[Asterisk-Users] Remote control IVR

[Steven Critchfield]

On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 12:13, Ívar Ragnarsson wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I work at a small company that has some IVR solutions that use
> Dialogic
> hardware for everything.
> Everything is written in C++ using MS VC++ using the Dialogic API and
> runs
> only on Windows.
> Being the rebel that I am, I would like free myself from Dialogic.
> To do this without porting all our existing code to run on Linux I was
> thinking of controlling the Asterisk from a Windows machine running
> our
> existing code.  
> i.e. making an API similar to the Dialogic one that would control
> Asterisk
> over TCP/IP.
> 
> Has anyone done something like this? Or does someone have has a good
> idea
> for implementing such a thing?

It would be ugly but doable to link up with the IAX library and then be
just a VoIP endpoint. Then asterisk is just your gateway. Your problem
will be in licensing. You could try and sidestep that by using SIP or
h.323 especially if you can get access into the MS protocols. This way
you haven't left the comfort of your MS world, and you haven't had to
make interfaces do things they shouldn't.

> I am still familiarizing myself with Asterisk but as I understand it
> you can
> add functionality to Asterisk through the AGI interface and by
> creating a
> loadable application.
> Which one would one should I use to solve my problem?  Does an
> loadable
> application give you more control than an AGI script?

Yes, and no. A loadable app is going to have less overhead involved and
runs in the same memory space as asterisk itself. AGI on the other hand
is run separate and if it crashes, it doesn't take asterisk down and the
port is still available to answer the next call coming in. AGI can run
the applications that are loadable too.  

> ps. Does a loadable application have to be GPL licensed?

If they are distributed then yes. Only when it is distributed does the
license really matter.

-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>