asterisk users - Sep 2011 - Distributed device state / presence info??

Hi all,

Last couple of days i've arguing with my colleges about presence-info.
>From the asterisk-bible and the wiki's i learned that it is possible to
let asterisk do some of the presense-info by means of the jabber.conf
file and a seperate xmpp-server.

On the other hand, most soft-phones are capable of "doing something"
with presence, allthough most of them use SIMPLE-protocol, instead of
XMPP.

So if when should one use the presence info from asterisk and when use
the presence info from the softphones.
It looks to me like doing the same job twice.

What i assume (please correct me if i am wrong) is that when a client
registers/deregisters, asterisk will update the presence info towards
the XMPP-server. Correct?

But otoh, what people would like to see is who is "on line".
And not only on the asterisk-server that they are connected to, but also
from other possible asterisk servers.
And furthermore, each registered user might want to set their
presencse-status to either free/busy/away/what-ever.

So if the changing/reading is to be done on a softphone, what is the
point of having asterisk doing someting with the device-status???

While writing, i've got a distinct feeling i'm understanding less by the
minute.... ;(


Anyway, what i'm building is a central server and a number of
asterisk-boxes that act as proxy/six-iax-converter.
All of the registered users should be able to see the presence of all
the users on either proxy.

Hans

On 09/01/2011 04:39 PM, Hans Witvliet wrote:
>> From the asterisk-bible and the wiki's i learned that it is
possible to
> let asterisk do some of the presense-info by means of the jabber.conf
> file and a seperate xmpp-server.
You are misunderstanding a bit; Asterisk can use an XMPP server and 
PubSub to *distribute* presence information among a cluster of Asterisk 
servers. This information is not intended to be directly sent to XMPP 
clients.
> What i assume (please correct me if i am wrong) is that when a client
> registers/deregisters, asterisk will update the presence info towards
> the XMPP-server. Correct?
Yes, in order to let other Asterisk servers in the cluster know about it.
> But otoh, what people would like to see is who is "on line".
> And not only on the asterisk-server that they are connected to, but also
> from other possible asterisk servers.
> And furthermore, each registered user might want to set their
> presencse-status to either free/busy/away/what-ever.
Asterisk does not support 'user' presence; it supports device and 
extension presence. In some applications these can be used 
interchangeably, but in others they don't match up very well.
> Anyway, what i'm building is a central server and a number of
> asterisk-boxes that act as proxy/six-iax-converter.
> All of the registered users should be able to see the presence of all
> the users on either proxy.
This is exactly what 'distributed device state' is all about, whether 
you choose OpenAIS or XMPP/PubSub to distribute the information between 
the servers.

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies
Jabber: kfleming at digium.com | SIP: kpfleming at digium.com | Skype: kpfleming
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
Check us out at www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org