Capacity is exceeded.
If you suspect calls are failing due to an overcapacity of channel usage and would like to confirm it, you may open a ticket with our Support team at support@sip.us and we can take a look. Please provide specific call examples when inquiring so that we may check the channel usage on the SIP trunk at the correct time.