asterisk users - Jun 2006 - DUNDi Not Able to Handle Complex Failover Situations

This is driving me nuts.

Why doesn't the DUNDILOOKUP function return the weight of a path to a
number? The CLI 'dundi lookup' command does. What about the mac address
and expiry period? The CLI command returns those, but the DUNDILOOKUP function
does not. Why?

We absolutely need this in order to perform out routing logic.

It has become quite apparent to me that DUNDi is _NOT_ suited to performing
failover applications. It is suited to situations where you want to check a
number on a series of peers before routing the call through an expensive PSTN
gateway. It is not suited to situations where you want to dynamically discover
where a number is located within a cluster of Asterisk systems.

In our particular scenario, we have ACD queues. Our phones register with a
primary Asterisk box. The primary Asterisk box for company A may be different to
the primary Asterisk box for company B. In the event that a user in company B
wants to reach Company A's queue, we need to use DUNDi to perform a lookup
that returns it's company A's primary Asterisk box. However, the primary
Asterisk box may have failed, it which case the DUNDi lookup should return the
secondary Asterisk system for Company A to the dial plan routing the call. This
may have not made sense.... brain is fried after dealing with this all day.

DUNDi seems to be falling really short in performing complex discovery and
failover applications like this. If the DUNDILOOKUP fuction returned a weight,
it would help a lot.

Oh... also.... when you call the dundi lookup CLI command, you get multiple
results. The DUNDILOOKUP function only returns one value. How can I get _all_
DUNDi paths with DUNDILOOKUP?

Doug.

pbx/pbx_dundi.c in dundifunc_read().  shouldn't be too hard to have it set
some variables (i.e. DUNDI_RESULT_n) and add the the weight in a CUTable
string.  Can't return multiple results in a nice manner with the result from
a custom dialplan function...  I'm working on some other projects right now,
but I'm sure the Digium folks would welcome a patch from you if you really
want it.

On 6/14/06, Douglas Garstang <dgarstang@oneeighty.com>
wrote:
>
> This is driving me nuts.
>
> Why doesn't the DUNDILOOKUP function return the weight of a path to a
> number? The CLI 'dundi lookup' command does. What about the mac
address and
> expiry period? The CLI command returns those, but the DUNDILOOKUP function
> does not. Why?
>
> We absolutely need this in order to perform out routing logic.
>
> It has become quite apparent to me that DUNDi is _NOT_ suited to
> performing failover applications. It is suited to situations where you want
> to check a number on a series of peers before routing the call through an
> expensive PSTN gateway. It is not suited to situations where you want to
> dynamically discover where a number is located within a cluster of Asterisk
> systems.
>
> In our particular scenario, we have ACD queues. Our phones register with a
> primary Asterisk box. The primary Asterisk box for company A may be
> different to the primary Asterisk box for company B. In the event that a
> user in company B wants to reach Company A's queue, we need to use
DUNDi to
> perform a lookup that returns it's company A's primary Asterisk
box.
> However, the primary Asterisk box may have failed, it which case the DUNDi
> lookup should return the secondary Asterisk system for Company A to the
dial
> plan routing the call. This may have not made sense.... brain is fried
after
> dealing with this all day.
>
> DUNDi seems to be falling really short in performing complex discovery and
> failover applications like this. If the DUNDILOOKUP fuction returned a
> weight, it would help a lot.
>
> Oh... also.... when you call the dundi lookup CLI command, you get
> multiple results. The DUNDILOOKUP function only returns one value. How can
I
> get _all_ DUNDi paths with DUNDILOOKUP?
>
> Doug.
>
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On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, Douglas Garstang wrote:
> Why doesn't the DUNDILOOKUP function return the weight of a path to a
number? The CLI 'dundi lookup' command does. What about the mac address
and expiry period? The CLI command returns those, but the DUNDILOOKUP function
does not. Why?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but DUNDi is doing all the failover work for you. 
It decides based on the weights what route is best.  If you want one route 
to be higher than another, set it up that way.  That's the benefit of 
using DUNDILOOKUP to handle it, no more work for you after the initial 
routing.

If that doesn't work for you, program the routes directly into the 
dialplan instead of using DUNDi, it seems like you'll get better results 
that way.  We did that for a while until we decided to move to DUNDi. 
Some people will find it more suited to their needs, some won't.


-- 
Aaron Daniel
Computer Systems Technician
Sam Houston State University
amdtech@shsu.edu
(936) 294-4198