[asterisk-users] Improving Asterisk's DNS support

[Kristian Kielhofner]

On 5/1/07, Per Jessen <per at computer.org> wrote:
> Kristian Kielhofner wrote:
>
> > After several years of using Asterisk I have always been frustrated
> > by the support for DNS.  I have seen all kinds of strange behavior
> > when Asterisk is used on a system with "iffy" DNS servers:
>
> Maybe that's where you need to start - by fixing the iffy DNS? :-)
>

  Certainly that is a start.  However - consider a typical scenario of
a REAL system connected to the internet with SIP peers defined locally
(registered locally) and SIP peers defined via hostnames accessible
via the internet.

  If the internet connection goes down Asterisk should not "freak out"
(for lack of a better term).  At least the local network resources
that don't depend on DNS should keep functioning as normal.  That is
not the case now.

  From the comments in dns.h and other places it is known that
Asterisk DNS support is synchronous and can lock if a DNS response
isn't received.  This is not proper behavior.

  And I'm not looking for hacks like /etc/hosts, DNS caches, etc.  I
want to solve the problem, not hack around it.

> > - no failover to other DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf (might be a C
> > library thing)
>
> That's not the responsibility of the application.

  Maybe that's why I said "might be a C library thing"?  Either way,
it's still a problem...

> > - dnsmgr doesn't support SIP (yikes!):
> > http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=9153 - other randomness (please
> > contribute your own experiences)
>
> I haven't been using Asterisk for long, but I have not yet experienced
> any DNS-related oddities.
>

  As another poster said - you will...

  The intent of my original message was to try to start a discussion
on how we can fix a REAL, KNOWN problem with Asterisk to make it
better.  I'm not sure what the exact problems are (or even the
specific symptoms in all cases), but  I am willing to offer anything
that I can (money, testing, etc) to fix this problem.

  I realise you don't know that this is a problem.  However, your tone
is *not* what I am looking for in this discussion.

Thanks!

-- 
Kristian Kielhofner