[Asterisk-Dev] Long comments and ideas for sip.conf

[Steven Critchfield]

On Thu, 2003-09-04 at 09:58, Thorsten Lockert wrote:
> I like the idea of moving registration into the SIP peer definition,
> especially if that also gets extended to having declarations for a
> proxy to be used (e.g. using fwdnat.pulver.com as a proxy for all
> fwd.pulver.com stuff, needed if your * box is behind NAT)...
> 
> The rest of the stuff also seems to substantially simplify management
> of the SIP configuration file, if you have a mix of device types and
> such.  In particular if you have a lot of devices.  The other option
> I would like to see for this (and for most of the other config files)
> is to have * read them directly from some database instead of flat
> files, and an easy way to have it being re-read without restarting
> *...
> 
> Restarting * to make configuration changes take effect becomes very
> much a non-option once you start running a lot of users...

Asterisk will reread config files with just a reload, not restart.
Databases are overkill for config files not to mention they are easier
to corrupt beyond use and take down your entire system than are flat
files. Most people who want databases are wanting an easy way to make a
web based configurator so they don't have to learn how to write the flat
files out from their simple php files. This is a bad reason to use a
database. What would be interesting though is a PAM like solution that
could be used across all VoIP solutions. The first module could be the
flat config file reader, and then all you database pansies could get
your option on as well. You could even do this via LDAP then. LDAP would
be nice in the end as you could then make all the windows weenies happy
with having their PDC control access to the phone system too.

PAM arguments will run very much like the switch arguments Mark puts
forth every time someone wants databased extensions support.
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>