[Asterisk-Users] Is Asterisk the right tool?

[trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 14:46 +0100, Paul Klipp wrote:
> I want to create a VoIP solution to allow many members of a closed community
> to talk to each other (one on one) via soft phones. In many ways, what I
> want is not unlike Skype, except that it would allow for relative anonymity
> and be open only to a select group. The system should support as many as 500
> simultaneous users located on different continents. 
> 

select groups and anonymity dont go well together, but that aside...

If its just point to point via sip phones and you just need a central
system to route the calls directly asterisk may be overkill.  If however
you want to do voicemail, or other applications (conferencing, ivr, etc)
then it may be a better choice.

If you just need a sip proxy (where sip phones register) and allow
direct connections to each other, ser (http://www.iptel.org/ser) may be
a better choice.

It tends to handle more users for sip on less hardware, this is largely
becuase it does less.  Its only a sip proxy and doesnt do any of the
applications, media gateways, etc.  Freeworld dialup uses SER.

Now if you want to make it more anonymous you may want asterisk to be
more of a man in the middle so the only IP that someone would see is
that of the server (requires more bandwidth, potentially larger server,
etc) then you may want asterisk, as ser will not be able to do this by
itself.


-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200
FreeWorldDialup: 635378
http://www.sacaug.org/ Sacramento Asterisk Users Group
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20060117/f7f72621/attachment.pgp