[Asterisk-Users] Stuck. Extenions.conf? Realtime? MySQL? Grrrrr!

[Douglas Garstang]

Boy, am I stuck...

I'm officially ready to toss Asterisk out the window. I have to admit it isn't necessarily all the fault of Asterisk either. It just seems that every option I turn to suddenly ends in failure. I don't know if it's me that's bitten of more than I can chew with this project, or maybe Asterisk just isn't mature enough yet.

Nothing complicated really.... Just a carrier class solution, with advanced custom routing, incoming and outgoing number blocking (at user/company and global level) and whitelisting, findme/followme, user specific pic codes and rate centres based on number dialled, blocking of specific star code prefixed features, different caller ID based on intra company calls, outside calls, calls overriden to use alternate caller id with feature codes, and not to mention it all has to be HA.

I'd been doing it in python written AGI scripts interfacing to custom built MySQL tables. Doing stuff this complex in the dial plan would be a nightmare (oh, did I mention a user web interface so that users can make changes themselves?), and Realtime, well it just has too many limitations. Imagine trying to code choosing a specific pic code based on the number prefix in realtime or the dial plan. For example, 1* might be 1123, 1303* might be something else, and 130* might be another pic code.

Throw in findme/followme with caller id based routing, multiple numbers per dial (easy in Asterisk but the MySQL tables start to get complex - actually not that easy if you want to dial a local user AND an OffNet user at the SAME time with redundancy).While we're at it, write the application generic enough so that it can handle Queues, voicemail and everything else.

My brain hurts.

Doug