[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk Realtime Capabilities

[Rod Bacon]

Hello all. I am trying to architect a large-scale solution and need to 
know some of the capabilities of * using realtime configuration (I have 
read some docuemntation on the WIKI, but have not yet played with Realtime).

As the supporting docco is a little light-on at the moment, I'm hoping 
to get some meaningful feedback from those who've used it successfully.

Essentially, I'm trying to build a distributed network of * boxes which 
will terminate SIP/IAX/PSTN calls. I would potentially like to use a 
central "farm" of redundant * boxes in place of a single SER box (if 
possible) to act as the SIP (and IAX) registrar/proxy. I know that SER 
is a much more efficient SIP proxy, but I'm hoping that the addition of 
multiple * boxes will largely negate this fact, and provide redundancy.

Is it indeed conceivable to build a national network entirely of * 
servers, have users register via SIP/IAX to a load-balanced (not sure 
which mechanism I'll empoy here yet) farm of * servers (ie. an unknown 
server), and then receive calls from anywhere in the network (and 
outside)? In other words, can the registering server update a USRLOC 
type database on the fly, so all other servers know where to route calls 
for a given (dynamic?) client?

Also, I will be using multiple * boxes as media gateways. Is there an 
existing mechanism whereby a given server can record the number of 
busy/available ZAP channels to a central database for the purpose of 
call routing?