[Asterisk-Users] The Evil of type=friend explained, again (was Re: [Asterisk-Users] Minor Registration Problem With Polycom Soun dpoint IP 500)

[Jeremy McNamara]

Tilghman Lesher wrote:

>On Thursday 05 February 2004 05:50, Jeremy McNamara wrote:
>  
>
>>A type=friend is simply both a type=user and type=peer using the same
>>set of config directives. While a type=friend makes things almost
>>trivial to get calls working in both directions, it will limit the
>>flexibility of your config and even hinder some of the more advanced
>>uses of Asterisk.
>>
>>For example: Say you want to use the same 'user' across many
>>different Asterisk boxes, which of course will have different IP
>>addresses. In this situation, you cannot have a host keyword in your
>>Asterisk config stanza for the type=user, but the type=peer requires
>>some host keyword. Thus, if you use a type=friend you will limit the
>>use of that one username to whatever IP address is contained in the
>>host keyword.
>>
>>You only need to register to Asterisk if you have a dynamic IP
>>address or you need to blow thru a firewall/NAT device. To register
>>you need to have a type=peer with a host=dynamic. Since in your
>>type=friend config directive you had host=some.ip.address, while this
>>may be this is fine to for the type=user, this same value also gets
>>used for the type=peer, which makes it so you cannot register since
>>the IP address is hard coded.
>>
>>So, either you do not need to register and things will Just Work(tm)
>>or you will need to use separate type=user and type=peer config
>>directives.
>>    
>>
>
>So, why can't you just do:
>
>[someuser]
>type=friend
>host=dynamic
>context=internal
>secret=somesecret
>
>In other words, you can have your user registered to the server AND be
>using a type=friend definition.  This is exactly how I have some test
>equipment set up and it works perfectly well.
>  
>




Sure, but then you are not restricting to any specific IP address to 
authenticate users and you will request the internal context on the far 
end when sending them calls.

Jeremy McNamara