[Asterisk-Dev] meetme enhancements to improve efficiency

[SteveK]

On Dec 1, 2005, at 5:08 PM, Geoff Karl wrote:

> On 12/1/05, SteveK <stevek at stevek.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Dec 1, 2005, at 4:22 PM, Geoff Karl wrote:
>>
>>> On 12/1/05, Kevin P. Fleming <kpfleming at digium.com> wrote:
>>>> Geoff Karl wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I would like to see something similar to app_conference where the
>>>>> transcoding occurs only once per codec.  This will allow meetme to
>>>>> scale much better.
>>>>>
>>>>> Is there any interest in this?
>>>>
>>>> Absolutely.
>>>
>>> Kevin, you know the internals infinitely better than I do.  Is  
>>> this a
>>> major undertaking?
>>
>> Why don't you just use app_conference?
>>
>> It might be easier to add the functionality you need to
>> app_conference, than it would be to change the mixing architecture of
>> meetme to be the same as app_conference.
>>
>> You can already add most of this functionality to app_conference, if
>> you attach something to the manager interface:  From the manager
>> interface, app_conference will report each user's DTMF digits dialed,
>> and will also allow you to, e.g. play sounds to users etc.
>>
>> The idea here has been to keep all the "features" out of
>> app_conference, and move them out to the manager interface, where you
>> can write them in a much simpler language (i.e. perl, or whatever is
>> your favorite).
>>
>> -SteveK
>>
>
> I have looked at app_conference many, many times and it looks great,
> but I really want to see something supported within Asterisk.
> Conferencing is a killer app and Asterisk itself should have a very
> good implementation.

There's no technical reason why app_conference couldn't go inside  
asterisk.  The code could be disclaimed, if people were interested in  
maintaining it in the core.

It _is_ maintained, as I use it all the time, but there's actually a  
couple of issues which make it less than ideal at the moment:

1) It wants all users to have 20ms frames, and will not be happy  
otherwise (so, iLBC, etc are no good).
2) it doesn't include _any_ features.

These can both be addressed, and it might be easier than trying to  
change the meetme architecture.  (also, (2) can be done more cleanly  
than in meetme, because it can be external from the actual muxing  
functionality).

I guess, you could also take the guts of app_conference, and  
transplant them into meetme (you'd still need the disclaimer), but  
then you'd still have all the muxing functionality mixed into the  
features..

-SteveK