[Asterisk-Users] Ok... what is 'sip show peers' really used for?

[Douglas Garstang]

I'd love to understand what the function of the peer list returned by 'sip show peers' is for, especially when Realtime is used. 

If I start Asterisk with realtime enabled, a 'sip show peers' yields none. As each peer (phone) registers, or a call is made to the peer, Asterisk adds them to the list returned by 'sip show peers'. Correct?

Apparently Asterisk doesn't refer to thie list however, when deciding where a peer is located. It uses astdb instead (I have rtcachefriends=yes). I cleared the fullcontact field in the database, and placed a call. The only place that Asterisk could get the peer's IP address from was astdb, as the peer wasn't in 'sip show peers' as I purposefully cleared the fullcontact field for all peers in the database.

So... what's the point of this? Is it used for anything? It looks like it uses it for voicemail, but that's it. Ie if the peer isn't in 'sip show peers' then voicemail does not get delivered, EVEN if it's in astdb.

Also, if all my phones are defined as friends, why does a 'sip show friends' return a smaller list than 'sip show peers'??? If the phones are all defined as friends, which are both peer and user, then a 'sip show friends' should return all the phones, but it does not.

No wonder I'm confused.

:(

Doug.