asterisk users - Oct 2006 - "No Authority Found"

In over three years of using Asterisk in the lab and also in real-world
deployments and supporting other Asterisk users, the single most common
problem I have encountered and seen others encounter is the message "No
Authority Found" and the inability to call between machines when using IAX.
This is always a configuration problem which is solved after some tinkering
with the iax.conf, however I still do not understand the behaviour fully,
every time I am able to get it to work it is by pure luck, not by a set
formula Even using the example iax.conf files I have seen the "no authority
found" messages, and what puzzles me even more is that I can't find a
detailed explanation of this error. Is there any resource with a detailed
explanation of "No Authority Found" messages and how to troubleshoot
them?
Maybe it relates to the second part of my inquiry?

Another thing is my understanding of the "peer," "user" and
"friend." I
thought that a "peer" can only receive calls from either a user or a
friend,
a "user" sends calls to a peer or friend and a friend is both a peer
and a
user, however in my production machine I have the following configured:

register = user:password@providerip

[provider-ingress]
type=peer
username=user
host=providerip

[provider-egress]
type=user
username=user
host=providerip

That's the basics, user, password, providerip are all the same. Now when the
provier sends us a call, it always comes in through (according to the CLI
and CDR) provider-egress. How can this be if a "user" is supposed to
send
calls, not receive them??
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Andrew Joakimsen wrote:
> 
> Another thing is my understanding of the "peer," "user"
and "friend." I
> thought that a "peer" can only receive calls from either a user
or a
> friend, a "user" sends calls to a peer or friend and a friend is
both a
> peer and a user, however in my production machine I have the following 
> configured:
> 
You have it backwards.

Peers terminate calls--that is they provide a connection to a remote 
endpoint.

Users originate calls into your system from the outside world.

Friends do both, but last I knew the cheeses have deprecated the use of 
friend in favor of explicit peers and users.

And yes, this certainly could impact your connections both inbound and 
outgoing, causing the error message you report.

B.

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Brian Capouch wrote:
> Andrew Joakimsen wrote:
>
>>
>> Another thing is my understanding of the "peer,"
"user" and "friend."
>> I thought that a "peer" can only receive calls from either a
user or
>> a friend, a "user" sends calls to a peer or friend and a
friend is
>> both a peer and a user, however in my production machine I have the 
>> following configured:
>>
>
> You have it backwards.
>
> Peers terminate calls--that is they provide a connection to a remote 
> endpoint.
Not true, peers can originate calls into the system as well. When 
asterisk receives an inbound SIP call it will match the IP against the 
list of peers. See comments from 1.2 sip.conf

; type = user   a device that authenticates to us by "from" field to 
place calls
; type = peer   a device we place calls to or that calls us and we match 
by host

Leo