[Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA
andPolycomphone!!
Gabriel Afana
asterisk at gafana.com
Thu Mar 16 11:01:10 MST 2006
www.aheeva.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Houser" <jhouser at trustamerifirst.com>
To: "'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion'"
<asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 6:50 AM
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA
andPolycomphone!!
> Gabe.
>
> Who was the call-center program from?
>
> Thanks,
> Jim
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Gabriel
> Afana
> Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 2:38 AM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Feedback from VON expo! Info on * HA and
> Polycomphone!!
>
>
> Hey group,
> I just got back from the VON expo. It was insane....there were so
> many
> companies there. The #1 thing ***EVERY*** company focused on was
> "convergance" - getting all your communication devices to intergrate
> with
> eachother. There were some nifty products out there that did some cool
> stuff :-)
>
> Of course Digium/Asterisk was there and I had a list of questions
> for
> them. I went by several times asking more and more questions...by the
> last
> visit, these guys were running from me because I was driving them nuts
> :-)
> Here are all the questions I asked them (this is not word for
> word...just a
> summary):
>
> Q: What are the plans for HA?
> A: With a configuration using DNS-SRV and DUNDi, you can create a
> pretty resiliant setup now.
>
> Q: What about failover without losing a call
> A: IBM has been able to make asterisk do this. However, at this
> time
> we are not working on any solution to offer this as part of the program.
>
> Q: Do you plan on offering support for other distros for Asterisk
> Business Edition?
> A: [uncertain answer] Not really sure...maybe SuSE...not sure
>
> Q: When is asterisk going to fully support video?
> A: Asterisk can complety support video using H.261, H.263 and we
> recently added support for H.264
>
> Q: What do you recommend as the best solution for HA?
> I got two different answers for this from two different people
> there.
> Both made good sense and are basically what everyone is doing now. Here
>
> both approaces are in a nut-shell:
>
> Approach 1 (seemed to be the preferred method): Use DNS-SRV lookups
> for
> all registrations. This will distribute the calls among the * servers.
> Next, you configure your servers using regexten and DUNDi. You use
> regexten
> to dynamically create the "exten => 1234,1,NoOp" when a phone registers
> with
> that server. Then when a call comes in, you use DUNDi to try to
> complete
> the call locally. If the phone is not registered to that server, then
> do a
> DUNDi lookup to find the server that the phone is registered to and then
>
> pass the call over IAX to that server to take it to the phone. Of
> course
> the phones will need to have a short registration expiration so they
> update
> frequently because if the server they are registered to crashes, until
> it
> re-registered, no server can access it. But by doing this, the phone
> will
> re-register to another server and then the next DUNDi lookup will then
> go to
> this new server. I asked about the load of having many phones
> registering
> frequently and he said it is no big deal at all. He also said it was
> very
> important to make sure cache is disabled in DUNDi!!! Each call that is
> made
> should result in a new query. This will ensure the calls are not
> getting
> old cached info which may no longer be accurate.
>
> Approach 2: Use a SER box to handle all registrations. The SER box
> will
> take care of distributing the load between the * boxes. You do not use
> DUNDi or regexten in this case. Just let each * box function on its
> own.
> If one of the servers fails, SER will not use it to terminate calls.
> Sinces
> the phones are registering to SER, and all incoming calls will be routed
> to
> SER, you do not need to worry much about the * boxes. You just need to
> make
> sure you have your SER boxes in a cluster to fail-over in the event of
> failure.
>
> Overall theme of the Asterisk stand: selling third-party products.
> In
> the there section, Digium had 10 seperate vendors that have teamed with
> them
> to sell special programs/products/services that intergrate with
> Asterisk.
> One was a call-center program, another was a resellers package, another
> delt
> with firewalls and NAT, another for voice recognition, another was Intel
>
> (that has partnered with Digium to offer drivers in the ABE for the
> intel
> cards), another was some email, fax, chat, presence, etc. kind of box
> that
> sits in front of * to combine all these services....and some others I
> dont
> remember. It felt like I was walking into an infomercial!
>
>
> I also spoke with Polycom guys a great deal and asked many
> questions:
>
> Q: Do you plan on offering 10/100/1000 ports on the phones?
> A: Yes, in the near future
>
> Q: Do you plan on offering a standard phone jack for failover
> purposes?
> A: No, we have no talks of this. However, I will take this idea to
> the
> production development team.
>
> Q: What is the "services" button ever used for?
> A: This is only operable in the 601 and is used to launch the XML
> browser. We have partned with many companies to offer you sports,
> weather,
> stock, movie ticket info...etc that can be fed directly to the phones
> screen.
>
> Q: What the deal with the limit on the number of people you can
> monitor
> for presence?
> A: There is no limit in the phone. This is an Asterisk limitation.
>
> Q: How can you get the name of the person you are calling to appear
> on
> the phone instead of their extension? (they had a demo of their phones
> there
> and they were doing this!!!)
> A: You enter the information into the phone book directly via the
> XML
> script loaded from the bootserver. Since all the phones will use the
> same
> bootserver to fetch the XML script, they will all have each others
> extension
> numbers and associated names. When you call another extension, their
> name
> will then appear.
>
> Q: When the phone is unable to make a call through the primary
> server
> and it redirects to the secondary server, does it just make the call or
> does
> it also register with the secondary server?
> A: No, it will not register with the secondary server
> automatically.
> This is done on purpose to help reduce unneccessary registrations.
>
> Q: Whats the best way to program the phone to handle failover?
> A: Use a DNS-SRV address for the primary server. When the phone
> queries the DNS server, it will receive a list of all the possible
> servers
> to send the call to. The phone will try to register to the first
> server; if
> this fails, it will go to the second server...and so on through the list
>
> until it can register. Once it is registered with a server, if that
> server
> fails (or the phone is unable to reach that exact server for some
> reason),
> the phone will *not* go to the secondary server!!! The results of the
> DNS
> lookup are saved on the phone so if the call doesn't go through to the
> server its registered with, it will recall the saved list of servers
> available and go through that list. Because of this, there is no need
> to go
> to the secondary server section since it will simply loop through all
> the
> servers it received during the DNS-SRV lookup.
>
>
> I am sure there were many things I left out or forgot to say. If I
> remember, I'll be sure to post them.
>
> - Gabe
>
>
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