[asterisk-users] IAX best practices

[Steve Totaro]

Asterisk wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I am planning to connect two Asterisk boxes that are currently running
> in two different countries, using IAX.
>
> I was wondering if anyone could provide me with some links or suggestion
> regarding best practices in connecting two Asterisk in such way. I guess
> many of you have already tried this, and already have some know-how
> (what I should be careful about, what to avoid, etc...)?
>
> Regards,
> Alex
>   
Bandwidth and latency.  IAX2 is remarakably good at traversing NAT and 
even double NATs.  It should just work.  The issues that I ran into are 
low bandwidth and latency.  Not much you can do about latency besides 
getting a better route and putting QoS on your equipment and hoping that 
your provider either observes your tagging or is not very latent to 
begin with.  The other is bandwidth which I found SPEEX works wonders 
(but adds to latency).

In my experience, bandwidth issues result in choppy audio and latency 
results in delays which cause people to talk on top of each other and 
can be extremely annoying.

Try pinging a router or device at the remote side to get an idea of how 
latent your connection will be. 

Thanks,
Steve