[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk Realtime Capabilities

Rod Bacon
Sun, 03 Apr 2005 18:24:56 -0000

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?