[asterisk-dev] Feature request: Ability to assign which nic card or mac address to use for each trunk in sip.conf

Thu May 28 20:08:39 CDT 2009

Clarification: I used the words "phone 1" and "phone 2" in the description of the temporary forced work around in the email reply that I just sent (below).
What I meant was "phone number 1" and "phone number 2". These are two of the phone numbers I rent from NTT and which need separate registrations for Asterisk in the NTT router.

-----Original Message-----
From: JwexlerAt MailDotCom [mailto:jwexler at mail.usa.com] 
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 9:55 AM
To: asterisk-dev at lists.digium.com
Cc: jwexler at mail.usa.com
Subject: RE: [asterisk-dev] Feature request: Ability to assign which nic card or mac address to use for each trunk in sip.conf

The reasoning for NTT's policy change to limit registrations of each mac address to only one registration is of course unclear. Their firmware development division made that decision and are not providing the reasons why to their customer service or maintenance departments.

NTT does not block sip data itself. I have phones in other locations on the public net for example which register with the asterisk box. The restriction that they introduced to the firmware of all their routers is specifically to register the mac address of the registering devices, allow new mac address registrations, deny registrations where that mac address was previously used. I can force a temporary workaround that temporarily restores the functioning of inbound calls for 2 phone numbers by registering phone 1 with eth0, then bring down eth0 and commenting out the phone 1 register statement and then registering with eth1 for phone 2. Then commenting out the register statement of phone 2 and bringing eth0 back up and then rebooting the asterisk box. Inbound calls for both phone 1 and phone 2 will then be received by Asterisk and the calls appear normal. Outbound only works for the trunk for phone 1 because that is the mac address for eth0 which asterisk uses. Within a few hours, the router recycles and would require the process to be re-performed and thus this kind of workaround for inbound calls is not a solution.

Reason that NTT has this monopoly is that they have the monopoly on the physical wiring connections to buildings and peoples homes. Literally the physical wires on the poles are theirs (with some in some locations owned by KDDI). If both NTT and KDDI wires are available, buildings then choose whether to install the connection to the pole to either NTT or KDDI. (For fiber, they have to put a connection box inside the buildings themselves which is actually a somewhat expensive fixed fee to the building tenants. Once that fixture is in place, it is very difficult for a change from that company to the other. Most of the connections are to NTT's infrastracture (they use to be the government run phone company).

In terms of the Asterisk user base in Japan, while I don't know what the number or percentage of folks there are, I can certainly say that there is a live and growing user base. I make that assumption from my reading posts, etc from other users (all in Japanese though - the English language difficulties among folks here in general constrict their ability to have their voices heard overseas.) If it would be helpful, I can certainly post links to messages from other folks here struggling with the same issue. Here's one for example (#180 on the page s/he is describing the issue of only 1 mac address per registration). (This is not necessarily a recommended reference post, just the first result from the search I just did):
http://pc11.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/hard/1236994712/

Here's the search I just used for that link (it has others in the results as well) (Translation of the search terms are NTT router MAC address registration restriction fiber):
http://search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=NTT+%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC+MAC%E3%82%A2%E3%83%89%E3%83%AC%E3%82%B9+%E7%99%BB%E9%8C%B2%E3%80%80%E5%88%B6%E9%99%90+%E5%85%89%E9%9B%BB%E8%A9%B1&ei=UTF-8&fr=top_ga1_sa&x=wrt

In terms of the "multipath solutions", that was someone else's comment and thus I cannot help evaluate that. I hope there would be some additional benefits from having this as an available feature.

> I think what was meant in the replay is that if this were done (and I am
> not saying that it wouldn't be at least an interesting feature) just to
> solve your problem with NTT, and they really care so much about it, it
> won't be long before that won't work either.

> I'm a bit confused as to what exactly they are blocking, by the way.  Are
> you unable to get SIP to any provider BUT NTT?  What if the traffic is
> tunneled?  I find it hard to believe they have locked down their router to 
> the point of denying ANY kind of VoIP access.  It just sounds like if you
> want to by service from THEM, you are limited in the manner you describe.
> It seems like a very odd limit.  Surely if they can sell you additional
> inbound DID numbers and the charges that go with them they wouldn't be
> trying to stop you from doing so.  Why do they care if it is one device or
> two behind their router that is receiving calls?  Do they charge you by
> the MAC address?  I'm really not understanding their reasoning.

> That is taking it a bit far - how many individuals in Japan (not
> companies) want to run asterisk in their homes?  Again I am not against
> the feature request - just want to point out that there is not "an entire
> country of people" beating down the door for this feature request.

> Personally I think multipath solutions don't belong in asterisk, but in
> upstream network equipment.

=

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