[asterisk-users] Asterisk's DANGEROUS Transfer CDR's

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Grey Man wrote:

> That will work for blind transfers but not attended and even in the blind transfer case the CDR's still aren't correct you're relying on an informational field.

I think there is an important point being missed here; Asterisk did not
originate the concept of CDRs, nor did it specify what they contain or
how they are to be collected and generated.

CDRs have existed for decades before Asterisk was created, and they are
a fairly well understood concept throughout the telephony switching
industry. They were designed for billing, and in many telephony networks
are still used for billing.

However, CDRs were created before the users of those services had the
ability to transfer calls, make three-way calls, make conference calls,
and do other magical things. As such, there is no way in a CDR to
represent this activity in any *complete* manner. Doing so will require
a redesign of the CDR system, which Steve Murphy has already begun for
Asterisk 1.6.

As far as I am aware, everyone who builds a complete billing system for
Asterisk and expects it to be accurate and reliable uses other means in
addition to CDRs for collecting the information, or they restrict their
users to not performing actions that will break the billing process.

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Director of Software Technologies
Digium, Inc. - "The Genuine Asterisk Experience" (TM)