[Asterisk-Users] Toll-Free Gateway Beta Test: freenum.org

[John Todd]

>John Todd said:
>>
>>
>>  United States:*       +1-800-...
>>                        +1-888-...
>>                        +1-877-...
>>                        +1-866-...
>>   via: Telesthetic/Local Exchange Carriers of Michigan
>>
>>
>JOhn, Good idea on leaving the code in. I'll do that.  Since IAXtel has
>8xx dialing into the USA would it be possible to have that one in
>freenum.org as the returned gateway fro the USA toll free?  That way, IAX
>will get some testing too.  Just a thought.
>Robert

Two comments on that:

  1) I think the same people that provide the actual gateways to 
IAXTel are the ones that offered their services for freenum.org 
(Telesthetic/Local Exchange Carriers of Michigan)

  2) The +1-8xx numbers offered in freenum.org are now available via 
IAX2, thanks to the kind efforts of the gateway provider.

Here's the issue: Asterisk does not have the ability to request 
specific NAPTR replies.  Since I have two different technologies (SIP 
and IAX2) in the list of records for (as an example) 1-800, there are 
two possible replies: a SIP NAPTR and an IAX2 NAPTR.  Now, the good 
news is that the standard DNS resolver on most UNIX distributions 
will rotate the two answers, so every time your particular computer 
asks the question from your local resolver you should get a different 
response than the previous request, or at least you will receive 
answers in a quasi-random fashion.  So, in the best possible world, 
every other call you make will be IAX2.  You could write some really 
ugly looping routines in Asterisk to keep requesting NAPTRs from 
EnumLookup until an IAX2 reply was given... <shudder>.

SO: Asterisk needs to have some extensions written to the EnumLookup 
routines that allow the user optionally to specify the technology 
requested.  Where was that guy on the IRC channel that was looking 
for Asterisk projects...

JT