[Asterisk-Users] Conference solution for 100+ users

[Stefan Märkle]

> Hi List,

Hi!

> 1-Skype-like softphone for *. is there any?

None that I know of. But IAX isn't bad in most of the firewalled environments, give it a try. It only has to get a udp socket open for an outbound connection (may well be NAT-ed) and to receive the answer packets back.

> 2-Just do audio streaming and have the customers use windows 
> media player. (I dont know how to do this)

This would mean exactly the same prerequisites as an iax-based solution as the media stream (usually udp) has to be received by the media players. One technique that circumvents this is using HTTP/1.1 streaming which may or may not work through an application level http-proxy.

> 3-Use some kind of Softphone with VPN...

Again, if you are able to do an outside connect through the firewall (as with openvpn which uses udp or with ipsec which uses ip), you can also do some other things by this means (e.g. iax).

> 4- Do Softphone--->Port 80---> SER--->Asterisk w/meetme.

Only reason for this might be an application level http-proxy that allows for outbound 'connect' calls, since I don't think you want to encapsule SIP in HTTP, do you?.
And for the outbound 'connect' method, port 443 might be a better choice for your port number, but you have to choose a protocol that uses TCP and only one single socket for this to work.
Maybe using iax over some sort of UDP-in-TCP tunnel could work (like zeebeedee).


> Whatever solution I come up with MUST allow anybody to listen 
> in assuming nobody can change firewalls.
> Any one has already done this? Any feedback will be much appreciated.

We're working on similar problems, so if you come up with a perfect solution, please let me know.
Also, if you are interested in a commercial solution feel free to contact me off-list.

Stefan Märkle


-- 
Stefan Märkle                       Netpioneer GmbH
Head Software Architect             Beiertheimer Allee 18
<stefan.maerkle at netpioneer.de>      76137 Karlsruhe, Germany