[Asterisk-Users] Why use 'Answer'?

[Eric Wieling aka ManxPower]

Rich Adamson wrote:
> That's an answer to the wrong question. See example below. 
> Rephrased: Why do folks think they have to use Answer in the sequence
> when Playback (etc) is _not_ used?

>>>>[voiptalk.org]
>>>>;forwards any calls starting with an "8" thru voiptalk.org
>>>>exten => _8.,1,Answer
>>>>exten => _8.,3,SetCIDNum(55555555)
>>>>exten => _8.,4,SetCIDName(My Name And Surname)
>>>>exten => _8.,5,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN:1}@voiptalk.org,,g)
>>>>exten => _8.,6,HangUp

Urban myth.  There is no reason to use answer for the example above.

People just repeat what they have been told or have heard (I've done 
that myself too occasionally) and so incorrect information gets passed 
around.

In fact using Answer could very well prevent the caller from hearing 
ringing.  I don't know, I would have to look at a SIP debug.

In the example above the call will hangup if the destination is 
unavailable OR busy.  You usually want to handle these events by looking 
at the DIALSTATUS variable.  See the stdexten macro in 
extensions.conf.sample.