asterisk users - May 2005 - SIP Gerenal settings conufsion

I have a little confusion about the general settings (other than the 
register values) in the SIP
General area. I understand that for examle in a SIP context like [FWD] 
or [BROADVOICE]
the entries in those areas are ths settings that take effect in any
 communication woth FWD and/or BROADVOICE.  However, I'm confused as to 
the purpose of the
"general" settings -- to what or which connection do they apply? 
Since
 the context suggested for the general settings is something like
 "nothing" to avoid unwanted sip calls, I'm confused as to the
purposse
of values in the general section since all parameters for communications 
with VOIP providers is contained in the contexts such as I specified 
above, i.e., [FWD] or for example [BROADVOICE].  Can someone shed some 
light on that for me?

Thanks,

Jeffrey Starin wrote:
> I have a little confusion about the general settings (other than the 
> register values) in the SIP
> General area. 
[snip]
> However, I'm confused as to the purpose of the
> "general" settings -- to what or which connection do they apply? 
Since
> the context suggested for the general settings is something like
> "nothing" to avoid unwanted sip calls, I'm confused as to the
purposse
> of values in the general section since all parameters for communications 
> with VOIP providers is contained in the contexts such as I specified 
> above, i.e., [FWD] or for example [BROADVOICE].  Can someone shed some 
> light on that for me?
Well, your confusion is understandable, given the way sip.conf works. 
    Parameters which affect incoming calls are not separated from those 
that affect outgoing calls, so it's easy to get mixed up (well, for me, 
anyway.)

In the [general] section the parameters become the defaults used unless 
overridden in a specific peer section.  Also, if an incoming or outgoing 
SIP call doesn't match a specific peer section, these parameters get used.

So, for example, if you don't want any incoming SIP calls that aren't 
from a known provider, you can set the default context to something 
innocuous as you describe above and the call will get rejected as a 
non-existent context.  This is what you described in our original mail.

But also in this [general] section are settings for *outbound* calls 
using SIP that aren't using a specific peer section.  This can be done 
with the Dial command, using a dial string such as IP/xxxxx@provider.com 
where provider.com is not listed in sip.conf.  This might happen, say, 
in the case of using the ENUM lookup capability, where the outbound SIP 
address of a phone number is determined dynamically at call time rather 
than pre-configured in extensions.conf/sip.conf.

Personally, I'd like to see this changed so there are two 'general' 
sections--one for default parameters to use unless overridden when there 
*is* a peer section below, and a different one to describe parameters to 
use when the remote peer is not previously known.  I know there are ways 
to accomplish this with the existing sip.conf structure but it seems 
very counter-intuitive.

-Johnathan

I want to add to this question as this seems relevant here. My question
corresponds to sip.conf, iax.conf and [globals] in extensions.conf. My
questions are as under:

1) Can we have two general sections - one in sip.conf and another one in
one of the included additional sip extension files, like the example
below? How will the following affect the calls?

Ex: 
;sip.conf 
[general]
port = 5060           ; Port to bind to (SIP is 5060)
bindaddr = 0.0.0.0    ; Address to bind to (all addresses on machine)
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
context = from-sip-internal; Default SIP context
#include sip_nat.conf
#include sip_additional.conf

;sip_nat.conf 
[general]
port = 5060           ; Port to bind to (SIP is 5060)
host=dynamic
nat=yes

;sip_additional.conf 
[general]
port = 5060           ; Port to bind to (SIP is 5060)
bindaddr = 0.0.0.0    ; Address to bind to (all addresses on machine)
allow=g729
nat=never


;extensions.conf
[globals]
; globals 
VOICEPULSE => IAX2/xyzd:123d12@gwiaxt01.voicepulse.com
PSTN => Zap/1
CALLER_ID=7328106707
; Which phones to ring for various users
RING_Seshu => SIP/6005
MAX_RINGTIME => 15
RINGSECS => 20
LONGTIMEOUT => 60
#include extensions_additional.conf
/* End of Extensions.conf */

/* Beginning of extensions_additional.conf */
;extensions_additional.conf
[globals]
RINGTIMER = 30
REGTIME = 7:55-17:05
REGDAYS = mon-fri
RECORDEXTEN = ""
PARKNOTIFY = SIP/200
OUT_3 = ZAP/g0
OUT_2 = IAX2/nypbx
OUT_1 = SIP/SIP_USA
FAX_RX_EMAIL = seshu@xyz.net


Are the above valid? If so how will they affect the values of different
parameters when the user contects of a specific  file is being served?

Seshu Kanuri 
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